| Jacquielynn Floyd: These ads are legal but yucky 01/20/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News There's no law against the two new billboard ads along Interstate 30 advertising a Web site that promises "adult toys and more."
The ads, west of downtown Dallas, are heavy on innuendo but light on specifics, and there's certainly nothing graphic or obscene about them. No rule has been broken, no ordinance violated.
Nonetheless, you can hardly miss the point: "For cheerfully consenting adults," says one; the other promises "Satisfaction. Guaranteed." Suggestive, sure, but nothing illegal.
But, yuck. Just because it's legal, does that always mean we're stuck with it?
Couldn't somebody over at the sex-toy factory have said: "Naturally, we want to market our fine products, but perhaps the main freeway linking Dallas and Fort Worth, traveled daily by children and grandmas and cardiac patients, isn't an entirely appropriate venue." Couldn't we be Bedford Falls instead of Pottersville every once in a while?
Creepy view
We face greater social ills, of course, and there's more bare skin in an average hour of prime-time television than these boards depict. Each one has a Web address and a few suggestive lines, illustrated by a large photo of a big-haired female model wearing lots of makeup and looking as if she's been sitting too close to the space heater. It's not obscene.
But it's kind of creepy. There's something about a billboard for X-rated products looming over the post office that gives me a little itch of discomfort, even though I'm just driving by.
It's effective advertising. I probably zip past 50 billboards during my daily commute that fail to dent my consciousness, but these are not easy to tune out.
It's probably not easy either for the lady who gets to explain to her newly literate kindergartner that "adult toys" are not like kids' toys, or for the man driving Mom home after supper at Luby's. But it's legal.
People I talked to in the billboard business pointed out that the ad is for a Web site, not for X-rated merchandise, and that you have to voluntarily call up the site to see the goods (I'll save you the trouble: sex gizmos and dirty movies).
"We wouldn't have accepted it if it was extremely graphic or obscene," said Clark Dunklin, the Dallas marketing manager for Infinity Outdoor, the firm that owns the billboards. "This is not an ad for a gentleman's club. The fact is that it's an ad for a Web site."
Let me add that these are only two of the 900-plus billboards that Infinity owns in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the vast majority of which carry perfectly benign advertising. Another Infinity board along the same stretch of highway, for instance, carries a message from the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
Up to the company
In most cases, it's up to the billboard companies to decide which advertisements they'll accept and display, said Arnold Velez, a spokesman for industry giant Eller Media Company.
"Every company has their own acceptance procedures," Mr. Velez said. "We have all turned down copy that we deemed not to be up to community standards."
And at times, the companies have been sensitive to community complaints. But since a permanent Dallas moratorium on new billboards was enacted last spring, some firms aren't in an especially sensitive mood.
"They banned us. There's not a lot of lovey feelings right now," said one industry executive.
Mr. Dunklin said the ban plays no part in Infinity's decision about which ads it accepts.
And while the company accepted ads for an adult-products Web site, he said, it would not have accepted direct advertising for adult products.
But the difference is only one click.
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