by Nick Coston
Whether you call you them billboards, screens, displays, panels, posters, digitals, 3-D or Holograms, the name doesn’t matter. What does matter is that current ad copy has gotten bland. That goes for all these OOH products mentioned. Compared to the 40’s and 50’s, with its bright colors, huge smiling faces and bold extensions, we’ve become what we’ve feared the most, a shortened print ad.
The phrase I quoted above regarding brevity was made famous by William Shakespeare in 1602, in act 2, scene 2 of a simple little stage play called Hamlet. Translated to 2026, it means keep it short, get to the point, don’t write a novel. Take your pick, they’re all good.
The most effective OOH copy still often contains the shortest of verbiage, promoting some quick clarity, a direct impact and finally selling the product. Less words, more visuals.
Driving through Baltimore on the interstate the other day most of the OOH copy, be it digital or static, just didn’t stick out, no punch to my face and hardly any recall by the time I got further north and out of the city. I didn’t feel my usual OOH love as in years past. Lottery copy with its changing dollar amounts is nice and informative but I feel I’ve become numb to the visual. Personal injury lawyers can be clever but redundant and it’s hard to make hospital ad copy glitzy and eye-catching. The smaller the markets it seems gets the better and more original, local style copy except for Philadelphia with that scribbled Steven Singers Jewelers “I Hate Stephen Singer” copy which I can’t get enough of. Now that’s clever, brief and hits you in the face.
When I was riding markets with Adams Outdoor (Fairway Outdoor in prior years), they had a policy of selling not just billboards, but great billboards. They always trained their salespeople to drive three core OOH principles, simplicity, repetition and dominance. Their goal was to drive engagement and build brand familiarity quicker than any other advertising medium. In fact in the lobby of the former Adams/Fairway office in Raleigh, NC (now a Lamar Advertising office branch) they had a very large mural with a Campbell Soup can called “Secret Sauce” accompanied by an Albert Einstein quote (well, they said it was Einstein), shouting “The World We Have Created Is A Product of Our Thinking and Cannot Be Changed Without Changing Our Minds”. It was constant message in similar Fairway/Adams offices at the time.
The Secret Sauce being the ability to use creative wisely as a means to make your billboard advertising stick out, give the client an edge over competitors using print, radio or TV. It was and still is an outstanding selling point.
Billboards (OOH) should always be treated as if it’s a piece of original art, because that’s what we are with our massive blank canvas’s covering the landscape. What a privilege it should be for us to fill these grand spaces, regardless of the format or size.
We should never pass up this exclusive moment to create original art, be seen, build a brand and sell a product. We have the unique ability to a say lot more by using the minimum of language convey something.
Brevity and wit will always be a winning combo for OOH.
Insider’s Note: Nick Coston has been writing opinion pieces for the OOH industry for 10 years now. His weekly pieces also appear on Substack where you can view the last 2 years worth. Full-time, Nick is the VP, Sales and Sales Strategies for Moving Walls, the Singapore based media and ad tech giant, here in The America’s.
If you are interested, here is Nick’s Substack LINK
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