Photo: Brad Wong

A billboard above a car lot in Oakland, Calif., uses Bill Gates and Microsoft as inspiration for companies grappling with the current recession.

A campaign by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America is trying to get the country to buck up and look forward to better times -- and it's using Microsoft and Bill Gates as inspirational material.

"Bill Gates started Microsoft in a recession," reads one of the billboards in the campaign. Our former Seattle P-I colleague Brad Wong spotted this billboard over a car lot in Oakland, Calif., and posted it on his blog.

The "Recession 101" campaign, funded by an anonymous donor, is "a light-hearted and succinct reminder to everyone that the nation will get through these troubled times and come out in the end," the OAAA explains.

As Brad notes on his blog, Microsoft's formation in 1975 did, in fact, coincide with a national recession.

Of course, you have to wonder how "inspirational" the message will be in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to countless Microsoft rivals. But the campaign may have faced a limited selection of well-known companies founded during the 1970s recession. Apple was founded in 1976, after the economy started to turn around.