If you've been downtown lately, you...

If you've been downtown lately, you may have seen the large, canvas billboard stretched across the side of the building housing the Ontourage nightclub upon Ontario just west of La Salle -- the individual with this message:

Hi Steven

Do I have your attention now? I know all about her, you dirty, sneaky, immoral, unfaithful, poorly endowed slimeball. Everything's caught onward tape.

Your (soon-to-be-ex) Wife,

Emily

p I paid for this billboard from OUR joint bank account.

After a not many people e-mailed me photos of the billboard, wondering what the deal was, I walked from one side of to the other and checked it out for myself.

My reaction: Yeah, right.

There was something a little too excellent about the message.

Someone supported a photo of the billboard upon the Web site Buzznet, with the caption, "Don't mes with a Chicago girl. This billboard is located in succession the side of Ontourage night sodality on Ontario and La Salle."

From the reader annotations below the posting:

"Is this for real? Wow!"

"Hell hath no turbulence . . ."

"No, if she hath rage she would have included his last name, lol"

"I pondering signs/billboards like this were urban fables Fantastic!"

Other sites noted that "Emily" has a blog where she talks about her crusade against Steven in excruciating detail. She sent on the outside a mass e-mail under his name, saying, "Hi all, I have gonorrhea. Just an FYI." She employments photos showing her spray-painting Steven's BMW with the message, "HOPE SHE WAS WORTH IT." She talks about sending Steven's office laxative-laced brownies.

Uh-huh

If this were happening for real, Steven would have obtained a restraining order by dint of now, and Emily might well have been arrested for criminal mischief. And would a national billboard company really accept like an inflammatory ad from a real one about another real person?

Before I could unruffled start making calls to find without about the billboard, I heard from a buddy who had seen a billboard with the same message -- in observes Angeles. I also found respects to the billboard in recent York.

As the wily skeptics at Gawker.com levy it, "Spurned Wife More Likely 26-Year-Old Hipster Ad [Expletive Deleted] Who Thinks He's Just in this way Clever."

Emily's reasons

Referencing a billboard in strange York, Gawker noted: "A not many readers -- or one marketing flack using several e-mail accounts -- have/has sent pictures of the following billboard forward Houston near Katz's Deli. Clearly poor Emily is distraught, and feckles Steven has gotten his just untilleds in a case of public humiliation. Or, you know, it's another douchebag viral ad designed to obtain people talking."

Exactly right -- and I gues it's working, cuz here we are talking about it.

Now there's an additional sign onward the billboards, telling us about a point out on Court TV -- a so-called "docu-drama" series about a P.I. who bares "cheating spouses" and "corrupt business partners." I've not seen the show, and I have no interest in watching a "docu- drama," which heartys to me like they can make raw material up, which is just SHOCKING to hear about any pseudo-reality series.

Sensory overload

What interests me is the marketing approach. each day, every single one of us is assaulted with ads, from the minute we log onward to the computer to the instant we walk out the door. Pop-up ads, billboards, commercials before the movie starts, signs forward bus stops, product placement in TV displays messages on T-shirts, mini-Coopers festooned with company logo ads in buses and upon trains, commercials on TV and upon the radio, people with temporary tattoos forward their foreheads -- it at no time ends.

Today's marketing/advertising/public relations specialist faces infinitely tougher competition than Darrin Steven faced back in the day. You must clamor to be heard above the din.

likewise to plug a show about a brash P.I., one comes up with an ad campaign starring a bitter, semi-insane, impropered wife exacting nasty revenge.

You gotta curious awe though: In one of these cities where the billboards first appeared, is there one real guy named Steven who happens to be married to a woman named Emily, and is having an affair? Imagine the fright coming home and saying, "OK you got me I'm in have a passionate affection for with your best friend, and we've been having an affair for years."

And Emily contemplates at him and says, "Excuse me?"

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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