The Lebanese Ads

Most tourists come to Lebanon for the excellent food, the lovely climate and the ever astonishing combination of beaches and mountains. Yet, although they’re impossible to miss, there’s an often a thing to add to Lebanon’s treasures: commercial billboards!
Anywhere you go, you can see the huge billboards advertising all sorts of things. Most of them are just plain annoying eyesores, but some of them have this inimitable very bad quality so much they become cool again. Below is a small collection of such billboards that you can find along the roads in Lebanon these days.
The first one is to sell white horses: simply slap a half naked model on top of it and off you go. So what to make of the below picture? I consider some clever Lebanese marketing bureau thought it could also work with horses:

White horse for sale

In order to appreciate the next billboards, you have to know that a few months ago, a huge discussion broke out in Holland over a billboard that was deemed too sexy and degrading of women, see below:

This picture caused public outcry in The Netherlands

What’s the big deal here, most Lebanese would say since they see worse every day. Holland, the only country that has a union for prostitutes, is apparently more conservative than the Lebanon.

The smaller the lingerie, the bigger the picture

While the above billboards are still somewhat tasty, things can always get worse. Just take a look at the below billboards. No clue what the intended message is, but all you see is how good you can spread your legs in Exo or Oxygene jeans. Makes you wonder which decent woman ever wants to buy them.

A new law: "Spread them, while keeping your pants on"

A really good commercial takes a cliché and turns it upside down to give you something to laugh about. A really bad commercial takes a cliché and leaves it untouched. Like, vegetarians are some kind of hippy folks who are stuck in the 70s. No way a company would make a commercial based on this cliché, that’d be too stupid, right?!

But of course: only hippies are vegetarians

As a final note, here is a billboard that is actually quite funny and has all the characteristics to make it one of the best advertisements at the moment. It’s from Almaza and addresses the actual political situation. The word ‘chair’ in Arabic can be an actual chair but is also referring to the upcoming elections in Lebanon.

"All eyes are on the chair this summer"

Posted by (E.T.)