National Vacuum is a local legend. The sign's message changes about once a month. The owner uses it to make (often very bad) jokes and puns, send seasonal messages and spread bits of folk wisdom. The sign indulges in "dadisms" (not dadaisms, dad-isms). It uses slogans and maxims to entertain. Most the time the posts have nothing to do with vacuum cleaners. The "goodwill" of the sign and the way it transforms a business location into a local landmark are advertisement enough.
I cropped it to get at the meat of the image; the meat of the message. This message is a sing-song rhyme and advertising slogan rolled into one. The ad suggests that doing housework is a way to burn calories, but instead of focusing on the addressed wife in focuses on an unseen husband. Anxieties about weight are displaced to someone else's body.
Most jokes have an edge; most jokes deal with anxieties. This one deals with anxieties about weight, how household chores are split up, who has more power in a relationship, the ways that long term partnership can lead to complacency about one's looks and the sometimes necessary subtle (and not so subtle) manipulations to get loved ones to do what's good for them. The rhyming and jokey quality of the phrase is like a feint, so all those other meanings can slip into the back door of our brains while we are looking the other way. All those other issues slip in and work on our emotions. We laugh while our fears are played on. The jokey quality of the sign hides the slightly vicious nature of using peoples' anxieties about being fat to sell an appliance. The sign maker isn't trying to be vicious; these advertising strategies are almost a reflex response. We use them without thinking about them; we don't second guess them as a choice.
If I were to classify this slogan as one of the great parables (following Marchand in Advertising the American Dream), it comes closest to being a parable of First Impressions. (more here later)
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