Wagon Wheels At the Entrance

Okay, there’s this place in Tulsa called "The Farm Shopping Center." It’s a collection of shops with "something for everyone." I’ve been there a few times, mostly to drop off camera film at Moto-Photo when I was an intern at a soft rock radio station a few blocks away. The Farm’s radio commercials feature a jingle that ends with "...and best of all, you don’t get malled at the Farm!" Get it? It’s a play on words. They’re telling the consumer that they will not have to deal with all the unpleasantries of going to a regular shopping mall (i.e., crowds of people, elderly speed-walkers getting their exercise, escalators, etc.).

Clever as this jingle may be, I can never stop the cold chill that creeps up my spine each time I hear it. "You won’t get mauled at the farm!"....... I can’t shake the vision of my legs and arms getting tangled in a tractor shredder. Bloody mess all over a hay field. Cows looking on. In order to appreciate the fact that I will not get mauled at the Farm and why I would want to avoid such a scenario, I must first envision just what it would be like to indeed get mauled at the farm. And those are painful thoughts.

Advertisement agencies sometimes forget that percentage of their target audience with debilitating mortality neuroses and their overactive imaginations concerning such.