Billboard Shocks Drivers in Austria

Billboard Shocks Drivers in Austria

Marketers expect consumers to swallow a lot with some of their ads. This billboard in Austria does too, literally. Drivers follow the road that looks like it heads directly into a woman’s mouth. The company is Oldtimer, a chain of highway cafes in Austria that advertises an all-you-can-eat menu.

 

Everything Old Is New Again

It is a perfect piece of trompe d’oeil, which is French for “to fool or trick the eye.” Though used as far back as ancient Rome, it reached perfection during the Renaissance. Oldtimer used it in this billboard with ingenuity and boldness.

And all-you-can-eat eateries are not new either. The first one to officially get the name began in Las Vegas in the 1950s. In Europe,  the smorgasbord has been part of Swedish cuisine for hundreds of years.

Oldtimer roadway cafes and hotels have been around since 1995. The all-you-can-eat restaurants are just one of the services and eateries they offer. 

Billboards are also old, but keep reinventing themselves to appeal to each new crop of consumers. Modern day billboards started in the 1790s, with the invention of lithography, which made it possible to produce posters on a large scale.

Modern billboards have evolved from just text announcing sales and grand openings to artistic happenings, like the Oldtimer billboard. The industry also uses modern technology like cell phones, electronics and sensors to produce intriguing images that attract the eye of shoppers.

Marketing and Fooling the Customer

Is that what it comes down to, all the efforts of advertisers and marketers, just fooling customers into buying?  Probably not, because most customers aren’t foolish. Quite the contrary, any customer over five years old is imbued with at least a gentle cynicism when they see a newspaper ad, billboard, TV commercial or Internet banner.

Modern businesses with healthy bottom lines know that it is necessary to work for a long-term relationship with a customer, whether a retail consumer or a business.

Truck Through Tunnel

Getting back to trompe d’oeil, a number of trucks have been painted using this technique. Check out the amazing illustrations on these semis in next month’s issue.

For example, the Pepsi truck with the boxes floating to the top of the truck advertised their light cola. Or the truck going two directions at the same time.

What if one of the semis decorated with trompe d’oeil drove through the Oldtimer trompe d’oeil? Would one trompe the other?