Chapter 8

Signing On to Outdoor Advertising

In This Chapter

Creating successful signs for your business

Designing posters and billboards that make a large impression

Opting for portable advertising with T-shirts, shopping bags, and more

Embracing the power of flags, banners, and awnings

Using transit advertising to your advantage

Signs are one of the most important, but least noticed, forms of marketing communication. Although signs used to be a narrow category, today you have a broad range of options. For example, you can supplement the simple professional sign plate beside your door with digital billboards beside the highway, banners and tote bags with your message, subway and airport posters, T-shirts with your brand on them, and a great deal more. Any way to get your message out in a public place is valuable to your marketing program and may produce added sales. This chapter looks at the different ways you can use signs in your organization’s marketing.

Whenever you review your marketing program, stop to do an inventory of your signs, posters, T-shirts, and other outdoor ads. How many do you have displayed? Are they visible? Are they clear and appealing? Are they clean and in good repair? Can you find an easy way to increase the number and impact of these signs? When you need to make your brand identity and marketing messages visible, you can never do too much. Although potential customers may see an ad you’ve placed in their favorite magazine once or twice, they’re likely to walk or drive by a sign over and over, making that sign a great way to get the message to them regularly.

Heading Back to Basics: The Essential Sign

Signs are all over — if you’re in an office right now, step to the nearest window, and you can probably see a handful with ease. Signs are also undeniably important. Even if they serve only to locate a store or office, they do a job that marketers need done. If your customers can’t find you, you’re out of business. And in many cases, signs also provide daily exposure to the brand name, helping to boost awareness and recognition. But most marketing reference books don’t bother to cover signs. So why do marketers — or at least those marketing experts who write the books — tend to ignore signs?

No national or international set of standards for signs exists. Nor can you find a major association that promotes standards and champions best practices. When evaluating signs, I can’t easily send you to the experts like I can with radio, TV, print, or other outdoor media. You’ll probably end up working with a local sign manufacturer, which means you and your designer will have to specify size, materials, copy, and art. You need to take charge of the design and placement of your signs, because no one else seems to know or care how to do it well. The next sections show you how.

Knowing what your sign can do

Signs have a limited ability to accomplish marketing goals — but perhaps not as limited as you may think. You can use signs to help people find you, starting with a sign near the freeway exit and ending with signs marking the entrance to your store or parking lot.

Numerous businesses make finding themselves difficult. Case in point: My office in Amherst, Massachusetts, is near the main campus for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the biggest college in the state and home to a top business school. Why do thousands of visitors a year have to pull over in downtown Amherst and ask for directions to the campus? Well, no signs downtown point the way. Hmm. Maybe I should send a copy of this book to the president of the university with a bookmark stuck in this page.

Aside from their practical value (letting people know where you are), signs can and should promote your image and brand name. An attractive sign on your building or vehicle can spread the good word about your business or brand to all who pass by. Don’t miss this brilliant opportunity to put your best foot forward in public every day — and night, if the sign is lit or in an indoor public space such as a mall or subway station.

Don’t forget to maintain your signs! About a third of all commercial signs are in poor condition. Signs sit out in the weather, and when they fade, peel, or start to fall over, they give negative advertising for your business. Don’t let your sign give the public the impression that you’re going out of business. Maintain and refresh your signs at least four times a year.

Finding reputable sign producers

The best, most effective signs usually aren’t do-it-yourself jobs. Take the time to seek out a reputable sign maker to ensure you spend your money wisely. Following are some suggestions for tracking down an expert who can produce your sign:

Consult your local or regional business telephone listings when you need to have a sign made. You should find several options.

Ask friends, family, and business associates for personal references. They may have had good experiences with certain sign makers.

Consider modern copy shops. Copy shops increasingly provide cheap, high-tech solutions for smaller or temporary signs. (In the United States, FedExOffice and FASTSIGNS stores are helpful.)

Have your sign designed and painted by an artist. Most signs have little real art about them, so when a business hires an artist to carve its name and logo into a big piece of mahogany, the result is something truly special!

Unusual and beautiful signs tell the world that your company is special, too. In fact, a really special sign that’s well displayed in a high-traffic area has more power to build an image or pull in prospects than any other form of local advertising.

