B______ R______
BILLBOARDS ASK FOR ANSWERS
By Kendra Chamberlain
Dig Magazine
January 25, 2012
The arts and entertainment nonprofit Culture Candy has teamed with the advertisement company Lamar in a new community ad campaign written by Baton Rougeans themselves.
“What does Baton Rouge mean to you?” That’s the question Culture Candy has posed to the community.
“We’re interested in stimulating out community to think about itself, to have a conversation with its self and find out what the other is saying,” explained Clifton Webb of Culture Candy. “In twelve characters, you can talk about what you think BR means to you.”
The community billboard campaign has become somewhat of a trend in recent years, as a great way to express both unity and diversity across a city.
“There were a few communities that have done billboard campaigns,” Webb said. “Ours is a little different.”
The idea emerged from another Culture Candy community project, involving photos taken from around town. After conversations with a number of community leaders, the idea to start a dialogue on the billboards emerged.
“It’s a good way to have conversations on the billboards, first of all, but then to have conversations with our buddies,” Webb explained. “You know, ‘Hey, what was that? You saw that crazy stuff they had on the board!’”
The idea is to think up two words that describe our fair city, one that starts with “B” and another that starts with “R.” The phrases will then be posted on a number of digital billboards, donated by Lamar, placed across the city. “One of my favorite submissions so far is about the Bucky Ford Railcardome – Quite a number of people will be familiar with that,” Webb said.
The number of billboards varies, depending on the amount of free ad space that Lamar can utilize for the project, but there will be between 10-18 billboards, located from along the interstate to Perkins Rowe and Corporate Blvd., participating in the project, which will run for the next seven weeks.
“It’s nice being a sleepy town, but we’re just stimulating thoughts,” Webb said. “We want us to be alive, we can have a certain type of vitality.”
Need some help getting started? Grab a pen and paper, and check out these thesaurus-worthy words to get your mind turning. To submit your phrase, visit www.CultureCandy.org.
B words:
Bacchanalian
Beneath
Beta
Bastion
Boisterous
Brash
Bejeweled
Bifurcated
Blythe
Bardic
Burgeoning
R words:
Revelry
Rampage
Recumbent
Royal
Ruthful
Rawboned
Rebel
Reel
Rein
Riparian
The original article appeared on Dig Magazine's website.