I love billboards. It’s the huge format that captivates me. They’re like giant canvasses placed in the city or at the side of a busy road that scream ‘look at me!’ but only for a few seconds otherwise you may walk into a lamppost or drive into the back of someone else’s car.

Over the years I’ve seen some stunning billboards that have had me turning green with envy. The best ones are those that have words and pictures that work together in such a clever way that they catch the viewer’s attention, communicate quickly, and stay with them for a few miles down the road… and ultimately stick in the back of their mind for a lot longer.

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I consider myself to be pretty lucky. My parents have a home in the South of France that I get to visit at least once every summer. I get to chill in the sun reading a good book, drink lots of local wine and sample the great cuisine. I call it my rehab time.

It takes less than 2 hours for me to get to my parents’ place. Cheap air fares and easy access to flights has made the world feel very small indeed. Yet it always amazes me just how different everything feels when I get there. Not least in terms of the advertising. Read more…

Have you ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four? It’s about an everyman living under an oppressive totalitarian regime. The ‘proles’ are kept in a controlled state of poverty, living under almost constant surveillance and being ‘educated’ on a daily basis to believe in the inherent good of their government and the inherent evil of others. All in all, it’s a terrifying fiction. Well, if you can call it that. In fact, the regime in the novel closely resembles many real-life regimes of the twentieth century. And, much like the citizens of George Orwell’s dystopian world, the billions of human beings living under these govenments were mostly genuine and wholehearted believers. Their corrupt leaders successfully brainwashed  them into thinking they were living the good life, even while terrible things (war, poverty, oppression) happened all around them. There’s no denying it’s an impressive feat. Yet you can’t help but wonder: how on earth did they do it?

Consider Adolf Hitler for a second. Just how did a small man with a silly moustache convince a nation of perfectly ordinary people to revere his Nationalsozialist Party, to give erstwhile chums up to concentration camps and to greet the promise of aggressive war with arms wide open?

Through manipulative, powerful advertising campaigns – that’s how. He may have been a cold-hearted, hate-filled Nazi git, but Hitler was an undisputed master of propaganda.

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An Amber Alert in action

At the end of October 2008 I found myself with quite a few hours to spare as I waited in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport for a connecting flight. Having never been to Chicago, I hopped on a train that was heading for the city. On the journey I stared out the window and among the many sites I saw was a billboard displaying what is known as an AMBER Alert™.

The AMBER Alert Program is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases. The goal of an AMBER Alert™ is to instantly galvanize the entire community to assist in the search for and the safe recovery of a child.

This creative use of a billboard got me thinking about how the Billboard medium is evolving, and how with the help of technology, the Billboard is becoming an effective Direct Response channel. Here are a few examples of how technology is breathing new life into the Billboard:

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