National Clothesline
Get those pants off the ground
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When community activist and self-proclaimed “general” Larry Platt auditioned for the television show American Idol in mid-January, he rapped his original song called “Pants on the Ground” which pokes fun at the younger generation’s propensity to wear overtly casual attire.
By the next day, everybody seemed to get the joke and Platt instantly became a
huge viral sensation. By that time, Dublin Cleaners of Ohio had already offered a quick and clever solution to such crimes of fashion.
The company’s advertising sign posted next to a busy eight-lane highway that sees over
140,000 cars daily proclaimed: “Pants on the ground? Pants on the ground? We clean and hem ‘em. Pants off the ground.”
Next, the Butlers posted a picture of the sign online and social media took it
to an even higher level of popularity.
“My dad put the sign up on Thursday at four in the afternoon and by 5:15 p.m.,
the local Fox affiliate called and wanted to come out and put it in the funny
part of the news,” recalled Brian Butler, the company’s vice president. “A lot of it was driven by Twitter. I put it on Twitter and I have about 600 or
700 people following us. So, it got retweeted all over the place.”
Less than two days after the sign was first posted, Brian Butler appeared live
on the national news show Fox and Friends for a three-minute segment during its Saturday morning show. (To view it, visit
Dublin Cleaners’ web site at www.dublincleaners.com.)
Butler is at a loss to explain why the phenomenon reached a national scale so
quickly. Still, he realizes that he and his parents, Greg and Margaret, were
fortunate to recognize early on that the theme was tailor-made for a
drycleaning business’s marketing.
Even a company like Dublin Cleaners — which has been around for 73 years and three generations — cannot afford to pass up on an opportunity to capture a little positive
publicity.
The song has continued to strike a chord with millions of Americans who have
chuckled from lyrics such as: “With that gold in your mouth/ Hat turned sideways/ Pants hit the ground/ Call
yourself a cool cat/ Looking like a fool/ Walking downtown with yo’ pants on the ground.”
“Pants on the Ground” has enjoyed much more than the typical 15 minutes associated with the lifespan
of fleeting fame. While the humorous hip-hop rant takes aim at the funny bone,
Butler believes that it hits a more serious nerve, as well.
“Everybody is so amused by it, but I think it’s got to be positioned and understood,” Butler explained. “What he’s saying is that his culture, or his neighborhood — or however you want to describe it — he’s seeing this ridiculousness going on there. To some degree, it’s going on everywhere. People are losing this cultural grasp of: ‘If you want to be somebody, dress like somebody.’”
