Aretha Swift needs a kidney, but she's buried deep on the donor transplant list. So she coordinated a fundraiser to buy ad space, and now has 24 billboards plastered around Pennsylvania and in Times Square that send people to AKidneyForAretha.com, where they can find out whether they are a match for Swift.

If Swift's billboards manage to land her a kidney, expect others desperate for organs to get similarly creative. But at least they're a major improvement on the billboard recently erected by a Texas mom to get her daughter voted prom queen, and the billboard in Chicago that compared global warming believers to the Unabomber.

[adweek]

When Texas high-schooler Brandy Day suggested to her mom that they rent a billboard to help along her campaign for prom queen, she never imagined her mom would spend more than $1,500 on newspaper ads, fliers, a customizable outdoor display sign at a local taqueria, and -- the nail in her prom queen coffin -- a "pink rotating outdoor" billboard. "I was joking, but she took me seriously," she said. "When she texted me a pic of the billboard and the newspaper, I was shocked."

[jezebel]

From the annals of bad ideas, McDonald's has debuted a billboard whose reflective-tape wording, "Open all night," is only visible when lit up by headlights. Because it's not at all freaky to suddenly come upon glowing words off a dark stretch of Vancouver highway.

[hypervocal]