Can’t be bothered to read? I’ll read it for you. SKIP INTRODUCTION | 2:11
In 1998, cinema magic hit our screens. The Olsen Twins released Billboard Dad. I thought, finally, a movie I could relate to. However, as I watched it, I became severely disappointed that it wasn’t a story about a dad working in the out-of-home industry, but about the eleven-year-old twins putting up a poster of their dad in an attempt to find him a new girlfriend… because that’s not weird at all.
Dad began his career in the mailroom of a poster company when he was sixteen. There, he found his life calling – posters. When Mum started dating Dad, he would have a Dictaphone in his glove box so that whenever he was driving, he could record any billboard issues he saw while on the road.
“Red alert. Cadbury’s poster torn, Olympia. Cadburys holding. Over.”
The billboard spotting continued throughout my childhood. Dad would slam on the brakes, the family would be flung forward, and he’d reverse to see the poster we had just passed moments ago.
“Red alert. The Persil poster is dirty on the A40 out of London. Over.”
So it was etched in my brain that a damaged poster was a very bad thing indeed. Now, as an adult, I find myself having to bite my tongue whenever I see a glitching digital screen on a bus shelter or an out-of-date poster on the underground.
“What’s wrong, Mary?”
“The Budweiser advert at that bus stop…”
“Yes?”
“It’s flickering.”
“Ummm….oookay”
Generally, people don’t pay much attention to outdoor advertising. They’re just there, decorating the walls, streets, and escalators – seeping into the subconscious.
I have been aware of posters since I was old enough to walk. Dad would always point out posters and say, “One of mine.” I never quite knew what he meant when I was a kid, so I assumed he was solely creating the posters for McDonald’s himself and putting them up there.
He would leave the house in the morning with a briefcase and go to his office, where, I imagined, he would draw his next poster. He would return in the evening, sometimes past my bedtime, and other times early enough to read me a chapter from George’s Marvellous Medicine.
I thought his office would be at the end of our road, and one morning I packed my own pink briefcase and went to find him, only to reach the end of Lydalls Close and find that there was no office or Dad there. It was later that I worked out he took a train to London every morning.
There were perks to being born into a billboard family. Dad once brought a gigantic vinyl poster home with him, and my brothers worked out that if they laid it out flat on the hilly part of the garden, blasted the hose, and used all the Fairy Liquid in the house, the vinyl poster made an excellent waterslide.
There were also parties at our house. A lot of them. I was told that these were important because adults needed to network. There was karaoke in the kitchen, a bucking reindeer at Christmas drinks, and a summer party featuring a live band called See You Next Tuesday. One morning, after a party, I found underwear scattered around our garden, leading up to the pool. Networking was strange.
Dad had a knack for persuading his colleagues to carry on post-work drinks back at our house. Mum’s steak sandwiches became legendary on those occasions. Dad, who was training me for networking, would want me to say hi to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who was in our kitchen drinking Oyster Bay.
I’d be in my room with my Sylvanian Families when Dad would barge in, knocking over the hedgehog family with his foot.
“Come and meet Lawson.”
“Who’s Lawson?”
“Come to the kitchen and you’ll find out.”
“Do I have to?” I’d whine as I reached over to save Mother Hedgehog.
“Come on,” he would demand and walk off. And I would sigh, and follow him. Networking was not a choice.
When I was a teenager, I made the mistake of asking Dad, “But do billboards actually work?” I may as well have asked if Tottenham Hotspur was a synchronized swimming team. That summer, I was sent to his office for a week of work experience, where I not only learned that billboards work, but also how they work.
I took along my friend Jess for the week. We learned about target marketing, updated the contact lists, and were taken out to a pub lunch or two or three. On Thursday, we were put into a marketing executive’s car to inspect the posters and screens of their clients, just like the dates my dad took my mum on.
It was then that I realized I did not inherit my dad’s passion for posters because, at some point during the drive, I fell asleep.
I have been asked a couple of times if I have ever been tempted to be an ‘out-of-home nepo baby,’ but despite a brief stint in a creative agency, I have stayed away from the advertising world. Slightly terrified, I was going to end up naked in someone’s pool, to be honest.
Dad, though, has never left the posters behind. Even the other day, we were walking through Bond Street station, and he pointed to the escalator screens.
“One of mine.”
Last week, there was a surprise. Dad, Jack, and I, along with Julie, Lawson, and all the other close friends he had met through successful networking, had a pint and then wandered over to Piccadilly Circus. There on all the famous Piccadilly screens was Dad’s face.
I felt like an Olsen twin. Thankfully, it wasn’t an ad to get my dad a girlfriend; instead, it was a celebration of 50 years in the industry and for the money he had raised for charity along the way.
There was a party afterwards, of course. Jack and I stood in the room, surrounded by billboard people who had at one point in time danced in our kitchen and eaten one of Mum’s post-work steak sandwiches. One or two may have been naked in our pool. There was no networking now, just a lot of chat about golf and advertising in the ’80s…the good old days.
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