If your restaurant’s front doors open over a busy downtown sidewalk, you own a plot of property that is appropriate for advertising’s most populist canvas, the A-frame sidewalk chalkboard . Come on—how can you not love these chalkboards? They’re an irresistible, unconventional, customizable pedestrian flytrap. And I assure you, there are at least three aspiring painters or poets or typographers working for you already who would kill to play with a stub of chalk every morning before lunch. Sure, chalkboard signs are analogue—old media—but so what? Neil Young put it best on Rust Never Sleeps: “…It’s old, but it’s good…”
Since before YouTube and AdWords and viral marketing, signboards have been around: they were here before the Taco Bell Chihuahua, the Budweiser Iguanas and the Doublemint Twins; they were here before the word Apple meant a type of computer, before Coca-Cola begot New Coke, before New Coke begot Coke Classic; they were here before an Italian actor, dressed as an Indian chief, wept about American highway litterbugs; they were here before slogans and jingles and greasy spokesmen became synonymous with Madison Avenue—before Ovaltine buried decoder rings in jars of gray chocolate dust, before the Marlboro Man appeared suddenly in a puff of smoke; signboards have been around since before Pears Soap, before Common Sense, before the Mayflower brochures; they were here long before Amerigo Vespucci, the greatest ad man of all time, publicized himself by franchising two continents; they were here before the printing press existed; they were here before books existed; they were here before the English language existed—way way back, a very very long time ago, during the early days of the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, a group of businessmen painted hieroglyphics onto giant papyrus posters and introduced history to the concept of outdoor advertising.
Century after century, entrepreneurs have relied on signboards to garner more business. In 200 BC, Alexandria had a population of around 300,000 people—the size of current day Pittsburgh—and the only way shopkeepers could lure in new customers was to affix papyrus advertisements to the stone walls outside their stores. These businesses succeeded and their ideas traveled. A Song Dynasty-era copper sheet, embossed with the words “Jinan Liu’s Fine Needle Shop”, is the oldest known advert that has survived to the present day. Jinan Liu couldn’t have known that 1,300 years after his death people would still be discussing his fine needles, but such is the power of advertising! By 1000 AD, sign boards had become ubiquitous. In the Middle Ages, most people couldn’t read, so cobblers, millers, and blacksmiths would etch images associated with their trade (shoes, bags of flour, anvils) into the wooden boards that hung above their doors. But by then, the signboard was already ancient. Several 9th century advertising experts told business owners to ditch their signage. “They aren’t social enough,” the experts said, “Invest in a town-crier. That’s where the future’s headed.”
There is no way to conceptualize how many inventions and conventions from the past 4,000 years have gone extinct. Only a select few—hammers, livestock, fences, pottery, shoes, signs, etc.—have survived. To even think that signs were once invented is ridiculous. It’s so simple a concept, so fundamental, that we can hardly imagine a world before the storefront sign was born. And like all fundamental tools, signboards serve a multitude of purposes:
1. They reinforce brand awareness
2. They associate your business with a landmark
3. They attract impulse customers
4. They give your brand personality.
So if you don’t already own one, and if you’re humble enough to admit that you don’t know more than four thousand years worth of human history, consider buying a $90 chalkboard sign today before they go out of style.
