Autor/ka:
Agnieszka Maszewska

Think Globally - Act Locally, or What Did Mildred Hayes Do?

trzy billboardy za Ebbing

[vc_row type="in_container" full_screen_row_position="middle" scene_position="center" text_color="dark" text_align="left" overlay_strength="0.3" shape_divider_position="bottom"][vc_column column_padding="no-extra-padding" column_padding_position="all" background_color_opacity="1" background_hover_color_opacity="1" column_shadow="none" column_border_radius="none" width="1/1" tablet_text_alignment="default" phone_text_alignment="default" column_border_width="none" column_border_style="solid"][image_with_animation image_url="10334" alignment="center" animation="Fade In" border_radius="none" box_shadow="none" max_width="100%"][divider line_type="No Line" custom_height="40"][vc_column_text]Warning: This article may contain spoilers, so Dear Reader, if you've seen the movie, read on, and if you haven't - read with your eyes closed (open them in the cinema for the movie "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"
directed by Martin McDonagh).

Angela Hayes is dead, her killer - or killers - have not been caught.
The residents of Ebbing, Missouri, know that Angela and her family went through hell, but since it wasn't their hell, they quickly got their emotions under control. They learned how difficult it is to do this when not even hell, but some discomfort starts to affect them when Mildred Hayes, Angela's murdered mother, decides to provoke the police chief into action.
Because Mildred thinks the police are sluggish and not working well. The police are led by Sheriff Willoughby, so it's him Mildred Hayes asks why there's no progress in the investigation. The public form of the question, on billboards, causes a stir. Angela's brother has trouble at school, local TV puts Mildred in a poor light, and finally, the parish priest is sent for mediation, because even the dentist doesn't hide his dislike for Mildred.
People sympathize with Mildred.
But they don't want to revisit the tragic events, which Angela's brother explicitly states. "As if I didn't think about her every day anyway, now I have to read about it too."

The three billboards hadn't been rented for a long time because traffic had moved to the highway. The road lost its importance - but only until Mildred Hayes' posters appeared on it. And Mildred Hayes and Red Welby's agency prepared a model project that should make the authors of some outdoor projects rethink, I admit: also on our media.

Do you remember what they looked like?
Intense background color, simple font, contrasting color, little content, maximum four words on each billboard, no elements that would distract from the powerful emotional charge.

Red Welby's agency generally worked well: one could only fault them for the fact that before Mildred rented the boards, the advertising surfaces themselves were badly torn and looked weak. But the structures and their surroundings - quite the opposite. Solid, aesthetic, and orderly structures, set up according to plan, presenting nicely from the road at an angle so that the messages were perfectly legible, the area around the billboards clean, grass mowed, and a stock of posters printed, because that's how it's done - every decent outdoor company knows this. An exemplary agency. Exemplary outdoor advertising.

An exemplary film. Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and the entire film are winning awards, and it looks like it's not over yet, with the Oscars ahead of us. While cheering for the excellent Woody Harrelson as the sheriff, I think at the same time, how wonderful it would be if outdoor advertising, one of the film's heroes, got such an Oscar-worthy role in Poland.
Mildred Hayes had an original and unrealistic idea to change the law for perpetrators of violence against women. She translated a global idea into local action. And then it began. Outdoor advertising worked, and it doesn't matter that it was on a side road, as traffic had moved to the highway.

Because usually, when really important issues appear in outdoor advertising, we start talking about them.
About really important matters.[/vc_column_text][divider line_type="No Line" custom_height="40"][/vc_column][/vc_row]