Rate This Board allows a billboard designer to rate a billboard ad using the following scale: 1 (not good), 2 (below average), 3 (average), 4 (very good), 5 (great).  Then the designer recommends how to improve the ad.  This week’s rating is provided by Melody Roberts, an OBIE nominated billboard designer and founder of Out of Home Creative, an outdoor advertising design firm specializing in out of home design for businesses, agencies, media buyers and out of home companies. Melody has been in the outdoor industry since 1999. Insider uses and endorses her services.

American Coach Limousine

Rating 1 (not good)

Please Note: For all ratings, I don’t know if a client insisted on certain elements or how much experience the designer had with out of home advertising. My recommendations requested by Billboard Insider are solely based on how I would have approached the creative design.

• The color scheme works for OOH, and the price promotion is easy to read. However, other than that the advertisement is cluttered and not appropriately arranged making it difficult to pinpoint where I am supposed to look first. I am viewing it 2 feet away from my computer so imagine a motorist trying to read this from more than 200 feet away which is close to the image of the approach shot. The other obstacle; the board is behind shrubs and off to the side.

• Stacking “Flat Rates… “, makes it harder to read. I would have made it a disclaimer size and placed it above the number. I believe there is a drop shadow behind everything (?), I would not have added this treatment or the lines above/below the website. Anything you can edit for a better read is going to benefit the advertiser.

• The direction I would have taken (and maybe they did, but it was not approved) would have been more conceptual. I would have used a background against the limo which invoked the feeling of luxury. If an extension had been an option, the price could have moved up providing more space for the limo to be the majority of the board. Finally, I would have used either the website OR the vanity number, not both because they both state what the business is and how to get in contact with them.

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