Thanks for the Ad

Anyone who has been to Picadilly Circus or Times Square knows it's nothing new to look up at the side of a building and see the flashing lights and motion picture imagery of advertising on the side of a tall building.

Here in Vancouver though, the concept is rare and has only recently been introduced.

The other night, as I moved from point A (my house) to point B (the pub) along the sidewalks of downtown Vancouver, I noticed this form of selling wares has now appeared, oddly, on the side of a building which houses the Burrard Medical Clinic.

This form of advertising appears to have allowed the BMW 1 Series to really, um, take flight over Vancouver.

I took those pictures looking up at the building (which is about 10 stories high). As you can tell, these images appeared on a "canvas" that obviously has no precedent for acting as a platform to sell cars.

These pictures are actually stills from what was actually a motion picture advertisement - it was just like a TV commercial, except no audio and a bit less than 30 seconds.

As the eyes of Vancouverites rose to meet the unexpected visual of a red Beemer on the side of a doctor's office, my eyes lowered to discover what was responsible for causing the image to unexpectedly appear like Britney Spears on an upcoming episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Here's what I saw... a fairly innocuous white van parked in the lot beneath the "floating" red car, with its rear doors open.

And what did I find inside that van?

That's Scott. A nice guy, eager to chat about what he was up to which was working for a local company in the business of making other people's business your business.

And if you make it your business to spend some time enjoying Vancouver, then by all means look up, look down, look all around… because this city, especially in the spring, will feel like the wind in your hair (unless you're bald) on a long ride in a new car down an open road (unless it's closed for Canada Line construction).