Did Esurance put up a billboard saying "Cover your home in a dick"?

Question

This tweet has been making the rounds about the dangers of bad kerning:

Supposedly the letters "c" and "l" are run together so that "click" looks like "dick" instead.

I call shenanigans. Surely someone noticed the problem while the sign was going up? Has the image of the sign been modified from the original? Or is this an optical illusion?

If it's the kind of billboard poster that's actually many smaller sheets glued next to each other, it's possible that the "c" and "l" were either side of a join and the person who put this particular billboard up accidentally (or deliberately) placed them with too much overlap. — David Richerby, Sep 04 '14 at 17:56
@DavidRicherby: It appears to be a single sheet of canvas. I actually found a video of a similar esurance billboard being installed in the same location, but the text is different (suggesting either that this picture is fake or, perhaps more likely, simply that esurance has run multiple ads in this same location). — Ilmari Karonen, Sep 04 '14 at 18:21
@ratchetfreak Ahh... F*ck Yeah Keming. click is a particularly problematic word. — , Sep 04 '14 at 23:34
It looks to me like the baseline of "ick" does not line up with the baseline of "cover your home in a". That strongly suggests it was photoshopped. — Snowbody, Sep 05 '14 at 15:52

user1840364 · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-04T18:20:19.350

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The image was stated to have been photoshopped.

UPDATE: Welp, the fun's over. Esurance contacted us today, and they're saying the image above is photoshopped. To be fair, we were incredulous when we first saw the photo, but decided to roll with it when we saw Esurance addressed the lady who first tweeted out the above image, and said they'd removed the billboard.

enter image description here

edited Sep 04 '14 at 18:20

answered Sep 04 '14 at 18:09

user1840364

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Hm, so I wonder why Esurance's initial tweet appeared to confirm that the problem existed? Or were they being sly - if no billboards were affected, then "we have removed all affected billboards" would be vacuously true. – Nate Eldredge Sep 06 '14 at 02:49
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@NateEldredge Extra publicity for free? – Izkata Sep 07 '14 at 16:04

score 30 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 04 '14 at 14:32

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It's real and was confirmed by esurance in a tweet.

Just in case the tweet gets removed later, here is a screenshot:

enter image description here

According to several sources online, the billboard was put in Chicago, not in New York:

redeye Chicago

Esurance removes Chicago billboards with NSFW typo

A blog post

Here's A Big Billboard That Says Dick In Downtown Chicago

edited Sep 04 '14 at 14:32

called2voyage

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answered Sep 04 '14 at 07:10

SIMEL

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Even with the apparently confirming reply, I'm still a bit skeptical. Given the how many people carry cellphone cameras around these days, and how obvious the mistake is (it doesn't just sort of look like it says "dick" if you squint at it, it actually, unambiguously, says "dick"), surely there should be more than one photo of that billboard. – Ilmari Karonen Sep 04 '14 at 13:44
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Definitely Chicago. The billboard in the picture is mounted on the "bridge" that is train yard behind the Metra station at Madison and Canal. – longneck Sep 04 '14 at 15:50
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sounds like a clever marketing trick if you ask me. – n00b Sep 04 '14 at 19:20
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Evidently not, eh? – HopelessN00b Sep 04 '14 at 22:33
In Chicago, I'm inclined to think the photoshopped version is less NSFW than the original. – corsiKa Sep 05 '14 at 22:40
In light of the evidence in the accepted answer, this answer should be considered incorrect. – Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard Jun 15 '15 at 17:41

Did Esurance put up a billboard saying "Cover your home in a dick"?

2 Answers2