There is a stretch of road I drive pretty regularly - I-294 in the Chicago area from the Eisenhower to O’Hare. The road has TONS of billboards. Conservatively, I would estimate that 5% of them are for a single hair restoration company. (It SEEMS like more than that, but I didn’t want to exaggerate!) They feature local pro athletes - primarily Brian Uhrlacher and Ryne Sandberg.
Really seems odd to me that that one stretch of that one road has so many hair restoration ads. I don’t see as many on other highways in the area.
Do you have stretches of baldness ads on your area’s roads?
Any other types of billboards prevail in your area? Further south, where 80/94 goes thru Indiana around the tip of Lake Michigan, the prevalent signs are for law firms (“In a wreck? Need a check?”), strip joints, and fireworks.
I used to travel the stretch you first mentioned on my way to work in Bensenville. What a nightmare. The only billboard I actively recall was for a financial services company. The billboard said: “My house is worth a million dollars is not a retirement strategy.” I always thought: Hell, I wouldn’t mind seeing if I could make that work for me.
That company started “wallpapering” the stretch of I-294 around O’Hare with their billboards a few years ago. At least, now, they have a few other people on the boards besides Urlacher – for the first year or so that they had the billboards, it was just Urlacher.
Speaking as an advertising strategist by profession, my hypothesis about the placement is that, as I imagine that their hair-replacement service must be pretty expensive, their target market is men who have some disposable income (and are somewhat vain about their appearance). That description probably meshes well with frequent business travelers, and so, they chose that heavy placement right by O’Hare to build awareness among their target.
Those billboards start, on southbound I-294, once you get into the south suburbs (i.e., once you’re past the interchange with I-55). I’ve joked that, if you outlawed billboards for strip clubs, casinos, fireworks stores, and personal-injury lawyers, there would be nothing but empty billboards along that stretch of road.
My closest relation was during a brief stint at a law firm where one of our clients owned several billboards in the area.
Do you happen to have a general idea of billboard practices nationwide? Seems like back in the 60s-70s they were much more prevalent. If they are less prevalent now, what factors contributed to the decline? And is the reason some nearby stretches lack billboards due to local ordinances in communities that are willing to forgo the income/taxes to avoid clutter?
As long as I’m musing on billboards, I often think the electronic changing ones problematic, because I’ll see them from a distance, but they will change before I get a chance to read what they say. I guess they are likely counting on repeat, day-after-day exposure.
It occurs to me that I can only recall seeing 2 billboards within about 25 miles. Both are ‘Find God’ kind of crap, and ironically, both about a mile from the Whore Houses.
The big factor in the reduction of the number of billboards was the Highway Beautification Act, which was signed into law in 1965 (though it looks like the Federal goverment’s negotations with the states on implementation extended into the early 1970s).
I’m not an expert on the laws around billboards, though I suspect that there may be different regulations covering urbanized areas (like along I-294), versus rural areas. And, yes, I also suspect that there are communities and states with more stringent laws than the federal laws.
Yep. I drive I-90 regularly from the city to my parent’s house in Huntley. Lots and lots of smiling Urlachers and Sandbergs on that stretch, especially near ORD.
Funny you should say that, OP. We were just visiting Chicago and drove that stretch of road. It struck me equally odd to see such an array of billboard ads related to hair loss/restoration.
After visiting for a few days it started to make sense. The tap water in Chicago seemed kind of hard to us with an almost drying quality on hair and skin, strange as that may sound.
