Flying Caveman on Campus

Yesterday afternoon, I was eating my lunch outside between Engineering buildings while talking to PM, when we noticed that there was a small plane flying overhead with an advertisement.

It was a GEICO caveman ad. It is very unusual to see aerial advertising in Durham or over Duke's campus, so it almost made us feel as if we were at the beach. The weather was particularly nice, so that probably contributed to the effect.

I'm interested in marketing strategies (in what am I not interested?), so it got me thinking about why they chose to fly over campus during a weekday as opposed to an outdoor shopping mall or a football stadium. I couldn't find any statistics, but I would guess that Duke's campus has an unusually low percentage of adults who own cars, since many undergraduates don't have them. On the other hand, it probably has an unusually high percentage of people who have driver's licenses since there are very few children on campus. Those without cars may be about to get them and would need insurance. I have a hard time believing Duke students, staff and students have fewer accidents, though. I even saw one at a four-way stop on campus as I was leaving work this evening.

Bull's Eye covered this as well. Cavemen banners have actually been sighted all over North Carolina. They flew over Chapel Hill, just a couple of weeks ago, and in Boone after Appalachian beat Michigan in football.

I guess flying a plane is so easy...

Showing Off My Impeccable Taste

As is probably hard not to notice, I've added a bunch of Amazon ads to my site. I've actually had loads of fun with this. If I'd been clueful enough to realize that one can put up ads the products of one's choosing, then I would have done this years ago. These are products that I use and like.

For example, I have an ad for Leonidas dark chocolate covered orange peel. I certainly don't care whether or not you buy it from Amazon. If you live near Durham, I strongly encourage you to support your local businesses and buy it from the chocolate counter in Parizade. That's what I do, unless I am shipping it to someone directly. The point is, if you like dark chocolate, please try this chocolate, because in my opinion it's the best dark chocolate covered orange peel available and I've tried a lot of different kinds.

Many of my readers can tell you that I can talk for a good twenty minutes about how I think that Duke's mayonnaise is the only mayo worth buying. Some people have never heard of it, but I have even craved it! Now you can see what the bottle looks like so you can try it out the next time you go to your local supermarket, because I'm assuming that you won't want to buy a whole gallon from Amazon.

In addition to adding a little more color to the site, it's fun showing off which music I think is the best. If they are compilations, they are the ones that I have and like the best or the ones that have the highest percentage of my favorite songs.