Earlier this week Insider ran a post discussing the risks of running personal ads on digital billboards.  Today Chris Cowlbeck makes case for personal ads:

By Chris Cowlbeck, General Manager Look Billboards and General Manager, IBOUSA

We at IBO HQ recently saw a few stories about personal ads and wanted to offer up some different perspectives. We have been training people for several years now on workflow to streamline operations to maximize efficiency and during this process have learned a lot about how different companies approach digital sales strategies. Because of these stories and the tons of related material that is out in cyber sphere, we have begun the IBO Digital Kickstarter training program. While this article fits well down the list of topics to master, it’ll be the first of many to help both the sage and sprouting companies in the space. 

First off, yes putting up personal ads can be risky, but so can many other copy types. Political comes to mind, then cannabis, followed adult content, alcohol, etc. The bottom line is that this can be managed easily and dropped faster than a posted vinyl if needed. I feel the worth of the following far outweighs the risk, hopefully you can at least understand the possibilities and view this area in a positive light. I’ll share my personal experiences from a decade of selling in a rural trade market, Ardmore OK, thriving at 25k population at night and maybe 50k during the day. 

We overbuilt digital here on purpose for a number of valid business reasons and always have availability (a whole other story). Great for political, events, public service and a general “good guy” feel to help the community we’d been in for now 50 years in other businesses. Of course there’s only so much self promo that will be accretive so other needs must be filled.  Enter the world of short term local ads, some lump into personal ads which I think fits more nicely into the subject line. 

We offer a variety of birthday, anniversary, congratulations, condolence, recovery and event ads. We don’t really look at these as huge profit centers, rather than cheap advertising for a service we sell that works!  We actually have self promos out that push these creatives, many of which we borrow from others in the IBO group and with whom we freely exchange and share. Some bring in $100 for 3 days on all boards up to $200 for a week for events. Do one or two of these a week and the numbers are not chump change. That’s the dollars n sense angle, but really the minimal point of view.  

The real worth is getting feedback from the locals of seeing the 40th high school reunion, the preacher’s wife’s birthday or that good ole Joe passed away. There’s the sweet 16s, Aunt Jane just hit a hundred and ole doc is on his way to recovery (see ad). 

But one of the best ones to illustrate community impact was the day a fellow came in with a picture of his “girlfriend”. Twas indeed a test of the risk factor, especially where we are located in southern Oklahoma’s Bible Belt. I asked him are you sure she’s ok with this and a firm yes with a smile. Wink, she’s my wife. I then passed it by the now 85 year old lady who works for me in the mornings the get the “Norma” seal of approval. “Yep, she’s a beauty” and off to press we went. 

The ad did caught lots of eyes, so many in fact that after three days, this service manager of a local car dealer said. “I’ve had over 30 calls and comments about my wife’s birthday ad that I want a year deal for the service center.”  They were up for two years @ $500 a month.

Billboards work, short term local ads work, you do the math, no matter how critical of the creative you can get.  The folks love them.

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