–Dan Kelly, Attorney

But for seeing a billboard last week like the banner below, it would never have occurred to me that cement producers really needed to advertise, but the Portland Cement Association has impeccable timing, as it is pothole season in Minnesota, and billboards like this are up all around the pothole-ridden Twin Cities.  The campaign takes a pretty effective swipe at asphalt, but asphalt has its apologists, too.

 

The PCA’s campaign effectively employs some good websites, including cement.org and think-harder.org, and it uses a complete lower case stylization for its “think harder. concrete” slogan.  Unfortunately, concrete.com, concrete.org, and cement.com are all owned by others, all of which are probably easier to associate with this campaign than cement.org, especially where the punch line of the main slogan lodges “concrete” in a viewer’s memory.  Even so, the cement and concrete groups seem to be ahead of the asphalt industry, whose category-killer domain asphalt.com redirects to this landing page for Asphalt Contractor magazine, apparently owned by Cygnus Business Media.