"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia": A Marketing and Advertising Proposal for FX.

Oh what a difference 90 miles can make. After spending a summer in NYC, I have grown to expect (and love...man what a summer in the industry can do for your taste) advertisements for everything, everywhere. This is especially true in terms of billboards, wallscapes, and other various outdoor installation's for fall TV programming. 90210 in the subway. TruBlood as I leave Manhattan via the Lincoln. Gossip Girl in Times Square. Sons of Anarchy on every bus in the city. Discovery Channel’s Shark Week on every bus stop in the city. The list goes on and on.

But now I’m back in Philly, the birthplace of America and the sixth largest city in the US and how many outdoor displays do I see for these shows...next to none. Aside from a few 90210 boards on the side of buses, there’s not much around here. It really took living in and then leaving NYC just to appreciate the amount of space dedicated to outdoor throughout Manhattan (and Brooklyn). Here in the City of Brotherly Love, for better or for worse, there’s just not that much creative use of free space... a sharp contrast to the ingenuity of advertisers looking to create noise in the Big Apple.




All around Philly there are great blank walls and sites that look like they are just waiting for ads. Sure, by advertising here in Philadelphia, networks aren’t able to target both viewers and advertisers like they can in NYC, but they would still be able to reach a lot of people who watch a lot of television. I bet you a billboard for the FX comedy "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia" would be more effective here than anywhere else in the country yet I’ve failed to see one. I was hoping to see tons of promotions and billboards for the show when I got back to campus (which is actually pretty darn good) as it’s essentially set in my backyard, but all that’s happened is one campus PR event. A huge push on the campuses around Philly could get college kids (a lucrative demographic) talking about Sunny and slowly it would start moving to other students in other cities. Stage a guerrilla event in Philly to publicize Sunny across the country? And maybe an ad or two around the city might help out as well? Just check out a few spaces (above & below) that could be filled with ads for it, or anything for that matter, located right on my walk to campus every morning:





Preston Herschorn
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
9/15/08