Safe is risky; risky is safe

You have about three seconds--maybe even less--to capture your audience's attention with your billboard. One way to do that, as this Moderinsta billboard for Stop Handgun Violence shows, is by embracing controversy. Sure, that's easier to do when you're promoting a polarizing political issue. But think how this translates to your product or service. What can you do to push the envelope? Remember, advertising isn't cheap, but it's a lot more expensive when no one notices your message. This is another case where--as Seth Godin might say--safe is risky, and risky is safe.

Hat tip: Ad Freak

Neoti Broadcast Network installs screens at TRF

Last week, Justin at Media Musings and the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly ran stories about the Neoti Broadcast Network's presence at this year's Three Rivers Festival. Here's what GFWBW had to say:

Neoti will be installing six screens in the Event Pavilion, with a number of other screens throughout the festival. The screens will feature a special thanks to title sponsors, area business advertising, a listing of events happening around the screen locations as well as a live weather forecast.

I was at the Three Rivers Festival Friday night to watch The Best Karaoke Singer Ever (you know who you are), and I saw one of the screens. There's a lot competing for your attention at TRF, but the location of the one I saw--above the beer line--was good.

I see this is just another example of a trend I discussed back in December: video, wherever you are, all the time. If you go to the Festival and you see the screens, let me know what you think in the comments.

A sign of things to come

It's hard to compete for attention in Times Square. If you're going to put up a sign, then, it needs to be big. Really big.

At 25 stories high, and wrapping three sides of One Times Square, a new sign commissioned by Walgreen's will be, in fact, the biggest digital sign in the world. According to a story and video on today's AdAge.com, it consists of "23 synchronized digital screens," more than twice the number of its next-largest neighbor.

No word on when the sign will make its debut, but something tells me that it won't go unnoticed.

Screen capture from AdAge.com video

McDonald's Egg-cellent Chi-town billboard

Most billboards ideas aren't all they're cracked up to be. Well, you sure can't say that about the one McDonald's hatched last week near Wrigley Field in Chicago.

The Arab Aquarius has the details:

The giant egg billboard starts cracking and opening up in the wee hours of morning. By breakfast time, the egg has already hatched, and you can see "Fresh Eggs Daily" written on the egg's yolk.

The egg stays open from 6:00AM till 10:30AM, to indicate the availability of fresh eggs during that time. Once the breakfast time is finished, the egg billboard shuts and stays closed as a whole egg till the next morning.

This is a classic example of the "reveal," where a message is hidden or incomplete for a time, creating curiosity and interest before the mystery is solved. Reveals have been so overdone that most are anticlimactic, but you can't say that about this one.

Hat tip: SBB reader and Chicago resident Julianne...thanks for sending it along!
Photo: The Arab Aquarius

How to reach sports fans beyond the stadium

With the opening of Lucas Oil Stadium just weeks away, advertisers are eagerly awaiting the chance to reach Colts fans in the team's new home. According to a recent post on Sports Marketing 2.0, though, online might be a better place to spend ad dollars targeted at sports fans:

There are 7.5 million Colts favorite team fans online and over 20% spend 20+ hours online each week!

[...]

[W]hen you consider that 68.7% of the US Population are NFL fans, and only 32 cities have NFL teams, it makes you realize that targeting stadiums and regions around stadiums fall way short of reaching the majority of NFL TEAM fans.

The upshot of all this is that team Web sites are the only way to reach MOST of the favorite team fan bases, yet most sponsors are totally focused on the stadium and the region around it.

While I agree with Pat's premise, I think in-stadium advertising has additional benefits when it can be seen on TV. Dasher boards, scoreboard signage, and other ads can give your brand some air time during the game, when fans eyes are focused on the screen. In-stadium advertising can be expensive, though, so just make sure you're buying as a marketer, not as a fan.

Breakthrough ad ideas from Toxel.com

At some point, someone probably said no to all the ideas shown in this post from Toxel.com. The finance guy said they were too expensive to execute. The media buyer said they didn't fit into the plan. And the lawyers--well, they said no before you even finished explaining what you were trying to do.

