What can a Billboard do?
I consider out of home advertising to be the medium with the most creative potential. Your brand is in public space, you have a 2D/3D canvas and surrounding environment to work with, that’s a lot of power. But, as that cheesy line from the 1st Spiderman film goes “With great power, comes great responsibility”. A billboard is more than just a surface to plaster a message on, it’s a creative opportunity to engage and delight onlookers. So, what can we do with billboards to maximize their potential?
Respect the Intelligence of your audience.
Perhaps the golden standard, the “Lightbulb” by AMV BBDO for The Economist in 2005, set the creative bar tremendously high. Using built in motion sensors,The bulb would simply light up when passersby would walk underneath it.
Provide a service.
“Probably The Best” by Fold7 and Mission Media LLC for Carlsberg Group designed the first billboard in the world that serves pints. 'nuff said. Where as the McDonald's “Sundial Billboard” by Leo Burnett Chicago helped remind onlookers what sandwich time it was using an ingenious and innovative take on the traditional sundial timekeeping method.
Play with light.
To advertise the new Dracula Series, The folks at BBC Creative created billboards placed at busy intersections in London and Birmingham, with real stakes protruding from their surface that create a shadow of the master of darkness “Dracula” himself when night falls.
Play with medium.
“Ponds Anti Bacterial Facial Scrub” by Ogilvy Philippines is a cheeky and stimulating visual remix of the typical billboard.
Play with the environment.
Another BBC hit, when BBC Worldwide first breached into US Territory, it wanted to do so with a bang. A network with a reputation for objectivity and no frills approach, they used billboards wrapped around prime corners of NYC with a message “see both sides of the story” with current news photos at the time being featured in it. Viewers had to walk around the corner, looking at both sides, to grasp the complete story.
And while we're in NYC, anybody that has been to Times Square over the past decade has bound to see the "Naked Cowboy" walking around strumming tunes on his guitar. CP+B with Fruit of the Loom, Inc. took advantage of that familiarity and used it to advertise their line of underwear.
