Recently, advertising veteran Tara Hatley won an advertising award for an innovative billboard design. It’s worth mentioning because Ms. Hatley has a couple decades of experience in the business, and all of her designs should be studied closely.
This one works for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn’t use, or require any words to tell the story or sell the service. The image alone is quite enough. A woman looking up in horror at a busted pipe as water gushes out of it. She’s capturing it in a bucket but clearly, that’s not a long-term solution.
The long-term solution is presented right there on the sign. If (when) you have a problem like this, call Kingsley Water Damage Service, and they’ll take care of it.
The expression on the woman’s face does a lot of heavy lifting here, but the design is aided by something simple and too often overlooked by advertisers. A billboard extension.
The pipe doesn’t neatly fit along the contours of the sign, it extends beyond it, and that matters. It matters because anytime a billboard’s design strays from the original, rectangular canvas, it forces and focuses the viewer’s attention. You have to look – there’s no choice, really. And so, you do.
That’s where the magic is. This billboard effortlessly draws, commands and keeps your attention, right where the advertiser wants it.
Some might argue that the designer should have put the company phone number on the ad, but honestly, it’s not necessary and would have taken up valuable billboard real estate. In today’s interconnected world, it takes all of about three seconds to get the number and call for service if and as needed. If every ad campaign you ran were as effective as the one we just talked about, you’d be miles ahead of your competition. We can help get you there. Just give us a call at 404-671-9490.