Alright, let’s get down to business. Like I said before, LA is another world—one where the advertising needs to reach millions of people from very different backgrounds.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Hollywood is one of LA’s biggest industries. It’s the driving force behind why so many people move West in the first place. That being said, much of the advertising there is revolved around new films or new TV shows. I can’t even tell you how many times I saw Zooey’s Deschanel’s face or or Mark Wahlberg’s abs plastered all over an electronic billboard or bus.

Electronic billboards seemed to be the number one form of outdoor advertising, as far as I could tell. My guess is that this has to do with the fact that in LA everyone is constantly driving somewhere and needs to be distracted while they sit at the stoplights. Or, it could just be that as a city as a whole LAliens need are already overloaded by a ton of stimuli and need advertising that’s quick, but effective.

I will say that I was bummed I never got to see any really wildly creative advertising. I thought for sure there would be guerilla advertising happening on nearly every street corner, but perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough. There was one day when my friend and I were downtown that we saw a plane fly overhead and start to spell out some letters, but we couldn’t really see what it said because of the buildings. Admittedly, I was probably too distracted by the beautiful weather and all the amazing food I ate to really look hard for anything totally out of the ordinary, but maybe when Erintern heads out there in a few weeks she can look too.

Outie!

-Maddy