Writing good signs

As a marketer, you need to master the strange art of writing for signs. Too often, the language marketers use on signs is ambiguous or overly wordy. The following sections can keep you from falling into those traps.

All across the United States are millions of street signs that say Ped Xing. Who writes a sign using two made-up words? Only someone who wants to force the viewer to decipher his code. Ever notice that cars don’t stop for people crossing? Why should they? The sign doesn’t actually tell them what to do (lacks a call to action), doesn’t give drivers a good reason to stop (lacks a benefit or cost), and doesn’t even use any words they know (lacks clarity). In marketing, you can’t get away with such bad writing. To make the meaning crystal clear, a marketer can use something like: “Always STOP for People in Crosswalk” or “Let people cross the road safely.” Adding a smaller-print reminder of the fine for not stopping may add even more power to this clear call to action. If this wording requires a slightly bigger sign to be readable, then use a bigger sign! The sign’s design must fit the message, not the other way around.

Before you approve any sign design, review the copy to make sure the writing provides a model of clarity. Try misinterpreting the wording. Can you read the sign in a way that makes it seem to mean something you don’t intend to say? Also, try thinking of questions the sign doesn’t answer that seem obvious to you — remember that the consumer may not know the answers. For example, some people have a terrible sense of direction, so a sign on the side of a store leaves them confused about how to enter that store. The solution? Put an arrow and the instructions “Enter from Front” on the sign!

Designing an informational sign

Marketers design some signs to convey substantial information — directions, for example, or details of a store’s merchandise mix. Informational signs are often either too brief or too lengthy. To craft the most effective sign possible, divide the copy and design into two sections, each with a separate purpose:

Have a header. The first section is like the header in a print ad (see Chapter 7). You design it to catch attention from afar and draw people to the sign. Be brief and use large, catchy type. (Often the header is simply the name of the business, but if not, include the name and logo elsewhere on the sign.)

Communicate essential information. The second section of the sign needs to communicate the essential information accurately and in full. If the first section does its job, viewers may go right up to the sign to read the informational part, so you may not need to make that type as large and catchy. The consumer should be able to easily read and interpret the wording and type though. This section also needs to answer all likely questions.

Most signs don’t have both a distinct header and essential info; therefore, they fail to accomplish either purpose very well. They neither draw people very strongly nor inform them fully. Unfortunately, most sign makers have a strong urge to make all the copy the same size. When pressed, the sign makers sometimes make the header twice as big as the rest of the copy. But going further than that seems to upset them. Well, to get a good sign, you may have to upset some people. As in many aspects of marketing, if you want above-average performance, you may have to swim against the current.

Getting creative to make your sign stand out

The average downtown street in the average city has more than 500 signs per block. Try walking such a block and then listing all the signs you remember seeing. One or two may stand out, but most go unseen. To avoid having your sign be lost in this sea of similar signs, you need to make yours stand out.

Signs permit innovation in two interesting areas. You can innovate in the copy and artwork, just as you can in any print medium. You can also innovate in the form of the sign itself. Experiment with materials, shapes, lighting (revolving or variable lighting is rare but amazingly eye-caching), location, and other creative ways of displaying signs. Remember: Signs should be creative and impressive!

Here are some of the many variations in form that you can take advantage of when designing a creative sign:

Hand-painted (personal look and feel)

Wood (traditional look; routing or hand carving enhances the appeal)

Metal (durable and accurate screening of art and copy, but not very pretty)

Window lettering (hand-painted or with vinyl letters/graphics)

Lighted boxes (in which lettering is back-lit; highly visible at night)

Neon signs (real wow-factor here)

Magnetic signs (for your vehicles)

Electronic displays or digital signs (also known as electronic message repeaters; movement and longer messages, plus a high-tech feel; often these displays take the form of LED signs that make it relatively inexpensive to change your message at will)

Small screen- or laser-printed boards with metal brackets for standing in lawns near roads (an inexpensive short-term option for promoting an event)

Flat-panel TV screens (with shifting sign content and images or video)

If you want to quickly and easily place large lettering on a wall (perhaps the lobby of your office building?), you can contact firms such as Words Anywhere (wordsanywhere.com), one of many suppliers of custom vinyl letters. Figure a cost of around a dollar per letter for foot-high letters, and you won’t be too far off in your budgeting. This fairly new medium is a great way to get a message posted quickly and at modest cost.