But here's the thing: someone eventually said yes. And when you have a good, breakthrough idea, all you need is for the right people to say yes, regardless of how many people say no. It's a little harder than doing the same thing as everyone else, but in today's communication environment, can you really afford to do the same thing as everyone else?

What I learned on my summer vacation

A few marketing lessons learned (or relearned) from a trip to seven states in six days:

- Word of mouth trumps everything else. I stayed at three hotels during my trip. I picked one due to great reviews in a travel book, and rejected another after reading some bad reviews online. And just about all the cities I chose to visit (and spend money in) were recommended by friends.

- Mass media is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Before I went on vacation, I posted about my media consumption habits. My increasing skepticism about the power of mass media was only reinforced by six days with no radio (listened to CDs, my MP3 player, or nothing at all the whole time), almost no TV (but I did watch about an hour of stuff on Hulu), and very little printed newspaper (skimmed the Panama City News-Herald a couple of mornings, and quickly flipped through the Savannah Morning News one day). I used the Internet a lot less, too. Do I wish I spent less time outside, on the beach, and in the water so I could consume more mass media? Nope. Does this reinforce my sense of urgency with regard to how hard it is to reach today's audiences? Yep.

- Better to do nothing than to put up a bad billboard. Billboards were the mass medium I saw the most of on my trip, but most of them were bad. If it's behind a tree, or you include 87 words on it, or three photos, or it's 200 feet from the road and you use a small font, it's a waste of money.

- But good billboards work. One of my hotel stops and most of my fast food stops were influenced by clean, simple billboards. There's nothing wrong with just using a big logo and an exit number in a really big font.

- And digital billboards are distracting. More than I originally thought, in fact. When the message changes, your eyes are attracted to the sign. Good for advertisers. Bad for drivers. This concerns me a little bit as I see digital billboards becoming more and more common.

- Your customers want you to succeed. In thinking of myself strictly as a consumer for a few days, it occurred to me that we marketers sometimes treat the customer as an adversary--but that's rarely the case. Whether I was eating, shopping, or sightseeing, I was willing to pay for good service, good products, and a good experience. It only got adversarial when promises (implicit or explicit) were not kept.

- Let My People Go Surfing is a great read. After reading this post on AdPulp, I checked out Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard's Let My People Go Surfing and took it with me on vacation. I'll post more on the book later, but it's a must read for anyone trying to find out how to make a living without compromising their beliefs.

- Want to learn what's not important? Go on vacation. This was my first vacation since last July, and it was good reminder that a lot of the stuff on my desk that seems urgent really isn't.

Photo: Bay.tv

What do you watch, listen to, and read?

This morning, one of the first things I did was walk outside and grab the Sunday paper. It's an old habit dating back to when I was a kid living just outside of Boston. Every Sunday, with few other things competing for my attention, I'd study the Red Sox box score in the Globe and read the weekly Peter Gammons column. This usually served as a gateway read, exposing me to issues and ideas throughout the rest of the paper that I might not have heard about otherwise. This was a good thing for a kid whose thoughts usually only ranged from Hank Aaron to Paul Zuvella.

Today, of course, things are different. The Journal Gazette is part of my Sunday morning ritual, but I spend significantly less time with the paper than I used to. That is somewhat a result of having less time, but it's also a reflection of my changing media habits. And I'd bet your habits are changing, too. All of us have more choices, which usually means less time spent with traditional media--newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio--in favor of new media.

All of this got me thinking about how it's much more difficult for advertisers to reach me these days, and much less likely that I'll be exposed to "unfiltered" information from outside my range of interests, for better or for worse. Here's a snapshot of how much time I spend with ad-supported media. How much opportunity does anyone have to reach me with an unsolicited message?

- The Internet is the big kahuna of my media consumption time. I spend at least an hour a night on the web, and as much as three hours some nights during the week. That doesn't count the time I spend on the web while at work, or the hours I'm online on the weekend, which vary from a couple to a couple dozen. However, I believe banner blindness is very real, and I can think of only about three times when I've clicked on a web ad. However, I know word of mouth (through e-mail, blogs, customer reviews, etc.) has a big effect on me, as does PR/earned media. In short, if you want to reach me, the web is where you'll find me. But it's unlikely you'll reach me with an ad.

