Business must be bad

Yesterday I drove from Kelowna to Kamloops. There are two ways to drive. You can drive via Merritt (west then north) or via Vernon (north then west). The forecast was for snow between Kelowna and Merritt, and as you go over a 1700 metre high pass with notoriously bad weather, so I went via Vernon.

Just past Vernon you take a left turn at the north end of Swan Lake and head off towards Kamloops on highway 97. There is a short strip of road with 13 billboards. All are owned by Pattison Outdoor.

Map of billboards around Vernon, British Columbia (Source: http://maps.pattisonoutdoor.com/map.aspx?l=en-US)

The cluster of 13 red dots are the billboards.

Map of billboards on Highway 97 north of Vernon, British Columbia (Source: http://maps.pattisonoutdoor.com/map.aspx?l=en-US)

If you go to the Pattison Outdoor website you can click on the map and actually see the billboard and even look at a Google Streetview of the strip of road.

So why do I say business is bad? Over half of the billboards had advertisements for Save-On Foods. (And Save-On Foods is owned by the Pattison Group.) Now it makes sense for Pattison to use unsold billboard space to advertise its own subsidiaries, but it sends a message to potential advertisers that this space does not have that much value. If they can't sell it to anyone else, then why should I buy it?

By my totally unscientific survey of Pattison Group billboards around the Okanagan Valley, it seems that between 10% and 20% hold ads for Pattison Group grocery store companies. Now it may be that billboards are the best way to advertise grocery stores, or it could be that no one wants to buy the space. I suspect the latter.