Clothestime Spreads Word Without Pictures : Advertising: Anaheim-based retailer’s billboard campaign, biggest in memory, sends playful messages to Southland women.

Clothestime Inc. has just made the biggest purchase of outdoor advertising in Southern California memory, and not a single piece of apparel appears on any of the 480 billboards the company is renting in five counties.

Instead, the retailer of young women’s clothing is sending its message with simple sentences printed on a plain red background: “Sex is an act. Romance is real.” “Life is a gift. Wrap yourself well.” And “Clueless boyfriends welcomed.”

The Anaheim-based retailer said it is spending about $500,000 on the billboard campaign, which takes a playful and sympathetic approach to the concerns of the 18- to 34-year-old women who make up its target market. And it has four times as many signs as any other single advertiser in the market, said Don Robinson, vice president of Western International Media in Sherman Oaks, which orchestrated the purchase.

“Nobody has ever done anything that size at all,” Robinson said. “It was a wonderfully opportunistic buy.”

Two weeks before Christmas, all 480 billboards will be replastered to read, “Shop smarter. Park closer. Dress to kill. Clothestime.”

“We want everyone who is driving to a mall to turn around and go to Clothestime,” said the retail chain’s advertising director, Lisa Van Wagner. Most of Clothestime’s 446 stores are in strip shopping centers.

Van Wagner said the response to the billboards, which were completed the day before Thanksgiving, has been very good. Shoppers in Clothestime stores are mentioning the signs, she said, and the company has had a number of press inquiries.

Kresser/Craig in Santa Monica, which created the ads, approached the campaign in the spirit of “irreverence and truthfulness,” Vice President Dan Mountain said.

The retailer was looking to set itself apart from radio and TV commercials that assault holiday shoppers. “We wanted to own the medium,” he said of the billboard blitz.

For that wide exposure, Clothestime is actually spending less than it usually does before the holidays. With cigarette makers and some other advertisers backing out of the billboard market, the rates have been slipping, Robinson said.

Clothestime, which reported 1992 sales of $259 million, has limited its advertising in the past to cable stations such as MTV and VH1, which draw a young audience.

Blanketing an entire market of drivers and bus riders to reach a small target audience is an unusual move, said John Vrba, senior vice president in the Newport Beach office of Western International.

“Young people are hard to reach,” Vrba said. “It’s an interesting use of outdoor (advertising) from that standpoint.”

Clothestime at a Glance

* Business: Women’s clothing chain

* Founded: 1974

* Headquarters: Anaheim

* President: Norman Abramson

* Stores: About 500

* Third-quarter profit: $1.2 million on sales of $81.5 million

Source: Times reports

Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times