Metro Turf

Is it possible to be obvious and clever at the same time? I would have answered “no” before I’d seen this great ad. It’s so effective that it stopped me — and I couldn’t possibly care less about football if I tried. And believe me, I’ve tried. This ad is effective because of its simplicity: IS IT MONDAY YET? This simple headline works so well because it was painted directly onto astro-turf, and hung onto a wall on the street. Had the end result simply been a photograph of this, or — worse yet — photos of players on the field, it would have just become part of the visual noise of everyone else’s bad ads. What works here is that the medium is the message. This, paired with a simple, provocative question speaks to the fan’s raw emotions, making it communicate instantly. Astro turf may be an obvious choice, but the whole thing comes off as being quite clever. I would have preferred if they had left off the “Monday Night Football” since any ignoramus like myself knows that Monday Night + Astro turf = one less TV channel for me to watch. Rainy days and Monday nights will still continue to get me down, but knowing that good ads can be interesting to an audience far, far outside of their target is a grand slam. I mean slam-dunk.