Creating and Installing the Burma-Shave Inspired RunPhones Signs

We love how the Burma-Shave signs from the 1920's to 1960's dotted the great American roadways with humor and public service, while promoting their shaving cream. It was phased out as cars started driving faster, and it became too difficult to read the signs. We are bringing back this fun advertising campaign with RunPhones. Even the runners who make it in under 1 hour and 15 minutes for a half-marathon aren't running too fast to get a chuckle from our signs!

On Thanksgiving's Black Friday, we went to Home Depot to buy lumbar, nuts, and bolts. They were nice enough to cut the plywood for us into 10" by 36" pieces. Those would be the boards. The stakes were trimmed down from 4x4s with a circular saw. Thank goodness Jason's father is very handy and has lots of equipment. The above picture shows them drilling the holes for the bolts. The picture below are the drilled pieces.

When we came home after Thanksgiving, we painted the signs with custom color-matched paint. It's amazing that even a little shop like our local Triangle Hardware store can mix paints. Our grass still looks like something was murdered...

The day before the big race, our public relations firm, Happy Valley Communications came out to put the signs up. Happy Valley Communications is the student-run PR firm from Penn State University. These super bright account members led by Brittany helped us put up 11 signs today and will put up another 5 signs tomorrow. A nice farmer with many many feral cats in the barn (I lost count at 19) said that we could put up the signs on his property, as long as it wasn't in his crop fields. Here is Ashley and Maggie hammering in the bolts.

Ashley found great rates from the Engineering Printing office at Penn State. We got all of our signs printed there - within 24 hours. Maggie, Ashley, and Katie staple the laminated banners to the wooden signs.

Then Brittany and Jason hammer in the sign, with Penn State's famous Beaver Stadium (football) in the background.

Jason's brother Jeff will drive down to run in the race tomorrow morning. Jeff, Jamie (our in-house PR guy), and the HVC team will all be there. Our friends Knuetes will be there too with their line of recycled clothing and outdoor gear. We'll have a great time tomorrow during the half marathon!