‘Hey, look at that dancing fool up there’

Not every doctor goes to work in an operating room.

This one actually does his rounds on a 35-foot-high billboard.

His name is Dr. Disco, and he's a dancing fool.

The mascot for the Boogie Nights Club at the Hollywood Casino Baton Rouge, Dr. Disco recently climbed atop a billboard in the city to promote a special charity dance-a-thon that took place last weekend at the club.

Dr. Disco looks like a regular man from the neck down. But his head is actually a gigantic mirrored disco ball, and he wears sunglasses so as to avoid the glare from all those mirrors.

The doctor stayed on the board from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. during the peak of the morning commute to promote the dance-a-thon.

The stunt was the brainchild of Hollywood Casino's marketing department and Lamar Advertising, the company that owns the billboard.

Hollywood Casino wanted an attention-grabbing way to raise awareness of the dance-a-thon, a 26-hour event held last Friday and Saturday.

What better, it figured, than a man hanging out on top of a billboard, where you hardly expect to see live people?

Javier Presas, an employee at Hollywood, took the job of playing Dr. Disco.

It was a sweaty one.

Temperatures that morning ranged from 80 to 84 degrees, and Presas was dancing the entire time in order to draw people's attention.

His perch was 35 feet high in the air. Presas danced on the catwalk in front of the billboard, which advertises Hollywood Casino Baton Rouge.

The billboard sits on I-10 East, near Citiplace, a shopping and hotel area in the city.

The stunt worked because it was silly enough to gain drivers' notice but not over-the-top enough to stop traffic, a bad thing during the morning commute.

Dr. Disco's dance spot was publicized beforehand, and several local media outlets picked up on the story after being tipped off.

Lamar also posted photos of the stunt and a video of Dr. Disco boogieing on its Facebook page, where they received several dozen "likes," carrying the campaign beyond the Baton Rouge city limits.
 

Tags: alternative media, alternative media stunts, ambient media, Baton Rouge, billboard, billboard stunt, billboards, campaign, dr. disco, Hollywood, Hollywood Casino, Hollywood Casino Baton Rouge, Javier Presas, Lamar Advertising, marketing, people, traffic