Each of the options presented in this section requires a different source or supplier, so you need to do some homework after you decide to explore a particular sign design. But have faith that you can find good commercial sources for any and all types of signs.

Researching the regulatory constraints before posting a sign

Many towns and cities regulate the display of signs in public places (you can usually get a list of the restrictions from local zoning boards). And if you rent retail or office space, your landlord may also have put some restrictions (or a right of review) into your lease. Research these possible constraints before spending money on design and construction of signs, and run a sketch or plan by the relevant authorities before you invest in having a sign made.

Going Big: Posters and Billboards

Posters and billboards are two of the most popular ways people use signs in their marketing. These two methods are popular because you can view them from a distance and they can be displayed in public places where traffic is high. However, large posters on billboards, bus kiosks, and other such public spaces offer a difficult design challenge because they need to be readable from far away. The next sections give you some important pointers to ensure that if you decide to include posters and billboards in your marketing, you do so successfully.

Deciding on formats for outdoor ads

You have several choices regarding the size of your outdoor ad and its distance from the average viewer:

30-sheet poster: A standard 30-sheet poster (a billboard-sized ad) measures 21 feet 7 inches wide by 9 feet 7 inches high in the United States. (With the advent of modern printing, they don’t have to use 30 separate sheets anymore.)

Bulletin: A bulletin is a huge version of the poster that usually measures 48 feet wide by 14 feet high (these ads may be 10 x 30 feet or 10.6 x 30 feet in places). You can extend bulletins with extra panels on the bottom, sides, or top (see Figure 8-1 for details). A bulletin is four times as big as a 30-sheet poster, giving it incredible impact close-up. Bulletins also make the text readable from a greater distance, so they work well along high-speed roads where the viewer isn’t near your ad for long enough to read anything requiring close attention.

8-sheet poster: Also referred to as a junior poster, a standard 11-x-5-foot 8-sheet poster is perfect for sidewalk-level viewing. This poster is about a sixth the size of the standard 30-sheet poster. But when you place an 8-sheet poster closer to viewers than a standard-sized poster can be, it’s sometimes even more effective than the bigger formats. Advertisers seem to think so anyway; the format is very popular with them.

Spectacular: If you really want to make an impression, you can choose something oversized (and not standard). In other words, you can use a huge spectacular, a custom-made, often building-sized display such as the ads that grace Times Square in New York City. These massive ads cost a bundle, and you should generally treat them as long-term, image-building investments. Few rules apply to spectaculars — aside from the rules of gravity and engineering — so you can have some fun with this unusual form of outdoor advertising.

Figure 8-1 shows the proportions and relative sizes of the standard outdoor ad formats. Note: Spectaculars don’t have standard sizes, so they don’t appear in this figure.

Figure 8-1: Three standard sizes for outdoor advertising in the United States.

You can also explore the growing number of variations on these standards. Want your message displayed on the floor of a building lobby, on a kiosk at a mall, or alongside the notice boards at health and fitness centers? Or how about on signs surrounding the arenas and courts of athletic events? You can use all of these options, and more, by directly contacting the businesses that control such spaces or by using one of a host of ad agencies and media-buying firms that can give you larger-scale access.

Grasping the limitations of outdoor ads

Outdoor or public-space advertising must be kept simple because people view it from a distance and usually in a hurry. The message should be simple enough to grasp in a second; the art and copy must also be simple and clear.

Here’s a useful exercise to help you understand the design requirements for a billboard. Draw a rectangular box on a sheet of blank paper, using a ruler as your guide. Make the box 1/4 inches wide and 1 inch high. That’s the proportion of a standard outdoor poster (a large, printed advertisement posted on a signboard or building). Although an actual poster is much larger, from a distance it may look as small as the box on your sheet (see Figure 8-2). Now hold your paper (or Figure 8-2) at arm’s length and think about what copy and artwork can fit in this space, while remaining readable to passersby at this distance. Not much, right? Be careful to limit your message to a few bold words and images — otherwise your poster becomes a mess that no one can read. Perhaps you’ve driven behind a car with a bumper sticker you couldn’t read. It’s frustrating, but nowhere near as costly a design mistake as when a billboard is hard to decipher. Be simple, bold, and clear!

