Visit Israel ... Now? Billboard in Prime Location May Not Be Spurring Travel to Mideast Warzone, But That's OK: It's Free
By Joe Eskenazi in Local News, WTF?
Wednesday, Dec. 31 2008 @ 5:59AM
The Israel tourism industry may be flagging, but it appears the billboard business is doing even worse.
By Joe Eskenazi
Drivers entering and leaving San Francisco may have been surprised to see giant billboards featuring the Semitic version of what appears to be the Sex and the City crew -- Sex and the Holy Land? -- and the text "Visit Israel: Different from the Israel on the news."
Yes, they may have been surprised -- In November. And they may have even been surprised earlier this month. But as the calendar rolls over, the ones who are surprised now are the good folks at Clear Channel. Ever since December 7, when an agreement with BlueStar PR expired, those billboards have been sitting atop the prime "skyway" spots alongside Highway 101 -- for free. Adding insult to Clear Channel's injury, it offered those billboard spots to BlueStar for $10,000 for a month -- when, during better economic times, the asking price would be somewhere between $80,000 and $120,000.
By Joe Eskenazi
Drivers entering and leaving San Francisco may have been surprised to see giant billboards featuring the Semitic version of what appears to be the Sex and the City crew -- Sex and the Holy Land? -- and the text "Visit Israel: Different from the Israel on the news."
Yes, they may have been surprised -- In November. And they may have even been surprised earlier this month. But as the calendar rolls over, the ones who are surprised now are the good folks at Clear Channel. Ever since December 7, when an agreement with BlueStar PR expired, those billboards have been sitting atop the prime "skyway" spots alongside Highway 101 -- for free. Adding insult to Clear Channel's injury, it offered those billboard spots to BlueStar for $10,000 for a month -- when, during better economic times, the asking price would be somewhere between $80,000 and $120,000.
Adding injury to Clear Channel's insult, after the advertising behemoth's opening offer of an 88 percent discount, the folks at BlueStar talked them down -- to $6,000.
And now, with no one else willing to pay up for the spot, it's free. And free is probably the right price these days. It's hard to talk people into visiting a country after its defense minister notes it is currently engaged in "all-out war."
But at least some people are still visiting Israel. It seems no one is buying billboards.
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