1-800-Call-Jacob: The Quest to discover the backstory of LA’s anti-aesthetic billboards
P A R T [ O N E ]: PRESEARCH
This is a subject that has been simmering in my mind for quite some time, and after some lengthy discussions betwixt my friends and I, in which we attempted to analyze the various motives and influences behind some of the more recent of the lawyer ads in Los Angeles, I’ve decided to launch a full on investigation into the matter.
Or a cross-examination, if you will
(Don’t sue me I’m not a lawyer so if I use law terms incorrectly then meh)
I’ve never been too fond of law ads, as I’ve always found them strikingly ugly, almost to the point that it seems they were intentionally designed to make your eyeballs commit seppuku (more on this later). But both my outrage and interest were piqued when I saw this monstrosity:
But the more I thought about it, the more questions I had. Is this truly a monstrosity or is it really a masterpiece? A fumble for the ages or a pinnacle of guerrilla marketing?
So here I am, in the presearch phase, hypothesizing various theories and explanations before I delve into what’s really going on behind the scenes. This is what I’ve been able to come up with so far.
Theory 1: The upside-down billboard is an actual mistake
At first glance this is the idea that comes most immediately to mind, but one which begins to deteriorate quickly when placed under scrutiny. One would first assume that the ad was simply applied wrong to the board, in which case your associated internal dialogue would either be “Aw, poor guy, they put his ad on wrong,” or in my case:
“How the f$*# did that happen?”
But this is where talking with friends helps, because one of mine pointed out that the ad isn’t truly upside-down. If you turn your head 90 degrees to read what it would say if it were right-side-up, you’ll actually have a harder time deciphering what the billboard says (“CALL JACOB” becomes “BOCAJ LLAC”) .
However, if you remain the passive consumer of advertisements that most of us already are, you can with little effort make out that the sign says “CALL JACOB”, except that the letters are slightly off.
So I used photo editing to recreate the original
And Voila. However this brings up more than a few logistical impossibilities printing-wise. For this to have actually occurred by sheer accident, the billboard maker would have had to have printed the correct image on one side and would then have printed a horizontally mirrored version of the image on the back. Then, the two-man team in charge of applying the ad to the board would have had to have grossly neglected their duties by first applying the wrong side of the ad and then on top of that applying this mistaken side upside down. The odds of not one but two catastrophic mistakes (a horizontal flip and then a vertical flip) in such a high-stake setting (the minimum cost of a billboard in Los Angeles is ($1500 a month) are so astronomically low that such an event taking place should be impossible.
This is assuming the ad had been printed on both sides of the billboard material, which does not happen. In the printing business, especially when it comes to large adverts, every inch of space counts. There is absolutely no reason the print maker would choose to use twice as much ink and waste twice as much time as necessary when one of the two sides of the ad-material will without a doubt be completely obscured. Such a process would be profit-killing and ultimately business-ending.
Just to ensure I had at least a minimal idea of what I was talking about, I stopped writing this article and looked up “how billboards are made” and found this nice and wholesome video.
If you pause at 1:20 you’ll see this,
where it’s clear that only one side of the vinyl-material is printed on, meaning the other side is completely blank. Meaning, there shouldn’t even exist a backside for the billboard-pasters to turn upside down.
But alternatively, perhaps for some odd and eccentric reason, Call Jacob’s billboard maker made an ad that bleeds through completely to the other side, meaning that when this is printed on one side:
Then the above image would bleed through and create this on the other side.
Long story short, this is also not a thing. Ink does not bleed through to the other side of printer-friendly material, that would require copious amounts of ink be next to impossible to control the appearance of, and wreak overall havoc for print makers.
What’s more this would still require that the billboard workers paste the ad both backwards and upside down, an occurrence which we’ve already established as having the same likelihood as quantum tunneling.
For the above reasons, I consider that the upside down (a.k.a. vertically flipped) billboard happening by accident to be logistically impossible.
Theory 2: The Upside down billboard was completely intentional
The more you think about it the more this idea makes sense. If you’re a lawyer — someone who is supposed to be familiar with every intricacy of law and procedure in order to represent your client — then you are bound to be detail oriented. You would also know that image matters — a lot. When you appear in court you do so with a well-ironed suit and well-kept hair, and you would advise your client to do the same (think about the difference between showing up in a suit versus an orange jumpsuit).
Why then, would such a detail-oriented individual (one who specializes in litigating, mind you) allow one of his billboards to be put on wrong, especially when he’s paying the equivalent of a one bedroom apartment in Santa Monica to do so? It would convey an overall lack of professionalism and care. Who would want that as their lawyer? That would easily be the kind of thing Jacob could sue the billboard company over.
Then consider things from the billboard company’s perspective. Why would you make a massive blunder and then do nothing while all of LA continues to bear witness to it? Why would anyone want to pay for billboard space when the company you hire is liable to ruin it? In the real world, I would imagine that if a billboard mistake truly occurs, then the company responsible would take efforts to rectify the error ASAP. It wouldn’t go sitting around for months like the Call Jacob ad has.
The answer to these questions, combined with the debunking of theory 1, make it a certainty that Jacob (or the company that designs his ads) intended for his billboard to be upside down.
Also there’s multiple upside down billboards, not just one. That this would happen by coincidence is out of the question, because that would also mean that every billboard owned by the same company has a significant chance of being accidentally pasted upside down, which also means we would see other upside down ads. They wouldn’t be just limited to Call Jacob’s ads.
I would’ve mentioned that sooner, but that would’ve taken much of the fun out. 😉