Maximizing the returns on outdoor advertising

The costs of outdoor advertising vary widely. In the United States, billboards typically range between $1,000 and $5,000 per month, depending on the quality and quantity of traffic. (The new digital billboards cost a little more but offer the advantage of lower production and setup costs.) When you get down to it, you want to make sure you’re getting your marketing money’s worth out of this investment. The following sections help you do just that.

Making cost-effective billboard buys

Given the high traffic rates on many expressways, you can get a pretty good buy for a billboard on a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis. For example, a bulletin in Denver, Colorado, delivers about 34,100 exposures, which is a multiple of the reach (number of viewers) times the frequency (how many times viewers see your ad). The frequency for a roadside sign generally ranges from 15 to 30 times per month, according to surveys. The Denver example has a price of $3,815 ÷ 34,100, or $0.11 per thousand exposures. Although prices vary — and I picked a moderately priced billboard to illustrate my point — outdoor advertising often does give you cheap exposure on a CPM basis.

The average U.S. 30-sheet poster reaches adults 18 years and older at a CPM of $1.50 per thousand impressions. Although that’s a far higher number than my quick estimate for that Denver billboard, it’s still far cheaper than most other media. (Radio costs about twice that figure; TV and print ads cost at least three times as much.)

Of course, the CPM figures I’m providing here give you only the beginning point for cost estimates. Be sure to factor in your estimate of the percent of exposures that reach your target market, which may be small given the numbers of people the ad can potentially reach (in which case, the divisor in that CPM equation goes down, and the price goes up). For example, the average CPM for reaching women aged 25 to 49 with a 30-sheet poster is about $7 — more than four times as costly as when you don’t care what sort of adults see your poster.

Boosting your reexamination rates

Always consider the likelihood that your billboard exposures lose value after commuters have seen your billboard many days in a row. Do you get the same effect from the 30th viewing of a billboard as you do from the first half-dozen? Will anyone even bother to look at the same billboard multiple times? Maybe not. In outdoor advertising, marketers talk about reexamination rates — the average number of times viewers bother to read the same outdoor ad.

Figure 8-2: From a distance, a large roadside poster looks no bigger than this image.

The best billboards have higher reexamination rates because people find them interesting enough to look at again and again. If your ad is clear, easy to read, and attractive or amusing, its reexamination rate will be higher. Keep this goal in mind as you design any billboard (or any banner, sign, or poster for that matter).

Blanketing the area with a 100 showing

In most urban markets, you can readily purchase enough outdoor advertising to (theoretically, at least) cover the entire market. The out-of-home advertising industry calls this practice a 100 showing, meaning you have enough billboards at viable locations to supposedly expose 100 percent of the people in that market to your message. (Similarly, a 50 showing gives you a maximum of 50-percent coverage.)

If you’re looking to introduce a product with a broad target market, such as a new Internet service or a new soft drink, then a 100 showing is a good goal. Search for an agency that handles outdoor advertising in your target city or cities and ask it for a proposal that includes 100-percent coverage. However, if you’re targeting a more narrow market, such as business managers, then don’t worry about percentages. Instead, ask for placement where you can expect the largest concentrations of your target market, such as along a major commuter route.

Taking advantage of location to buy smaller, cheaper bulletins

As in print advertising (see Chapter 7), the costs of billboards vary based on both ad size and audience size. A bulletin costs about four times as much as the standard poster ad — reflecting the fact that a bulletin is about four times as big as a poster. A junior poster (which is about a sixth the size of a standard poster) costs roughly a quarter of a poster ad.

Not all outdoor advertising is equal. Location makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of your ad. A smart shopper can find good locations that give a bigger bang for the buck than the average outdoor ad space. If you or your media buyer care enough to shop around (and possibly wait your turn) for locations with low-speed traffic, you can get a billboard that a higher percentage of passersby read more slowly and carefully.

Putting Your Name on Portable Items

A broad definition of a sign may include any public display of your brand or marketing message. Your message can appear on quite a few items people carry around with them or even wear. To me, these messages are just as legitimate as a message on a signboard. And they’re often a lot easier and cheaper to make. The following sections share simple, small-scale ways to get your message across, including T-shirts and bags.

