Many families have Legos spilling out from their children’s playroom into the family room, kitchen and beyond. Entire childhoods have been built on these tiny plastic bricks. And now they have invaded the outdoor space, in the form of billboards, bus stop signs and street art like the one above. Eye-Grabbing Icons The characters at […]
Have you ever heard of trompe l’oeil? It’s French for “deceive the eye” and according to Wikipedia ‘is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions.’ The technique has been used in advertising for quite some time now; billboards that utilize this technique catch […]
Did you know that the some of the first examples of roadside advertising–the first billboards—were circus posters? The Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus large-format poster (shown above) was more than 50 square feet in size. It called children and adults to see the lions and tigers and clowns at the circus in 1835. The First […]
What if you can use the environment around your billboard as a part of the concept of the billboard itself? Well, that’s just what happened in India. A billboard for Berger paints makes clever use of the changing colors of the sky to show off the color and natural finish of the company’s new line. […]
Billboard Shocks Drivers in Austria Marketers expect consumers to swallow a lot with some of their ads. This billboard in Austria does too, literally. Drivers follow the road that looks like it heads directly into a woman’s mouth. The company is Oldtimer, a chain of highway cafes in Austria that advertises an all-you-can-eat menu. […]
The Billboard That Asks: Are You Brainy? This billboard in Britain has a light bulb that lights up when a pedestrian walks under it. The idea is that the person is smart enough to read The Economist, a leading, deep-thinker’s newspaper. The billboard appeals to people because it is active, and interactive, drawing them into […]
Dieting resonates among every age group from teen on up, every economic bracket, male and female. This Chattanooga, Tennessee billboard for Silberman’s Fitness Center sends a message loud and clear—time to get fit. Easy to Understand The minimalist presentation is easy to read by people passing by. The guy with the big paunch tilts the […]
This Minneapolis billboard for QuitPlan is not subtle, using as it does a 30’ high cigarette getting extinguished in a huge ashtray alongside the freeway. All it needed as text was the company name, QuitPlan, a group that helps smokers kick the habit. Potential Buyers The road where it was installed had a variety of […]
If you somehow happened to find yourself stuck on top of a billboard, do you think commuters would call the police on your behalf? Most likely! How do we know this? Because some ingenious marketers decided to find out what would happen if you gave people the impression that there was someone sitting on a […]
An automobile that can jump a bridge is one smart car. And indeed, the car featured on a billboard on a bridge in Rotterdam, Netherlands is the Brabus Ultimate – a mini sports car manufactured by Smart Automobile in 2007. This tiny vehicle is an unlikely candidate for a sports car, so the company wanted to […]