"If you're not fast, you're food"

This is the advertising campaign for Timberland and it is plastered all over the Harvard T Station. Every morning I walk by the ads showing a bear, about to eat a wolf about to eat a dude who is running. I am so completely baffled by this campaign and why it is being used in the middle of an urban setting that each day I think, 'I'm going to blog about that', but then I don't 'cause that's how my brain rolls. But, today, oh today, I remembered. So here I am to share my thoughts.

If you haven't been in the T station of late, there are billboards throughout each platform, the main area where you get your treats at DDs and also up the escalators. Timberland has bought them all up so all you see are their ads and slogans. According to the press release I found online, the Harvard Stop campaign is known as "full station domination". Indeed. Some show bears, cougars, wild boars and wolves by themselves, looking somewhat menacing and fast, like they might just run down the escalator and get you at any moment. Others show all three and a guy running for his life.

Also gleaned from the press release is that the campaign is known as "Bait" and will be in Boston and 2 other cities and along with this ad campaign there will be some mobil media for iphone and blackberry users - geared towards helping outdoor lovers find adventure in urban settings. What kind of urban adventures do they think are to be had in Boston? Are we to go to the zoo and jump into the bear's cage with our eco conscious Timberlands on and see if we can climb the fence faster than the bear? Is the bear a metaphor for the Cambridge Police Department and Skip Gates had better watch himself as he walks the mean streets of Cambridge?

I just don't get it. Well, I do get that maybe they want to move away from the association people have with their boots that were known where I'm from as 'shit kickers' and are now popular amongst the gangster rap crowd. I could see wanting to expand your market beyond gang bangers. But, I don't get the appeal. I don't get why that campaign would make someone go and buy Timberland Shoes. Over the weekend I saw the first television spot for the ad campaign where a guy is running being chased by the aforementioned scary animals and out running them over hilly terrain while wearing his special shoes. It left me equally baffled.

Now, I have seen two significantly large hawks swooping around Harvard yard (another post to come) and once have I seen a Wild Turkey loping along in Brookline, but I just don't think I need to fear a wild boar coming at me while I'm out having an urban adventure of any kind.