client: Apple
improvement: Think Doomed
date: June 21, 1998
San Francisco Examiner
June 24, 1998
Billboard pranksters: Vandals who think differently
By Ray Delgado
of The Examiner Staff
One day, the Joe Camel billboard advertised “genuine taste.” The next day it read “Am I Dead Yet?”
The Marlboro man’s billboard turned into a real sleeper, changing from Marlboro to Marlbore overnight, with the word “yawn” added I near his mouth for effect.
And just this weekend, Apple computer’s Amelia Earhart billboard was changed from “Think Different” to “Think Doomed” a reference to the legendary pilot’s fatal attempt to fly around the globe.
The Billboard Liberation Front is back, bringing its own twist on advertising and social commentary to Apple’s billboards around the Bay Area, the latest in a 21-year history of ad alterations.
“It’s getting harder and harder for people to speak their minds — that’s what we’re doing,” said Jack Napier, an original founder of the group. His name is also that of Batman nemesis the Joker’s alter ego. “Having a diversity of opinions out there is better.” No billboard is safe.
The 30 or so members of the top-secret organization are professionals at what they do, capable of scaling tall buildings with a single ladder or hanging from a billboard in a harness while they do their dirty work. Some of the members even have jobs in the advertising industry, Napier said, participating in the alterations because “it’s a way to have a creative outlet that’s not business or work.”
The group really doesn’t have any particular political or social beliefs, Napier said. Some billboards just present better opportunity for manipulation because of design, while others are chosen because they are at the center of controversy. The group isn’t even opposed to billboards themselves — they just don’t like that only corporations can afford to use them.
Once an ad is selected for alteration, it can take months for the actual face lift. The group likes to be as professional and covert as possible, so they take plenty of time to monitor motor and police traffic patterns at different times of the night. They go through painstaking attempts at creating imitations of the typeface they want to change.
Apple’s new “Think Different” ads, pairing the simple slogan with images of world-famous innovators, world leaders and artists, were ripe for the illegal alterations, Napier said.
For starters, they’re grammatically incorrect. Add to that the fact that Earhart, Ansel Adams and Miles Davis obviously didn’t grant the technology giant permission to use their images to hawk computers, being that they’re dead. And perhaps the best and most ironic reason of all: Altering the ads would in fact get people to think differently about the company’s ad campaign.
The group targeted several different Apple ads over the last few months, replacing the word “different” with “doomed” on the Earhart ad “dividends” on an ad with media titan Ted Turner and “disillusioned” on an ad featuring the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet. And just for effect, they replaced the rainbow-colored Apple symbol with a rainbow-colored skull.
“If they’re going to dig up dead bodies for their campaign, we can help them with that” said Napier.
“Obviously the icons aren’t involved in the decision (to use their images).”
A spokesman for Apple refused to comment on the billboard alterations. Apple is just the latest of a string of companies who have been targeted by the BLF.
The organization got its start in 1977 when members of the San Francisco Suicide Club — a group devoted to pulling pranks — altered two Max Factor billboards to protest the use of makeup to create a “pretty face.”
The significance of that alteration, coupled with the brouhaha of being arrested by police waiting below, convinced Napier, Irving Glikk and Simon Wagstaff to form the BLF. Others tried to imitate them and similar groups have formed around the country, but Napier takes credit for the movement’s beginning here in San Francisco.
The group went on to become an occasional source of amusement and some headaches throughout the years, popping up every so often with new alterations. Among them:
- A 1978 cigarette ad that featured a shirt-less man was altered to have the man’s chest painted over with a bra to protest laws that allow men to go shirt-less in public but not women.
- A 1979 ad for Fact cigarettes that was changed from “I’m realistic, I only smoke Facts” to “I’m real sick. I only smoke Facts,” with an arrow pointing to a warning label placed in the ad.
- A 1989 ad for a local radio station with the slogan “Hits Happen — New X-100” that was changed to “S— Happens — New Exxon,” just months after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
- A 1990 ad for Harrah’s Casino that covered up the name of the casino with giant signs that read “America. Everywhere: AIDS, crack, the homeless. The White House: Don’t worry, be happy.”
- A 1994 Plymouth Neon car ad that was changed from “Hi” to “Hype. 666.”
Most inconvenienced by the alterations are the companies that sell the billboard space to companies. Steve Shinn, the spokesman for Outdoor Systems in Berkeley, said it can cost his company thousands of dollars to restore ads to their original message.
The only good thing Shinn can say about the group is that they actually go to great lengths to not damage the actual billboards and leave behind consolation gifts for the billboard artists.
“They do it in such a manner that they can be fixed easily and we appreciate that,” said Shinn. “Sometimes they leave a six-pack of beer up there for our workers to say sorry they had to come out. It makes it a little more palatable, I guess.”