Insider enjoys printing articles by readers.  Here’s a post from Jena Powell, VP Sales and Marketing,  Huntington Outdoor and a candidate for the Ohio State House of Representatives. 

By Jena Powell, Huntington Outdoor.

When you’re in the billboard industry it’s easy to become localized. We work every day with road names, maps, and locations within a certain geographic. We often times drive the same roads day after day and forget about the world around us. We’re hyper-focused on our market, our clients, and our competition.

I’ve seen the pitfall from other companies when they do this. The ads become generic, they aren’t innovative, nor do they ever think outside the box.

Billboard advertising is one of the oldest forms of marketing, but old doesn’t have to mean boring and lacking creativity.

We are one of the most trusted forms of advertising, and with that, we should also be trusted to have our “A” game on at all times. We should be scoring the most points in creativity, service, and innovation. How does a company stay creative when the product so often feels the same? You travel, you see the world, you visit new places, you take in new air.

So that is what I did.

Since billboard advertising is an old form of advertising I thought the best place to spark my imagination would be an old city itself. So I grabbed a flight to Europe and traveled around France, Spain, and Rome.

I toured the Louvre, ate pastries, and explored the city. While wandering the city, our eyes glazed with the newness of it all, I also came upon familiar sites. Billboards. Billboards everywhere. They showcased the old and the new. The oldest buildings to tour and the newest of technology to buy.

Whether you look in your hometown or travel across the world, billboards are everywhere. Each year the market for billboards grow. Our industry is projected to grow 3%-4% per year, for the next five years.

As an industry, we can grow and we can expand. Let’s just make sure while doing so we continue innovating, imaging, and thinking outside the box.

Sometimes to do so, we need to step outside our normal routine, walk the streets of Paris, and wonder upon a city of light … and billboards.

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