durtbagz: operation overpass

so, this weekend here was nutz. we had the FBR tournament here as usual, and we also had this thing called the Super Bowl.

so i decided to do some gorilla marketing since basically, there were more people in the Valley during these four days than there would be any other all year. probably for years to come.

we have a ridiculous freeway system here with a few overpasses. so, i used them as my canvas. kind of.

i spray painted 10 banners, saying things like ‘durtbagz.com: more cowbell’ and ‘durtbagz.com: stings the nostrils’ and ‘durtbagz.com: no cougars’. we had another that said, ‘we love lamp’…you get the idear.

then i recruited a small team of folks who were willing to get up with the senior citizens at 4am. since they don’t drive, i figured we’d be safe. we left the house around 5am in two teams and hit two freeways in the east Valley. by 6a…we were done. it was freezing, freezing, freezing. i think it was 34 or something stupid like that. those of us in my car had an audience at every overpass. apparently, traffic on the 60 starts early. but no one did anything; they just watched. it was kind of like tee peeing, but different.

the best part was that we’d hurry to hang the banner and then wait for the getaway car , who would have to circle and deal with stoplights. so, after we’d finish, we’d turn around…to a bunch of cars full of people watching us, but none of them our car. pretty funny.

in the end, the ones on the 60 stayed up until about 10am and the ones on the 101N were up until at least 2p. not too bad for $70 and a short night’s sleep. we’ll do it again sometime and make the banner a little more durable. someone cut down the ones on the 60 b/c they were no where to be found when i wen searching for them. i though they blew off, but there was nothing left on the overpasses. the 101N ones lasted longer, but the ties broke off the bottom. you could only really see them at that point, when the wind died down. which wasn’t often.

but it was a success; it increased my traffic to the site to almost 6 times the daily average and i got some emails and comments about them from total strangers. nice.

so that was how my friday was spent and i’m happy about it. we hit the FBR on saturday and it was ridiculous. we snuck our video camera in and shot people who were dressed super lame or super great (aka knickers and golf hats). i’ll post that video after i edit it on durty laundry this week.