Saturday, 19 March 2011

no secrets with billboards


ok, like many others, I am a fan of america's next top model. About 4 years ago, myself and a heap of my close friends would celebrate top model friday! we'd have dinner while watching top model (all feeling like we probably shouldn't be eating because it wasn't going to make us feel good about ourselves) and then we would discuss the night's elimination decision while getting ridiculously drunk! My how those times have changed..........we have somehow managed to grow up a bit.
so! now i spend time contemplating over why people do certain things and maybe i have become more cynical as i have grown older mostly thinking "are people really that stupid sometimes???".
anyway......the whole point of this entry is more to do with the advertising of this season of america's next top model. the above billboard is positioned at the bottom of pitt st. in auckland and what i realized the other day while driving past it was that these billboards have ruined something!!! they may not be telling us who has won this cycle, but from watching all of the episodes that have screened so far on channel four, i can pretty much guess who is going to be eliminated because of the billboards that show the nz shoot! this week tatianna and alexandra were in the bottom two and because of the billboard that i have driven past over and over again, i knew it wasn't going to be alexandra who was going to be sent home! this makes me think that somebody at channel four and the company that they employ to do all of their advertising made a boo boo and obviously didn't think about this. sure the billboards are interesting and they do a great job of highlighting the fact that this is the cycle that we have all been waiting for (ANTM in nz) but it would've been better if channel four just used a shot of all the models so that the viewers could have had a bit more of a surprise!? To be honest, we all watch it to guess who's going home and most of us probably feel like we should be on the judging panel (literally) to make the executive calls on who should stay or go, and somehow it feels like these billboards have taken that imaginary status away from us.
on another note, don't you think channel four's new branding is a bit retro?? seems like they have decided to do a bit of time travel, but unfortunately in the wrong direction......backwards!