2 November, 2007

Making a splash

Walking through the city centre this evening (a rare occurrence in itself for me, nowadays), I noticed a full-size billboard advert for canals.  Not a specific location or event, just a generic consciousness-raising 'use your local canal' advert from British Waterways.

I wonder why. As Fi observed, the return on their advertising expenditure isn't obvious: where's the commercial benefit to British Waterways from more dog walkers and cyclists? Maybe they receive mooring fees from boat users, but the advert didn't depict narrowboats, just towpath activities. Maybe it's a political thing, to increase general usage, to prove canals are popular, to gain government funding.

Who knows? It seemed odd to me, anyway.