After seven years overlooking Baltimore's Penn Station, the Smyth Jewelers billboard showing National Bohemian beer mascot Mr. Boh proposing to the Utz girl has to move.
Turns out the dorks who own the billboard itself want to switch it over to a digital video display in May, so Smyth is trying to find a new home for its now-classic ad, which was put together by Owings Mills, Md., agency MGH.
"Natty Boh and the Little Utz girl are Baltimore's version of the royal couple," Smyth president Tom Smyth tells the Baltimore Sun,"which is why it's imperative that their next home pay homage to the sense of pride they instill in our city."
I don't know that I'd go that far. Clearly John Waters and Divine are as close as we here in Baltimore are ever getting to royalty, but he's right that the city has a fondness for that image that won't extend to a video board. That kind of gaudy, touristy crap should be restricted to the Inner Harbor.
Luckily, the smaller version of the Boh-Utz ad in North Baltimore doesn't seem to be going anywhere.