Yard spam

This week's the beginning of the end (for just a little while) of political yard signs, those imposters that dare to compete with tulips, daffodils, and dandelions as a harbinger of spring.

The signs are more like kudzu than like flowers, though. Left to proliferate, they would squeeze out the flora and smother every lawn, sycamore tree, telephone pole and fence post visible to the naked eye from a car.

To make sure that doesn't happen, local governments have come up with a million ordinances to control the signs' size and placement. For example, they are to be measured in inches, not feet; placed on private property only with the owner's consent; not allowed to rub against roadsides, bunch up in medians, or be nailed to utility poles. That leaves them room to invade intersections and neighborhood yards, especially the corner ones.

Yard signs are a form of spam -- advertising that gets a politician's name in front of voters without their asking for it. Campaigners spend time and money trying to pinpoint places where the most people likely to vote will see their signs.

One of these places is the intersection. The signs' haphazard arrangement near traffic lights looks as if candidates or their volunteers played Pin the Tail on the Donkey when trying to find the best spot to plant them. This jockeying for position finally ends with one sign being more visible than the others -- usually that's the one up front.

Do people read all of them? Barbara Nash of Bluefield, Va., says that she reads the signs once, and then she doesn't "see" them anymore. "After the first time, I associate a candidate with a color."

Color is expensive, though. The more vinyl ink used, the higher the price. You can get 1,000 one-color ones for 75 cents each. That price doesn't include the 9-gauge wire hangers that hold the plastic or coated cardboard signs in place and anchor them in the ground.

Nash lets local candidates shove those hangers into her front yard. Doing so doesn't mean that she's going to vote for that person though. "Sometimes I do," she says, "but not always." That's another strategy: placing lots of signs in yards makes it seem as if more people support you, but that may not be the case.

One candidate whom I will not name for he may run for office again says that his show of support in yards didn't translate into votes. He thought that people displaying his signs owed allegiance to him, especially the ones who were relatives. They didn't vote against him, he learned; they just didn't vote.

Dynamic Logic Study, a research company that measures marketing effectiveness, says that the No. 1 way to get name recognition is through TV and direct contact. But TV spots are expensive and direct contact takes too much time. Few politicians now go door-to-door unless it's to ask if they can put up a sign in your yard. Less expensive or time-consuming ways are e-mail, direct mail, telemarketing, newspaper ads, online advertising and yard signs. No matter if you like the signs or not, they will be with us until someone creates a cheaper and easier way to garner name recognition.

Will yard signs go the way of political badges, pens and bumper stickers, becoming memorabilia you find mainly in collectibles stores? Or will they mutate, becoming fliers that find their way into church bulletins tucked between a pamphlet about missions in China and the menu for Wednesday night supper? Will they turn up in loaves of bread with Vote for Me written in edible ink on each slice?

Whatever happens, the change has begun. In some locales, politicians are taking their cue from Macdonald's advertising success with its trademark symbol, the golden arches. Candidates are associating their names with a symbol suggesting the reason people should vote for them. It's not a stretch to see a yard sign with a checkbook representing the candidate that promises to balance the budget; a handshake for someone whose word you can trust; a beaver for the one who promises to get things done; and the history book for the candidate who says "no" to progress and change.

Now, if they could find a way to graft those symbols onto a flower petal, then roadsides and yards during election springs would be a lot more pleasant.