What's Your Sign?

While running errands this morning, I had the pleasure of travelling down one of the busiest roads in the county, Dixie Highway.  It's nothing but six lanes of pain in the ass.  Unfortunately, to get anywhere in the city you almost always have to get there via Dixie.  Traffic was the usual stop-and-go Saturday traffic with everybody else out running errands at the same time I was.  While travelling down Dixie and waiting in traffic, I noticed something odd - on almost every corner, someone was standing there with a big sign advertising something.  It wasn't your typical handwritten cardboard "will work for food" or the posterboard sign advertising a car wash  - these were about 6 feet tall, and brightly colored to catch your eye. 

Here's just a few of the businesses I saw being advertised on the street corners:   Buehler's Fresh Market going-out-of-business sale, C.C.'s Pizza to-go, Fashio Cent$ going-out-of-business sale, Sears Essentials, Little Caesar's Pizz, and Neil Huffman Volkswagon.  Let me sum this up - it seems that the current trend in advertising new stores, stores that are closing, and pizzas is to use big signs.  Let me also add that the sign holders were PATs.  Most of them had on shorts that were sagging down to their ankles, and were bopping and grooving to the music coming from their headphones. 

I'll give Little Caesar's credit - they were the first in our area to use the big signs for advertising.  In the early spring, I spotted the first PAT holding a Little Caesar's sign over by the park.  He looked as if he would rather have his eyes gouged out by flaming arrows than to stand there and hold a sign advertising a large pepparoni pizza for 5 bucks.  But the sign worked - on impulse, I pulled into Little Caesars and bought one.  It was about a 10 minute wait, because there were 8 people ahead of me doing the same thing.  So that's proof positive that the sign advertising is working.