for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
Manhattan Mini Storage is a family-owned self-storage company in New York City with 17 locations throughout the city. And for a company in a, let’s face it, fairly mundane industry, Manhattan Mini has cultivated a reputation for producing controversial and often savagely witty advertising.
Its ads are engineered to appeal to a certain type of New Yorker: progressive, hip, edgy and smart. An early billboard poked fun at Paris Hilton – an admittedly easy target – with the tagline: “Your closet’s so shallow, it makes Paris look deep.” Another classic is “Does this butt make my room look small?”
But some time around 2007, the ads started taking on a bolder, more politically charged tone. “Your closet space is shrinking as fast as a woman’s right to choose,” read one. Another: “Your closet’s so narrow it makes Cheney look liberal.” During the 2008 election, it took jabs at another easy target, Sarah Palin: “What’s more limited? Your closet or her experience?”
For a brand that has been so consistently on top of the zeitgeist (and not afraid to project a point of view), Manhattan Mini Storage has missed a golden opportunity in recent weeks. To be specific: Where are the Anthony Weiner ads?
We here at Digiday are fans of the work Manhattan Mini Storage does. Its more recent ads are still funny, if politically toothless (“You’re not Little Edie and this isn’t Grey Gardens.”) So in an act of homage to Manhattan Mini that is meant only to flatter – and perhaps inspire – Digiday humbly offers a handful of our own PhotoShopped Weiner-themed ads. (Special thanks to Matt Creamer and Roxana Zegan for Twitter inspiration.)
We think a certain Señor Danger would approve:
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