Trying your hand at T-shirts

Your customers may think of a nice T-shirt as a gift for them, but you know the truth: That T-shirt is a body billboard! It’s amazing how many people are willing to go around with your advertising messages on their clothes (or even on their bodies — temporary tattoos are also a marketing option). Don’t overlook this concept as a form of outdoor advertising. In fact, use it as much as you can. People happily display marketing messages if they like them.

You can easily implement this quality premium strategy by looking for good-quality T-shirts made of good-quality fabric and by having a real designer create your compelling, fresh design. (A cool design on your T-shirt is practically guaranteed to get your target audience to want the shirt.) Make sure you use an experienced, quality-conscious silk-screener to put that fine design on those good T-shirts.

To find companies that provide customized T-shirts, try your local Yellow Pages or Web directories for listings of silk-screening shops near you. (Although silk-screening shops screen onto many different materials and products, directories generally list these shops under the T-shirts heading.)

Getting slapped on with bumper stickers

Don’t overlook bumper stickers and car-window stickers. If you make your stickers clever or unique enough, people eagerly seek them out so they can deface their nice new cars with them. Don’t ask me why. But because people do, and because the cost of producing bumper stickers is very low, why not come up with an appealing design and make stickers available as giveaways on store counters or as bill stuffers?

Commercial or brand-oriented bumper stickers are used by people who think the brand is so cool that it enhances the car — a hard thing to achieve. An alternative is to keep your brand identity small and star an appealing message instead. A clever joke, an inspiring quote, or something similar is appealing enough to get your message displayed.

You can even include a nice bumper sticker in a direct-mail piece, where that sticker can do double duty — acting as an incentive to get people to retain and read the mailing and giving you cheap outdoor advertising when they display the sticker on their vehicles. (Contact local print shops, sign makers, or T-shirt silk-screeners; any of these businesses can produce bumper stickers.)

Putting your name on bags

Department stores believe in the importance of shopping bags as an advertising medium. But many other businesses fail to take advantage of the fact that shoppers carry bags around shopping malls, sidewalks, subways, trains, and buses — giving messages on those bags high exposure.

To use bags effectively, you need to make them far easier to read and far more interesting than the average brown paper or white plastic shopping bag. You should also favor designs with comfortable carrying handles, even though these cost two or three times as much. Why? Because if you do, people will carry the bags at their sides where they’re easy to read instead of hugging them to their chests or stowing them in someone else’s bag that has better handles.

A modern take is to order high-quality reusable shopping bags with your name and logo, plus attractive artwork or a message about green shopping, and give them to your customers. Reusable bags bring your message out shopping, not only in your store but in many others, time after time.

You’re not just designing a bag — you’re designing a form of outdoor advertising. So apply the same design principles. Come up with a hook (a striking image or attention-getting word or phrase that gets everyone looking at that bag) and try alternative colors or shapes. (By the way, most bag suppliers can customize their bags; check with suppliers in your local area. If no suppliers around you can, contact printers and silk-screeners. They can always handle bag orders for you, too.)

Staying dry (or shaded) with umbrellas

Similarly, umbrellas (available from premium companies; see Chapter 11 for more on premiums) can broadcast your logo, name, and a short slogan or headline — although only in especially wet or overly sunny weather. The advantage of putting your logo on a high-quality umbrella is that people are likely to keep and use the umbrella for a long time. Plus, umbrellas are a lot more businesslike than T-shirts, so they make good gifts when formality is called for. (A bank could offer a free umbrella to each person who adds a new account, for example.)

If it rains in your region, consider offering custom golf umbrellas as a particularly striking and durable premium item.

Taking Your Message to the Streets

What better way to get your message to your prospective customers than to place it right in front of them as they walk around and do their daily business? Most marketers don’t take full advantage of the many options for outdoor advertising. The most obvious one — the full-sized billboard beside a busy road — is great if you want to target drivers with a daily message and you have enough sales to justify the cost of giant signs (see the earlier section “Going Big: Posters and Billboards” for more info). But you can also consider other types of messages, including flags, awnings, and mobile signs on vehicles. The next sections take a closer look at these options and more.

