Most people think of billboards as static advertising, not passive. People walk or drive by and they read it, and that’s fine. It’s a perfectly acceptable advertising method and it’s what most people expect.
Sometimes though, if you can find a way, doing the unexpected can yield handsome benefits.
Take, for example, this delightfully simple design produced for the YMCA by an ad agency out of Vancouver.
The only text on the ad is the YMCA’s Canadian web address and the iconic logo. That’s it. The magic though, was that the ad contained a basketball hoop at regulation height.
This is advertising at its best and most effective. The design tells you everything you need to know about the YMCA, and it provides a fun bit of entertainment for kids in the area of the billboard itself. That’s killer design.
Granted, it’s not always easy to integrate some form of interactivity with advertising, but a surprising number of companies have found ways. Coca Cola once had a billboard that dispensed actual drinks. A chocolate manufacturer once displayed a billboard that gave out real chocolate.
In another instance, The Economist magazine featured a billboard that had a lightbulb that passersby could turn on by touching it, so it can certainly be done and it’s probably worth spending some time figuring out how to apply this approach to your own advertising strategy.
The reason is simple. Designing the ad is only the first part of the equation. For it to be maximally successful your ad should get talked about. It should spark a global conversation across multiple social media channels, and interactivity helps make that happen.
It can be difficult, though, to come up with ideas like that, and that’s where we come in. Our advertising professionals have decades of combined experience, and we’d love the opportunity to put that expertise to work for you.
📞 To get started, just give us a call at 404-671-9490.