Your Quirky Ad Here
Location, location, location. It’s the mantra of many businesses but may be most apropos for billboards.
That fact is not lost on Gail Zone, proprietor of the gargantuan sign overlooking the junction of Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue, the hip Silver Lake intersection she has dubbed “the Times Square of the West Coast.”
More than 54,000 people pass through every day, according to the Traffic Audit Bureau, making the billboard an enviable and potentially profitable outdoor advertising space. But that was not Zone’s intention when she began leasing the sign to local artists and businesses three years ago.
“I wanted it to be an outdoor art gallery,” says Zone, 52. “I’ve tried to let the people speak.”
Under her auspices, the sign has developed a reputation for messages that embody the independent and eccentric spirit of the neighborhood. Ads range from the silly (a blanket fort installation company) and the political (a message in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal), to the whimsical (“Got Art?”) and commercial (“Give Pizza Chance,” an advertisement for the local Honk ‘n Holler Pizza Parlor that ran one year ago).
“It’s good because it’s not a corporate billboard,” says Patti Peck, Honk ‘n Holler’s owner. “It’s not what we’re used to seeing. It’s not McDonald’s or who’s on ‘Ricki Lake’ tomorrow.”
Nor is it Adidas, currently on the billboard directly across the street. Operated by Eller, one of the country’s largest outdoor advertising firms, that sign rents for $7,826 a month.
Zone could easily charge as much but doesn’t.
“I try to be reasonable to whoever it is I’m dealing with--take into consideration what they’re talking about and who they are,” says Zone, an artist and single mother of two boys “who’s happy just to get the next day covered.”
Zone rents the billboard from its owner and charges her clients from $700 to $1,200 a month. She has had offers from major advertisers and been offered buyouts by larger advertising firms but has rejected them.
“I would rather not put Blue Shield up there,” says Zone, who in 1995 was inspired to change the billboard after repeated trips through the intersection. “I was so tired of looking at dead shrimp and just stupid advertising--that mindless stuff that stayed up for over six months.”
The billboard is presently occupied by a colorful advertisement for Wacko, a novelty gift shop and art gallery two blocks from the sign. Next month it will be rented to locally produced Mean magazine and carry the slogan “Don’t Get Mad, Get Mean.”
Jamie Fraser, the magazine’s associate publisher, was attracted to the sign because “it’s cheap, it’s in a great location . . . and it’s independently owned,” he says. “Gail Zone is a really amazing person. She really wants to promote Eastside activity and keep it a neighborhood family vibe, which is totally awesome.”
Zone’s billboard, the only one she leases as part of Gail Zone Advertising, is one of a handful of independently operated billboards across the city, and it may be the only one that is still hand-painted.
Ben Strout is the artist who paints the sign, using only a ruler and a paintbrush. Depending on the complexity of the ad, it can take him up to 55 hours to paint a single billboard, like the one he did for the Los Feliz Business Assn., sponsoring a local event. With three columns of type and 252 hand-lettered characters, Strout didn’t finish painting the sign until the day of the event.
“It was too much stuff to put on a billboard for the amount of time you’d need to read it,” Strout says. “You’d have to pull over and stop to read it.”
Still, “it’s very satisfying to . . . know there are tens of thousands of people seeing it,” says Strout, 30, who ordinarily pens 8 1/2-by-11-inch drawings. “That’s kind of cool.”
As for Zone, she says, “there’s so much here in L.A. that needs just a little TLC. Hopefully I can keep on doing this for a while longer and really get it to be where I want it to be, which is art and communication.”
