Confused? Good!
Credit: Clear Channel
Billboards in San Francisco are at a premium and command top dollar, largely due to relentless demand from AI firms. But chances are the messages on these displays will leave you scratching your head.
Messages like "Inference that scales with your app" and "Agents don't work without evals" mean nothing to us everyday schlubs—they're also not supposed to. As NPR reports, these cryptic billboards are meant to be exclusionary.
If you don't get it, you're not meant to get it. If you DO get it, the message is probably extra impactful; you feel like part of an exclusive club, speaking an exclusive tech language that everyday Joes and Janes can't comprehend.
As the head of marketing at one startup says, "For a lot of folks, the ads don't really mean anything. But we're selling to engineers. They're like, 'Oh, we know exactly what this is.'"
Karen Anne Wallach from the University of Alabama in Huntsville recently published an article about these kinds of exlusionary ads in the Journal of Consumer Research. Her findings suggest that if you are really into dark roast coffee, for example, a message like, "If you don't like dark roast coffee, this isn't the coffee for you" is more effective than one that says, "If you like dark roast coffee, this is the coffee for you."
The subtle shift in framing makes the product or brand seem more focused and specialized. I suspect it also heightens the emotional attachment because it spells out not only who the product is for, but also, crucially, who it is NOT for. Maybe it makes you feel like part of a club that is in on a secret. As OOH giant Clear Channel puts it, it offers some social currency.
Wallach admits there are potential downsides—namely, you can alienate those who are outside the club. It's a negative message, in a way, and it can stick to your brand long-term. As one San Francisco resident notes, "The billboards here are actually something that makes me feel really pessimistic about the city...Tech has overrun the city and that's the whole culture here now."