Even though we transplants have taken over metro Atlanta, there are still times that fully remind you that you’re still in the South.  No, I’m not talking about how it’s supposed to be almost frickin’ 80 degrees tomorrow.  I sure am not in the Thanksgiving mood yet with this unseasonably warm weather.

But back to the point I was making – the High Museum in Atlanta has quickly become one of the premier art museums in the country, bringing in “big name” exhibits the past decade such as Michelangelo, the French Impressionists, and Ansel Adams, among others.  The building itself has had 2 famous architects design it.  Richard Meier created the initial design and Renzo Piano was brought on board to design the new addition to the building.

So, with all of that impressive pedigree in such a short time frame, you’d associate it with the stereotypical snootiness afforded most cultural places like this.  And for the most part, they live up to that billing (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  Then this year they announced, what is nothing short of a coup in the art world, that they had entered into a 3 year agreement with the Louvre in Paris to display a rotating exhibit.  Every year they will be getting a new set of exhibit pieces on loan from the Louvre.

Obviously this is something that they should, and have, bragged about and any extra advertising they do regarding this exhibit will easily be made up in revenue from the oversized crowds.  But they dipped into the Southern Cliché Book with a billboard they have on I-85 which shows a painting from the Louvre and next to it is the slogan “Bonjour Y’all.”  BLECCHHHHH.  Why not just sneeze directly on to one of these paintings?  This is the best an agency could come up with?  Was the slogan “Fun to See after lunch at Sonny’s Rib Shack” taken?  “More fun than a fistful of Krispy Kremes”?

Obviously it’s easy to armchair quarterback any ad campaign but I think they sunk to the lowest common denominator with this one.  It’s not original, overuses a well-worn word, and is equivalent to wearing one of those 1980’s mesh baseball caps to a wedding.  I’d be saying the same thing if I the Art Museum in Chicago used a campaign with something like “Da Louvre”.

Here is a link to the ad company that did the campaign.  You can see the billboard I mentioned below in addition to other print ads they're rolling out.