In Search of the "Ultimate Captive Audience," Advertisers Go To Jail

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I can’t go a day on this planet without learning about some strange new service that upsets whatever forces hold us back from plummeting into a completely twisted, dystopic hellscape. One that’s bursting at the seams with hyper-psychotic advertising and vapid anti-cultural “icons,” recalling all those politico-sci-fi novels and movies we were afraid of in high school.

Pulling from Gilliam’s, Brazil, Orwell’s, 1984, Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Judge’s, Idiocracy, the Eerie County Holding Center in Buffalo, New York is moving forward with plans that will allow bail bondsmen and defense lawyers to advertise their wares on high-definition television screens pointed at defendants minutes after their arrest.

Metrodata Services’ "Captive Ads" will place one ad-filled screen outside of the Holding Center booking area and another in a lobby where friends and families wait to visit inmates.

Reports The Buffalo News:

The key to effective advertising is to reach consumers at the moment they make their purchasing decision, said Anthony N. Diina, the head of [Metrodata Services]. "What do people want when they are in the Holding Center?" Diina asked. "They want to get out. And they don't want to get convicted. So they want bail. And an attorney. "You want to advertise to someone exactly when they want to make their decision. That is the case here," he said, adding later, "this is the ultimate captive audience."

I’ve never spent a night in the klink or anything, but I’ve seen enough of those sketchy attorney and bail bonds ads to gather that this is precisely the sort of thing that has the potential of really disrupting the ways in which media interplays with reality and becomes a parody of itself.

Let’s have a look at some ads you could expect to see in a jail near you soon.

Michael’s Bail Bond Co. leverages breasts and R&B to remind you where to turn when you want out of the big house.

Hollywood Bail Bonds takes the obvious route: what would Santa Clause do if he got busted for a DUI?

Bail Bond Girl is probably the most convincing of the lot, here. If I was locked up, I’d definitely trust a zany offbeat superhero to get me out.