OFF THE WIRE
A sign on Coast Highway 101 that read "Happy to sit on your face" was apparently too racy for the company that owns the billboard.
Clear Channel Communications contacted Carlsbad-based Spy sunglasses ---- the company behind the advertisement ---- on Wednesday night to tell it the sign that had gone up last week had to come down, Spy marketing director Devon Howard said.
The advertisement was removed Thursday morning.
"They told us that they had received some complaints," he said. "We're disappointed."
A Clear Channel representative said the company would not comment nor issue a statement about the matter.
The advertisement was the latest in a string of nontraditional messages from Spy and was the first in a series leading up to next year's launch of a new product called the Spy Happy Lens.
The billboard was remarkably simple. No models or photographs were used. Just white letters on a baby blue background. The Spy logo was in the upper right corner of the sign, but it was the double-entendre message in huge letters that had locals talking and plenty of passers-by snapping photos.
The sign was supposed to be up for about five weeks, Howard said. The company is now scrambling for a replacement.
"If we thought there was going to be an issue, we would have had an alternate advertisement ready to go," Howard said.
Reaction on Thursday was mixed. Business owners and merchants thought the billboard was brilliant.
"It created a buzz," said Sarita Mihaly, who runs Moonlight Hair Design. "It didn't say anything inappropriate, although some people's minds might have taken them to an inappropriate area."
Mihaly aknowledged, however, that she had heard complaints from customers seated in a salon chair with a clear view of the billboard.
"Some clients were pretty offended by it," she said. "But when I told them what Spy was, they were, 'Oh, OK.'"
Aaron Stewart, who works at a Leucadia Pizza that faces the billboard, agreed that those who complained probably didn't know about the connection to Spy sunglasses. He suggested that had there been an image of some shades on the sign, that may have alleviated some of the criticism.
But Stewart liked the advertisement.
"I thought it was good marketing," he said. "There was a side of me that thought maybe this is inappropriate, but then I'd think about it some more and I couldn't stop laughing."
Others said the humor in the billboard was hard to miss.
Encinitas Mayor Jerome Stocks said he noticed the billboard Tuesday while taking his daughter to school. He said it helps that Spy is a well-known sunglass company and Encinitas is a beach town. Stocks said he's heard no complaints from constituents.
Howard said the sign was part of a lengthy advertising campaign.
"We wanted to build up a teaser to the new lens technology we have coming out in the spring," he said. "We're trying to have some fun and create some awareness that this is coming."
A clerk at McGill's Skateshop who identified himself only as James said he was disappointed in the move.
"It was a nice, creative play on words," he said. "I guess this is a sign that our freedom of speech isn't what it used to be."
This is hardly the first time a local business has used sexual innuendo in getting its message across.
A Vista-based air-conditioning business launched a campaign in the summer of 2010 that started out with a single billboard reading little more than, "Your wife is hot." About a week later, AnyTime completed the message by adding, "get her AC fixed!"