Stripping Naked For All The World To See!

I met with the interactive team of one of the regional newspapers last week.

Their person heading up sales said that most of the companies they call on have already spent their budget on another medium.

And you know what that medium is?

Outdoor billboards.

I am not kidding. Outdoor billboards.

I hear that the billboard companies are cutting some great deals. I hear from businesses we meet with that they are really trying to justify their advertising dollars.

Seeing your advertising on a big board that you drive by several times a day probably reinforces that CMO who wonders every day if they are the next in line to be cut.

Outdoor billboards are not a bad medium.

Many advertisers can target them right in the heart and the daily driving course of their “rifle-defined” audience groups.

However, to this day, there are few marketers, designers and advertising agencies that understand the mechanical requirements of a billboard.

Sometimes if I am stopped at a red light and there is a billboard in front of me and I get a chance to see it up close and look at it longer that just a few seconds, I will finally get a chance to read what it says and see the nice pretty design.

One of our past clients that spent a good share of money with us is running a billboard campaign right now.

(I have to quickly say that we are not their ad agency nor are any of the ad agencies with whom we partner!)

It features a balloon in the shape of a heart and our client’s brand name is listed right on the center of the balloon. There is a three-word headline (they get credit for keeping it limited to three words!) and then an entire sentence of copy underneath.

It looks nice up close. Like when you are smack on top of it at a red light stopped.

Any time you are further back or driving past it, you cannot read the name of the client nor read the copy line.

And I promise that I am not making this assessment after a few happy hour drinks!

They are not alone.

Billboard after billboard after billboard is designed to look nice with whole sentences. Others have not one, but several pictures.

So many billboards look like newspaper ads when the paper is right in front of a person and they have some time to read the copy.

I remember one of my college professors saying in class that all that belongs on a billboard are five words or less.

That’s it.

When I think back on billboards I remember, I quickly remember the “got milk?” boards developed by Goody Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993 and later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers.

My college professor would have given the agency an A+ on that project.

Since then, I would wager to bet more than 1,000 different companies and brands have pirated the idea and used it for their advertising.

One of the first account supervisors I worked with understood outdoor advertising.

Before we could take any outdoor ad layouts to the client, we had to take the layout boards and walk across the room, tape them to the wall and then walk back and see if we could read what was on the design board.

If we couldn’t, the layouts were sent right back to the creatives to re-layout and the copywriters to edit down.

BrandVenture is neither an ad agency nor a design firm. However, we do have to deal with top management teams that will quickly conclude that marketing really does not work…and worse yet, they have to do another agency review to find a shop that “gets it.”

A month ago I wrote about how so many companies are building their cocoons to dwell among others that (God Forbid) rock the boat, challenge the strategy and try to do anything innovative with the brand.

What I write about in this blog-logue is actually an extension of the same desire to tell it all in the nicest, prettiest way.

Shoot. And saying that all that belongs on a billboard are five words or less is like stripping naked and holding up the brand for all the world to see.

My oh my… that’s risky isn’t it?

Psst… spending all those marketing dollars on those nice designed, copy intensive, pretty billboards and tracking their returns may be actually be much more risky than you think!