DJ’s Billboards Stopping Traffic Big Time
Big Boy’s made sure your morning drive will never be the same. In more ways than one. Oh, we’re not talking about the red-and-white-checkered, overall-clad, burger-bearing Big Boy of yore but another soon-to-be equally iconographic urban symbol. The immense and popular Power 106 (KPWR-FM [105.9]) DJ has made his looming presence known not just audibly but visibly. And you know of what we speak if you’ve taken a drive down some of L.A.’s most intensely traveled thoroughfares lately.
For those of you who haven’t, let’s just say that with more than a wink and a nod to Calvin Klein’s line of seductive, skivvy-centric advertisements, Big Boy has decided to bring it all the way down--Casanova style. The 450-pound host with the most, in a series of promotional ads, has been seen in a range of poses--from wild-eyed, wacky portraits, to two of Big Boy in repose. However, the most eye-catching of the series shows Big relaxing in “intimate wear”--a pair of silk boxers--and . . . well . . . nothing else.
“That’s the one that gets the most omygods. That’s how I know which one they’ve seen,” the 29-year-old drive-time radio deejay says. “I had one partner call me up, and all he could say was ohmygod.”
Voted best billboard in L.A. by America Online’s Digital City LA, the “Morning Obsession” billboards were unveiled in December and have popped up all over town--from the 605 and the 405, to Wilshire Boulevard and Highland Avenue. To say the least, they’ve garnered a lot of attention.
“I mean, you know you don’t get so many big sexy role models like myself,” Big says, without a sliver of modesty. “And,” he underscores, “I want the kids to know there are no steroids involved. It’s au naturel.”
For the last year or so, Big (a four-year veteran of the hip-hop station) has taken the wheel as morning drive man, swapping places with Nick and Eric V.--the Baka Boyz--in one of the most fiercely competitive time slots in the L.A. market.
“We’re the No. 1 morning show on Power 106,” Big Boy assures us.
Dianna Obermeyer, Power’s director of marketing and promotions, says she got the idea for the Big ads after moving here from the East Coast and was immediately confounded by L.A.’s preoccupation with image.
“It all started with those Obsession ads. Those teeny tiny models,” she says.
Obermeyer then came up with a series of ads that are an in-your-face critique of L.A. and its own self-obsessions.
“I have about 20 more ideas,” she says. “We’ve got a campaign that starts out pretty tame and then gets progressively wild. The whole idea is to poke fun at popular culture.”
Which is exactly what the show itself does. Fresh and wildly irreverent, “Big Boy in the Morning” broadcasts live from the center of “Big Boy’s Neighborhood,” with a cast of characters that includes the emotionally fragile misfit Luther Luffeigh, who prank-calls various unsuspecting businesses to help him out of his daily fix, and the self-explanatory “Ebonic Woman.”
How has the public taken Big’s turn as heartthrob Antonio Sabato Jr.? Been mixed, says Obermeyer. “People don’t quite know what to make of it.”
And for Big Boy, the jury is still out, until his mother’s ruling.
“My mom’s been in the hospital,” he says of one of his most regular on-air guests. “So she hasn’t seen the billboard. But if she can make it through that,” he figures, “she’s a strong woman.”
