Publications & Sites 
Do Oak Parkers have bad skin?
Paul Sassone
Updated: August 1, 2012 4:38PM
You’re looking good.
How do I look to you?
I’m asking to find out if it’s true that because
we are Oak Parkers we have bad skin.
Please don’t be offended. Let me explain.
I was heading east on the Eisenhower Expressway. I had just moved into the left lane to get off at Harlem Avenue when the billboard just east of Harlem caught my eye.
It read: “Hello Oak Park. Goodbye problem skin.’’
This message was followed by the name of a dermatology group and an email address.
Why specifically mention Oak Park in this giant ad? Is someone trying to tell us something?
True, the billboard is in
Oak Park. But there are other
ads, other billboards in Oak
Park, but they don’t say, “Coke,
the pause that refreshes Oak Parkers.’’
So, I began to wonder if somehow Oak Park and bad skin are related.
One way to find out, of course. The place where there is an answer for everything: the Internet.
I Googled “Bad skin Oak Park.’’
What flickered on to my screen was a bunch of doctors and medical businesses.
So, I cast my net wider:
“Bad skin United States.’’ More doctors, plus a seemingly endless list of all the things that are
harmful to human skin. None of those harmful things was Oak Park.
So, today as I was out and about in Oak Park I started looking at people’s skin — nothing obvious or creepy, you understand. But just as an experiment to see how much bad skin I could see.
All you Oak Parkers looked pretty good to me.
I was going to give up the whole thing when I mentioned it to someone I know who knows about business and such.
She said such ads are not
uncommon nowadays, that
businesses think mentioning the town in their advertising makes them seem part of the community. And if they are perceived as part of the community they may receive more business from that community.
She added that such advertising would be done more, except it is expensive to do community-specific billboard advertising.
So, I replied, instead of being offended or hurt that someone thinks we Oak Parkers have bad skin, we should be flattered that a business thinks enough of us to include our town’s name in its billboard advertising.
We should keep this in mind in case Preparation H puts up a billboard in Oak Park.
