Pain in the ad

We "experts" can debate about whether some ads are good or not and nitpick the details. However, you occasionally see an ad that clearly illustrates a complete lack of understanding of advertising.

There's a billboard I see on my drive home from work every day that makes the adgeek in me cry every time. It's a tiny thing that's fairly badly positioned to begin with. But let's ignore the placement for now.

The copy reads "Where does it hurt: Stand-up MRI." The most important part to note about this is the fact that there's a colon instead of a question mark between the headline and the subhead. A colon denotes an explanation, not a question. So instead of posing the question "Where does it hurt?" and suggesting that the stand-up MRI is the solution, the billboard suggests that the stand-up MRI is the place it hurts. I can't say my stand-up MRI has hurt much lately, but I'm probably not the target audience.

Also, the entire background is black. This matters because the tiny subhead "Stand-up MRI" in white (probably the most important part of the board) is sandwiched between the large yellow headline "Where does it hurt:" and the red phone number. Did I mention that there are both serif and sans-serif fonts, not including any logo?

And just for good measure, let's include a strange and barely-related image. The small image relegated to a small square of this ad on one side is a silhouette of a skeleton riding a bicycle...that's right...a bicycle. I'm not even gonna touch that one.

In short, an unclear and terrible ad does two things at once- gives me professional pain every day on my ride home and illustrate how far off-base you can get when you don't know what you're doing.