By Wes Frick, Wes Frick Design Agency
#1. Shareability, Emotional Reaction, & Shock Value
People aren’t interested in reading advertisements. They want to be entertained, and you have to force drivers to look. Iconic billboards have the necessary shock value to get shared, talked about, and referenced. Those actions are critical in creating an effective billboard campaign. Powerful billboards also overshadow weak billboards on the same road, and can stand next to anything and be noticed. In order to test shareability, you can test your creative by showing it to multiple people, and look at the feedback you get. If everyone seems to be laughing or enjoying it, it’s the one to use. Once it’s right, it’s right.
#2. Design Billboards From A Distance
If your billboards don’t work from a far distance, your billboard campaign likely isn’t going to work overall, because you’ll reach less drivers. Every driver on the road is important. We create for them, and what they’re seeing. Billboards need to be able to read it from 300-500 feet away, within 3 seconds, allowing drivers to safely travel and connect with the brand. Designing it from a distance focuses on the most important elements. Once you’re happy, you can go in and clean up the details closeup later.
#3. Closeup Images Work Best
When you design billboards, the best type of image is one that shows a lot of detail of a closeup part that makes the product make sense, such as the flame of a candle instead of the whole candle. You can sell the feeling this way. Instead of showing a pencil, show the very tip of the pencil, or the eraser of the pencil.
#4. Use Individual Headshots, Not Group Photos
Individual headshots work much better on billboards, because you have the most control over placement, allowing for details to be displayed much better. Group photos tend to look really cluttered, and offer a lot less control. Individual headshots allow the campaign to be resized much more effectively, especially from bulletin, to poster, to transit.
#5. Awareness. Authority. Visibility.
The out of home advertising industry is in business because of the awareness, authority, and visibility that our platforms offer. It’s not about immediate direct sales, it’s about building local relationships with heavily impactful, strong creative on every placement that directs local traffic to websites, storefronts, and events. It is highly critical to understand the benefits of out of home, and to focus your creative on making the target audiences aware of the main benefits that they could actually use, while building trust & authority enough for that person to go in and use them.
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