The latest low-technology billboards along highways in the Netherlands are startling enough to prompt motorists to indulge in U-turns.
Or make that ewe-turns. These ads are walking, woolly flocks of bleating sheep. Early this month, Hotels.nl, a Dutch online reservations company, began displaying its corporate logo on royal blue waterproof blankets worn by sheep.
The company spends 1 euro, or about US$1.23 a day, per sheep and sponsors about 144 sheep in flocks throughout the Netherlands. But commercially branded sheep roaming the bucolic meadows of the northern Netherlands have prompted a reaction.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
On Saturday, the town of Skarsterlan began fining Hotels.nl 1,000 euros a day for putting branded blankets on sheep. Advertising on livestock violates the town's ban on advertising along the highways.
"My first reaction was a smile; it is very creative," said Bert Kuiper, the town's mayor. "My second reaction is that we have to stop this. If we start with sheep, then next it's the cows and horses."
Hotels.nl said it would pay the fines, but it planned to fight the ban in court. Since the advertising strategy started, sales by Hotels.nl have been up 15 percent, and so were visits to the company's Web site, said Miechel Nagel, chief executive of Hotels.nl, a four-year-old company based in Groningen.
He plans to increase the number of sheep sporting the company's logo, and is searching for locations where there are frequent traffic jams.
Hotels.nl did not originate the idea of sheep as billboards, but it was the first company here to use the technique. A Dutch horse breeder, Andre Groen, dreamed up the concept, and Easy Green Promotions, based in Leiden, created what it called "Lease a Sheep Shirt-Sponsoring."
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