Barnes Outdoor Wins Award for Creative Digital Campaign

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2016 Watchfire Digital Signs Best of Show Winner

Barnes Advertising Corporation won the 2016 Watchfire Digital Billboard Best of Show award in the 2016 Watchfire Digital Billboard Awards for a campaign for Fink’s Used Cars.  You can find a complete list of winners here.   Barnes owns nearly 600 print and eight digital billboard faces throughout 15 counties in Southeastern Ohio.  Insider featured Barnes as Company of the Day on March 14, 2016.

The Campaign:  Fink’s Used Cars, also in Zanesville, Ohio receives new inventory regularly. As new vehicles are entered into stock, the VIN is scanned and sent to an RSS feed. Using Ignite OA software, Barnes Advertising was able to extract a portion of the RSS feed and display it on the digital billboard within a content page designed especially for the campaign. This method allowed recent vehicles added to inventory to be immediately displayed to the buying public. With content changes each time a new vehicle was scanned, the client had great success with increased traffic for the dealership, and consumers inquiring about the every-changing vehicle offerings displayed on billboards.

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Rob Nichols, Barnes Advertising Art Director

Insider interviewed Barnes Advertising art director Rob Nichols about the campaign.

Who came up with the idea to link the dealer inventory changes to the digital billboard?

A member of our sales team who works directly with Fink’s discovered the dealership uses an RSS feed that we can potentially stream directly on one of three digital billboards Barnes owns in the region. We pitched the concept to Fink’s, they approved, and we then tweaked the code to display pertinent vehicle information in real time to drive potential buyers to the dealership. In addition to streaming live content, we also developed the creative template or display for each digital impression.

Did it require any extra programming?

Using Ignite OA software, the Barnes creative team was able to extract a portion of the dealership’s RSS feed to display details of recently added vehicles by scanning the VIN, allowing potential buyers to view the year, make, model, and other relevant vehicle details. The programming and messaging had to be delivered in a clean, simple way that attracted and informed people driving by very quickly.

Was the billboard updated every time a new car was added to the dealer’s inventory?

Essentially yes, information on the billboard can be updated every time a vehicle was added to the inventory, per Fink’s discretion. The digital impression shows the most current vehicle scanned from the dealership’s RSS feed, or a current vehicle Fink’s chooses to showcase to the general public. Since implementing the digital campaign in 2014, Fink’s has experienced a dramatic spike in customer inquiries and dealership traffic, realizing a rapid return on the advertising investment.

Insider’s Take:  Hats off to Barnes.  This award-winning campaign highlights a strength of digital signs.  You can quickly and inexpensively update ads.  Insider also likes Watchfire’s idea to recognize effective digital sign campaigns.   Outdoor companies have less experience designing effective digital ads and it’s helpful to recognize good digital design.


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