Cute Animals and Tasteless Advertising at Henry Vilas Zoo
Ever since the Reachemol billboards I’ve been keeping an eye on local advertisements. And you know where you can find great ads? At the local zoo, where everything is required by tradition older and dearer than law to include at least one adorable animal. Look at this one, telling me about all the good things hospitals do:
Or this one, which raises some very good points about the Honda Odyssey and its similarity to various zoo animals:
Or this one! About loving giraffe families and…divorce law. Wait. What? Yep. Don’t bother squinting at the picture; there’s close-ups below.
That is in fact an advertisement for divorce lawyers. See how it works? The poster has this helpful little bloc of information on giraffes…
…and then it has this:
So if you ever need to protect your young, perhaps because your ex is a ravening beast like unto a savage lion, these are apparently the guys to call.
But it gets better. And I have no idea if the guys over at Axley Brynelson were aware of this next fact or not, so it’s anybody’s guess as to whether the real hilarity of their advertisement stems from malice or ignorance. Because the zoo’s giraffes are, I’m sorry to say, a broken home:
No joke. For added hilarity, the initial separation had the female and the junior in one pen and the adult male in his own — she must have had a good lawyer. Now junior’s on his own, and they’re back outside with an improvised fence dividing the pen:
Pretty sad stuff. But all’s well that ends well, and it looks like the grown-ups are approaching some kind of reconciliation over there. My understanding is that the young one is not the offspring of the two adults, so it’s a little less Oedipal than I’d initially hoped, but you still have to admire the nerve of a divorce firm that uses the zoo’s only broken family as mascots in their advertisement. The one posted at the zoo. Full of small children.
I’m searching for a pithy conclusion to all this, but I think it just comes down to “divorce lawyers are kind of dicks.” That and “pay attention to local advertisements.” Anyway, here are more giraffes, just because they’re cute. Tune in again Friday!
OMG. This is fascinating. It’s stranger than fiction. Thanks for sharing!
Yep…great zoo, though; nice to see them getting some advertising dollars.