We expect a billboard to proclaim a clear message — the more transparent the better — especially when it stands above an interstate highway in a zone where family vehicles and industrial trucks stack and jumble up at velocity. Compare this to a soft drink advertisement, or a sign directing you to a restaurant, or another tempting you to purchase and eat a candy bar — their products appear in giant illustrations described with bold text leaving no doubt what they are and what they can do for you. Our example strays far from that ideal of pure signalling; instead of a clean punch in the gut, we mostly get noise. Does its significance lie among the cute bunnies as bunnies?  Or is it mainly the fact they are made of chocolate? Could the lagomorphs in themselves be completely irrelevant? Who is Ken Garff and what is he selling?  Questions and confusions raised by this tarnished communication at first glance have no obvious resolution.

To comprehend anything here you must be able to perceive the tiny text below Ken’s last name: WE HEAR YOU. However you cannot read this sentence from an automobile operating in the center lane among American speed demons. Adjacent Garff’s slogan we find in red what is apparently the company logo. Sadly it contains no intrinsic meaning. It could be a symbol picked from an imaginary alphabet, or might be a twisted strawberry licorice stick, it gives us no help. The amputated rabbit’s ears are important, but also difficult to perceive from a car window. A wind might have snapped off those appendages, we cannot tell. We need reliable information about this missing piece of the picture; we must know whether the ears are absent by choice of the graphic designer, or whether violent forces have ripped and carried them away.

The chocolate bunny at left with ears intact must stand for Ken’s business, perhaps more specifically his staff members. The subtext: Garff’s rabbit ears stand at attention when you talk. He listens. His competitors do not listen, are small by comparison, in fact are handicapped and disfigured in a pathetic way. They could not hear — much less understand you — even if they cared to make the effort.

A question remains: What is Ken merchandising? After examining this picture on its own — using the human brain without prosthetics — the through-traveler cannot tell whether Mister Garff is selling furniture, groceries, commercial real estate or intellectual property. Reaching the answer demands local knowledge, which I acquired the old-fashioned way: I asked a resident of Salt Lake City if he knew what the sign meant and he explained it in five seconds.

Why the designers fixed on rabbits, then dipped them in chocolate remains a dark mystery.