Billboard Mistakes

I love billboards when they are used right.

But when they look like a dog's breakfast two questions come to mind.

Who is proofing these boards and who trained the sales rep selling?

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you are going to use billboards.

1.  Keep the message brief.
2.  Your billboard should be part of your overall campaign and not your campaign.
3.  And your boards have to be designed to be read from street level.

I took this picture from my car parked.  It's the top board.

What do you see?

So I parked a little closer.  And this is what you would see driving by.

This is a picture from the parking lot behind the business where the board is.

Its challenging to read even from here never mind travelling the speed limit from the opposite side of the street.

The expression , "showed up and threw up" comes to mind.

This is to busy and the colors make it difficult to focus on the 5 messages on the board.

I would have used a white background, the Lantern picture and website.

Here is another example of the above expression.

This isn't in my car but me standing on the sidewalk trying to make out the board on the left.

Me standing on the sidewalk but zooming in with my phone.

The headline is "Innovators never stop learning."

Underneath it says, "And they are enrolling in Canada's most innovative adult learning programs."

Register, website and something I can't read because of the fixture and then the University of Manitoba logo.

Oh and someone decided to put a picture of lady which I would likely guess is a stock photo they bought and means nothing to the ad.

Why not stack the message.

Headline.
Web address.
Logo.

Lots of white space and the billboard company expertise selects the font so it can be read from street level.

Billboards are a terrific medium used properly.

Remember very few words, one call to action and don't be afraid of white space.