Circle Graphics CEO Rod Rackley is writing a three part series on John Morgan’s terrific keynote at last year’s OAAA conference. 

Yesterday I left off with Morgan’s verdict on our industry’s creative: most of it isn’t creative. What made his keynote more than a good roast was what came next. He put his own boards on the screen and walked the room through them, one at  time, with a story for almost every one.

I took notes. Here’s what I think that slideshow actually teaches, sorted into lessons you can use on Monday.

He borrows from the best, and says so

Morgan didn’t claim to have invented funny advertising. He said he watched GEICO, State Farm and Progressive running what amounted to comedy skits and figured they must know something he didn’t. So he made the same bet across TV, radio and outdoor at once.

He did the same with the Chick-fil-A cows climbing up the billboard. He loved those boards and asked his team what one cost. The answer was about $150,000 a cow. He passed on that price and built his own version anyway. Hold onto that number. We’ll come back to it.

He talks to every city in its own language

Atlanta got “Hurtlanta.” Pennsylvania got “Painsylvania.” Boston got “Wicked Smart.” New York got “I Law New York.” In Philadelphia he ran “I’m Jawn Morgan,” which drove the locals crazy because he isn’t from there. He told the room he was doing it anyway. In Vegas he went the other direction and kept it straight: America’s largest injury firm, $30 billion recovered.

None of that costs a dime more to print or install. Same vinyl, same crew. The difference is that somebody took ten minutes to think about who drives past the board.

He buys something once and uses it everywhere

Morgan sponsors the Red Sox, the Yankees and the Cubs. He sponsors Kyle Busch’s NASCAR team, UFC and monster trucks. The sponsorship earns its keep in the arena, and then he takes those images and puts them on buses and boards. In North Carolina, where Busch fans are serious, the car goes on the side of the bus right next to Morgan.

If you sell space, that’s a question worth asking every client: what do you already own? Sponsorships, mascots, local athletes and hometown slang are free creative sitting in a drawer.

He gives people something worth photographing

In the subways Morgan built what he called galleries of client testimonials. He said people stop and study them like they’re in the Louvre, and then they take pictures. Every one of those photos is reach he didn’t pay for.

He’ll look ridiculous on purpose

Morgan as the Statue of Liberty. A Mary Poppins bus in Orlando. Morgan riding a pigeon, which he cheerfully admitted he can’t explain. And my favorite: he had his own graphics people design fake “defaced” versions of his boards and posted them around the country. People assumed vandals had gotten to him. By his telling, the boards sat near the top of Reddit for about a month.

His rule on this was not printable, so I’ll translate. If you won’t make fun of yourself, don’t expect people to pay attention. Most advertisers worry too much about looking dignified, and they pay for it in indifference.

The brand never moves. The message never stops.

This is the one I keep coming back to. I liked it enough to write an OAAA Supplier Insights paper on it, The Creative Multiplier.

Look back over that list. The name, the face, the colors and the promise never change. You can spot a Morgan board from a quarter mile away. What changes, constantly, is the line: the city, the season, the team, the joke. He even does Christmas boards. One year it was Grandma getting run over by a reindeer.

Most advertisers do the reverse. They buy twelve months, print one face, and let it go stale by spring.

What it means for the rest of us

For media owners: sell a creative plan along with the space. A twelve-month buy with four executions is a better product than the same buy with one. The client gets better results and a reason to renew. The cost of a new face is small next to the cost of a board the market has quietly stopped seeing.

For suppliers: back to that cow. One of the biggest buyer in the business wanted a dimensional extension and balked at $150,000. That gap is our opportunity. If we can make extensions, embellishments, accent lighting and quick copy changes faster and more affordable, advertisers like Morgan will use them all the time instead of once in a while. We need to get comfortable saying, “Yes, and here’s how we do it for a lot less.”

Part 3 covers the other half of the keynote, the part that had nothing to do with billboards. I’d argue it was the more valuable half.

Rod Rackley is Chairman of Circle Graphics and Chairman of the OAAA Suppliers Council, and represents suppliers on the OAAA Board. He started his OOH career at Lamar, joined Circle Graphics near its founding, and later founded Anthem Displays, a digital display company. Along the way he has had a hand in producing as many billboard faces, static and digital, as almost anyone in the business. He wrote The Creative Multiplier, the first paper in OAAA’s Supplier Insights series, and lives in Boulder, Colorado. Circle Graphics prints billboards for Morgan & Morgan campaigns; Morgan & Morgan did not sponsor or pay for this series.