Billboards in the Blue

"But don't you ever make mistakes?" asked the admiring young thing. "Naturally," said the skywriter. "Last week, for instance, I got the P in Pepsi-Cola upside down." "Oh, my! Whatever did you do?" "I scooted behind the nearest cloud and spelled 'DAMN.'" Advertising in the sky is no longer subject to such human frailties or bad jokes. In the New York City area last week, the second of three block-long dirigibles went aloft on an advertising mission. Its message, plugging Ford, flashed along its side in moving letters 20 feet high.

These "flying spectaculars" are the latest venture of Douglas Leigh, 36, a spectacular himself in outdoor advertising. He bought the ships from the Navy for $10,000 each (original cost: $400,000) last year when they were scheduled to be cut up for raincoats. He worked out their present application in his cubbyhole Manhattan office, where the colossal has often been corralled into a blueprint. The dirigibles are visible for five miles at night, can reach an estimated audience of 31,000,000 people, cost advertisers $19,000 a month. Leigh has already bought four more ships, hopes soon to get them afloat.

Lost in the Dark. When the coastal blackout went into effect in April 1942, no one was forced to grope as much as Doug Leigh. Starting with $50 and a case of mumps at the depth of the depression, he had parlayed his native talents of salesmanship, showmanship and inventiveness into an electrified million-dollar business. He owned or operated the biggest single block of the dazzling and ingeniously animated signs along Broadway, when the lights were turned out.

Since the U.S. got out of the war and Leigh got out of the Navy, outdoor advertising has boomed again. This year the industry will do a record $100 million worth of business, and Leigh, with signs in 19 cities, will gross over $2 million. His signs now blow real smoke rings, show coffee cups that exude real steam, and a giant box of Super Suds that spouts 5,000 large bubbles a minute. Forthcoming are a three-story soda pop ad in which full glasses will effervesce real balloons, some of which will contain tickets entitling the holder to a free drink, and a blimp-sized orange that will seem to drip juice into a building-high glass.

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