Billboard Insider’s note: Independent operators in smaller markets don’t have unlimited creative budgets. That’s this billboard campaign by Durden Outdoor deserves attention. Sometimes smarts can substitute for money. Kudos to Bill Durden and Out of Home Creative’s Melody Roberts.
By “Dolla” Bill Durden, VP and Creative Director, Durden Outdoor
Damn I love billboards!!!! But more specifically…..I love executing a killer idea on a billboard. The #FamousMakers at Durden Outdoor have been privileged to work with many great clients over our 54 years in business. However, it’s the clients who want to push the creative pedal that really get our engine to purrrrrrr. Since we are located in a small metro area (110th largest in the US), let’s just say our local clients don’t have huge production budgets for outdoor. So to pull off some of the crazy billboard installations that our team has done in the past, we gotta do it country boy style (aka: cheap) Our FAMOUS MAK’N story today is with our friends at Hyundai of Dothan in Alabama. This client had seen us pull off a highly effective billboard campaign for a wound care doctor featuring an amazing eye catching 14′ gangrenous foot with a headline “Before You Amputate Call Dr. Duke”. This static and digital campaign caught the attention of our entire town causing a great local social media stir.
What messaging do car dealers run in a post COVID time when demand is high and inventory is sparse? Hyundai of Dothan’s marketing team came to us wanting a creative way to push their new “LIFETIME WARRANTY” with a Zombie Apocalypse theme. So our in-house team developed the headline “Our Lifetime Warranties will outlast a zombie apocalypse”. Then we worked with Melody Roberts to create these three creepy head turning visuals pictured below. As a final BITE in this creative, we felt that the eyes of the zombies needed to glow to capture maximum attention to these boards. At scale, the size of the zombie’s eyes were fairly small around 4″ in diameter. So the dilemma then came how do we find a green led light that is only 4″ in diameter that has enough brightness to be seen on a billboard in a price that we can afford.
A quick scroll thru Amazon and we found some green LED lights made to mount on an ATV to see at night while hunting. At $26 a pair we were highly skeptical that these lights would be waterproof, much less bright enough to see at night. WHOA were we blown away at the punch these inexpensive lights even during the day time!!! We tied the lights directly into the breaker at the ground so they would be lit 24 hours a day.
Once it all visually came together we then concepted the idea to light up the zombie’s eyes on two of the 3 layouts for the final touch of this campaign. A quick search on AMAZON landed us on a page with some green round led lights made to go on a Jeep or ATV. To our surprise these lights were a whopping $20.03 plus shipping. My first thoughts were that they were going to be cheap & last for 3-4 weeks and the fact that they were only 4″ wide would they even throw off enough light to even see at night? (which fit the scale size of the zombie eyes perfectly).
Point of this story is that there are two ways to solve any problem…..with money…..or creativity.