- TV is where I most clearly divert from the norm. The only TV in my house is the one my wife has had since college (and she graduated in 1990). There is no such thing as "must see" TV in my world, and it's rare that I turn it on for anything other than occasional background noise. And while I'd like to attribute my rejection of TV to some Zen state of being or a preference for more high-brow activities, I'll steal a quote from Lev Grossman*: "I can get away with not having a TV partly because my personal life is so amazingly rich and satisfying but mostly because I have a computer." In fact, instead of upgrading my TV, I'm thinking of getting rid of it altogether.

- Radio is also a low-impact medium for me. When I'm in the car, I usually listen to a CD or I'm on the phone. I listen to a decent amount of NPR stuff on WBOI/98.1, but other than that, radio is a nonentity. And WBOI is, of course, "commercial free." So unless you're a public radio underwriter (sidenote: I don't think there's much of a distinction between advertising and underwriting), you won't get my attention.

- Newspapers and me, as mentioned above, go way back. But that's not to say that my newspaper reading habits haven't changed. In addition to Sunday, I read the paper on Saturday since its delivered as part of the ever-expanding Journal Gazette "weekend" subscription (which I think now includes everything but the third Tuesday of the month). Other than that, though, I almost never read a printed copy of the JG, and I read other papers only rarely, except when a blog post or a friend directs me to a story online. I used to go to the Fort Wayne Newspapers website just about every day, but now I have the sections I'm interested in--Local, Business, and Opinion--"delivered" to me via RSS feeds. And when Google Reader is your morning paper, guess how many ads you see? (Well, at least until next week.)

- Magazines still get some of my discretionary time. I subscribe to a few, and because they're aligned with my interests I'm sure the ads I see have some impact on me. The ones I read regularly include Runner's World and Men's Health (although I'm almost certain to cancel my subscription soon since all they write about is food, sex, and abs exercises...I'm not sure why I subscribed to begin with), and local publications like the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly, Business People, and Fort Wayne Monthly. But overall, my time spent with magazines is declining. A great example is Time, which I subscribed to for more than 10 years before canceling a couple years ago. It just seemed like most of its content was old news by the time it hit my mailbox. This is where local magazines have an advantage, because it's hard to find the same information on the web and the content is potentially more relevant to my information needs.

- Outdoor is the one medium that seems to be least impacted by new media. But it's also among the media most likely to be executed in a way that makes it totally ineffective. Creating a billboard is deceptively difficult, but if you follow the rules of good design, I'll listen to what you have to say. But only for about three seconds.

As someone in marketing, I continue to use myself as a reality check when considering how to connect an audience and a message. It's not easy today, and it's not going to get any easier as technology continues to give us more choices.

How about you? What do you watch, listen to, and read? How have your media consumption habits changed during the past few years?

*Recommended reading: Lev Grossman's "Getting Rid of My TV" at time.com

Fort Wayne goes digital: billboard provides new option for advertisers

Last month, I posted about the outdoor advertising industry's increased investment in digital billboards. The technology has been in Indiana for some time, but to date it's been unavailable locally. Earlier this month, however, Fort Wayne's first digital billboard went up on State Road 14/Illinois Road, courtesy of Adams Outdoor Advertising.

The new board provides a new, interesting option for advertisers, but it's not for everyone. If you need to make frequent changes to your message (if you want to tout low prices on specific products, or if you want to feature time-sensitive events, for example), it's a good choice because you can change the creative frequently and easily. However, if you use outdoor for image/branding, it doesn't make as much sense since your message is only up for seconds at a time and since digital billboard space usually costs a lot more than traditional billboard/poster placement.

All I've seen on the board so far is self-promo for Adams, but I'm sure that will change soon. If you happen to be on 14 and you see any new messages pop up, send me an e-mail or add a comment with your thoughts.

More on the success--and future--of outdoor advertising

This 3-minute AdAge" video interview with Richard Schaps, CEO of Van Wagner Communications, is a great overview of current trends in outdoor advertising. And if that's not enough, check out this April 15 SBB post on the same topic.

Bonus coverage: an Oct. 2007 Inc.com interview with Schaps, who appears to have done pretty well for himself in the moolah department.

Photo: XsurrealX on stock.xchng

Think you've seen it all? You probably haven't seen this.

Looking for a way to rise above other marketing messages? Well, there's something new in the air: Flogos.

These floating logos (hence "Flogos") are a modern skywriting of sorts, but with shapes, not words. They're also more environmentally friendly since they're dispatched from the ground, not the sky. According to the Flogos website, they're made of soap, foam, and "lighter than air gases such as helium." Shapes can be customized to 24" or 36," and you can have any color you want, as long as you want white. More size and color options are allegedly on the way.

Does this mean we've run out of places to advertise on the ground? Not quite. But it probably means the future of advertising as a whole--not just billboards--may be up in the air.

Hat tip: AdFreak
Photo: Flogos.net

The future of billboards is up in the air

Billboards are hard to like. They clutter the landscape. They can distract drivers. And when they're bad, they're really bad.

But here's another thing about billboards: when done right, they can be tremendously effective.

Outdoor advertising is enjoying a resurgence of sorts, especially compared to TV, radio, and print. While other media struggle with changing consumption habits, and as audiences discover new ways to avoid ads, billboards remain as conspicuous as ever. There's no way to change the channel or fast forward past a billboard, making them an increasingly attractive option for advertisers looking to maximize their return on investment.

Outdoor advertising companies are looking to capitalize on this recent success by employing new technologies to give advertisers even more options. One trend, discussed in a recent article on Fortune.com, is digital billboards. Instead of using paper or vinyl, digital boards consist of nothing more than pixels, meaning the production cost (other than creative) is $0, and the message can be changed in seconds. The Fortune story details some of the benefits:

Rather than a business of months-long contracts and time-consuming ad installations, billboards would become real-time competitors to local newspaper advertising (as if newspapers needed yet another headache). Instead of alerting drivers to a Denny's restaurant three exits away, billboards could advertise a nearby open house scheduled for that day or a sale at a local supermarket or a public service announcement. Reilly notes that the Cincinnati Reds used digital billboards to announce its starting pitcher for a same-day game.

There's one downside not mentioned in the Fortune story, however: when you advertise on a paper or vinyl board, you own the space all day and night for the entire length of your contract. With digital boards, your ad rotates with other messages, meaning that traffic can miss it depending on the number ads in the rotation (the fortune story says the ads change every 6 - 10 seconds).

I recently traveled to Columbus, Ind., on I-65, and saw a couple of new digital boards firsthand. My take is that given the additional expense associated with digital board space, they only make sense for advertisers who have a time-sensitive message, and even then the pros and cons should be considered carefully. This is especially true for Indiana advertisers: because digital boards are fairly new to the Hoosier state, digital board availability is scarce. That means you'll pay even more for the seconds of exposure you'll receive.

It's Friday, and "Yass" is a city in Australia

Hat tip: Billboardom

Billboard backlash enboldens vandals

A couple of years ago, one of my client's billboards was defaced by someone with a can of spray paint and way too much free time. We were pretty lucky for a couple of reasons: the message painted on the board was just random graffiti not directed at the advertiser, and we had a second vinyl in inventory that we were able to get up within hours.

Other advertisers aren't so lucky. Last week, for example, the Billboard Liberation Front, a California-based group that has been "'improving' outdoor advertising since 1977," changed this board...:

into this:

The BLF's tounge-in-cheek press release stated that the goal was "to promote and celebrate the innovative collaboration of these two global communications giants."

"NSA gets the data it needs to keep America safe," the release continues, "telecom customers get free services, and AT&T makes a fortune. That kind of cooperation between the public and private sectors should serve as a model to all of us, and a harbinger of things to come.”

In case you didn't notice, they're being sarcastic.

Now there's part of me that thinks the BLF's efforts are funny and smart. After all, it's hard not to laugh when the joke's aimed at a corporate behemoth and the governmental equivalent of Big Brother. But it's easy to see the humor when it's at someone else's (literal and figurative) expense. I'm guessing I wouldn't be laughing as much if the joke was on one of my clients.

Part of the problem is the ongoing controversy surrounding outdoor advertising (see this post for more). Billboards aren't very popular, and they can be pretty ugly and obtrusive. As a marketing strategy, however, they also can be pretty damn effective.

My take is that like most other things in life, the key is moderation. Citizens and municipalities should work together to develop common sense ordinances that allow for some outdoor advertising, while limiting the kind of proliferation that blights the landscape (and also makes individual messages less effective). That's easier said than done, but even striving for this type of compromise would be a step in the right direction.

In the meantime, I'll try to stay off the BLF's radar, while keeping a backup vinyl at the ready, just in case.

Hats tipped to AdFreak, boingboing, billboardom
Photos from the Billboard Liberation Front's photostream on Flickr

You call that a sign ordinance? THIS is a sign ordinance.

Did you know that there are no billboards in Vermont? I didn't, until I read a great AdFreak post today about the Green Mountain State's law:

The proposal became law back in 1968 mostly thanks to the efforts of one man, Ted Riehle, a state legislator. Riehle faced stiff opposition from farmers, who made money leasing their land, and from advertisers, who wanted the ad space. But Riehle convinced the state that it would benefit financially and aesthetically by taking the existing billboards down and banning new ones.

The post also includes a defense of billboards from Steve Simpson of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Simpson's defense, in summary? Yes, billboards can be ugly, but they also can be pretty. And sometimes they're in front of stuff that's even uglier, like strip malls.

Simpson's argument reminds me of DDB New Zealand's "Say No to No Billboards" campaign, which made a compelling counterpoint to the "billboards blight the landscape" claim. Sometimes, it's actually the landscape that blights the landscape. And in that case, a billboard might be a little easier on the eyes.

SBB's take on billboards? Aesthetically, as AdFreak suggests, it's hard to make a case for them. But as a marketing strategy, it's also hard to argue against them--and this is important--when they're done well. The audience can't turn them off, they're big, and sometimes they can be incredibly cool, but you have to know their limitations:

• No more than six words. Ever.
• Nothing that takes more than three seconds to read, including phone numbers and web addresses.
• One central image. One.
• Not all locations are created equal. And some are behind really overgrown trees.
  

How about you? Are billboards part of your marketing plan? Why or why not? Let's hear your thoughts in the comments.

Launch Mobile Media takes billboards on the road

Four months ago, Launch Mobile Media
joined Fort Wayne's advertising mix, moving billboards from the side of the road to the road itself. Launch's truck-mounted signs can carry an advertiser's message through traffic or stand stationary, providing a visual backdrop for an event or serving as an alternative to other forms of outdoor advertising. The display panels also can scroll through multiple messages, giving Launch the opportunity to accommodate several advertisers at once.

Prior to Launch's launch, I'd had several conversations with co-workers and clients about whether mobile billboards were a viable option in a city the size of Fort Wayne. The conventional wisdom said that Fort Wayne was too small a market—and I had always agreed with the conventional wisdom. But I decided to talk to Launch to give them the opportunity to respond to my doubts.

Last week, I spoke with Nicholas Cochran, one of Launch’s owners. Nicholas gave me an overview of the business and highlighted some of their successes during their first four months. He explained some of the ways in which mobile billboards compete favorably with other forms of outdoor advertising, and described some technologies that his company was considering to make their medium even more effective. Nicholas also detailed some of the early successes that his company has achieved, including one client who signed a 12-month extension after just two months with Launch.

Did Nicholas change my mind about mobile billboards in Fort Wayne? Well, I’m pretty stubborn, but he did get me thinking. And I’m planning to learn more about Launch to see if mobile billboards are a better (beware of oncoming pun) vehicle than I originally thought. After all, a lot of entrepreneurs—and marketers—have done pretty well betting against conventional wisdom.

Now that Launch's trucks have been on the road for a few months, have you seen them? Has anyone used mobile billboards, either in Fort Wayne or elsewhere, to advertise their business? What do you think?

Photo: Launch Mobile Media

How to fill your billboard with water (no water required)

Awesome use of outdoor by the World Wildlife Fund. Wow.

Vid length: 39 sec.
Hat tip: Billboardom