Leveraging your vehicle fleet

Everybody likes free advertising, and you can get great free exposures from signs. A magnetic sign on the side of a car or truck, like those you see on the cars of real estate agents, can reach thousands of people a day at minimal cost. You basically have three choices if you want to use your vehicle fleet for signage:

A magnetic sign: This sign is the cheapest and most flexible because it can be moved from vehicle to vehicle, but it doesn’t make as strong an impression as a painted sign on the side of your vehicle.

A painted sign: Airbrush artists are available through body shops and local Web searches to decorate your car with durable painted lettering and images. Review a portfolio (photos of earlier jobs) first to make sure you like the artist’s work. The cost ranges from a few hundred dollars for simple designs to more than a thousand dollars for elaborate images.

A shrink-wrapped sign: Even more impressive, but also more expensive, is a shrink-wrapped sign that decorates most of your vehicle with your brand identity and marketing message. You can blow up a photo, a logo, or any other artwork as big as your vehicle can handle. The art is printed on special plastic sheets that are then shrink-wrapped right to the vehicle for high-quality art that makes a big impact. Although the setup costs are in the low thousands, you can apply the same design to multiple vehicles (such as a fleet of vans), and the cost per added vehicle is far less.

Figure 8-3 shows examples of these three options.

Figure 8-3: Three strong options for vehicle signage.

Flagging down your customers

I have a theory that the first branding by human beings took the form of a flag. Powerful back then, a flag (an outdoor message on canvas or synthetic cloth) is still a simple but strong way to communicate an identity or brand. Think of a flag as a more dynamic kind of sign and try to find ways to use it to build brand awareness, make your location(s) more visible, or get a marketing message displayed in more forms and places than you could otherwise. Also, note that the costs of cloth-based forms of advertising can be surprisingly reasonable.

If you find yourself in a community where you may encounter problems with public acceptance of a large billboard message, try a more low-key, decorative approach by using multiple flags and banners instead. Just know that you need to find lower, nearer locations to display them because they’re smaller than a billboard. Check with a local realty firm to line up building owners willing to fly your flags.

A number of companies specialize in making custom-designed flags and banners. Of course, you see tacky paper banners — often produced by the local photocopy store — hanging in the windows of retail shops on occasion. But I’m not talking about those banners (because they probably don’t help your image). I mean a huge, beautiful, cloth flag flapping in the breeze. Or a bold 3-x-5-foot screen-printed flag suspended like a banner on an office or trade-show wall. Or a nylon table banner that turns the front and sides of a table into space for your marketing message. Or a streetwide banner, suspended from a wire cable, complete with air vents, tie-downs, and even sand pockets to keep the message readable in any weather. Figure 8-4 illustrates the most common standard options and terminology of the flag and banner industry.

Figure 8-4: The typical options for flags and banners.

Flag companies give you all of these options and more. These businesses regularly sew and screen large pieces of fabric, and they can also supply you with cables, poles, and other hardware you need to display flags and banners. In recent years, silk-screening technology and strong synthetic fibers have made flags and banners brighter and more permanent, expanding their uses in marketing.

For superior outdoor performance, order a custom flag or banner printed on nylon. Some forms of nylon are protected from deterioration by the sun, so ask your supplier about that. If you want, you can also specify the method used to put your logo or message on the sign. An appliquéd sign is sewn and looks traditional and elegant from close up, but it may come apart in wind. Silk-screened signs are inexpensive and durable. Dye sublimation is a more expensive way to print on cloth, but it allows you to reproduce a photograph or other detailed piece of artwork, which can be very impressive.

Consider using a flag or banner as a sign for your store or business. So few marketers take advantage of this way to use a banner that it can help you stand out. A flag or banner is less static and dull than the typical metal or wood sign. Cloth moves, and even when it isn’t moving, you know it has the potential for movement — giving the banner a bit of excitement. Also, flags or banners often seem decorative and festive. People associate flags and banners with special events because these decorations are traditionally used in that context rather than for permanent display.

You can find a full line of stock and custom products available from Arista Flag Corporation (www.aristaflag.com). Flags Unlimited, Inc. (www.usflags.com) also offers custom flag production. A number of large-format printers — including DPI (www.dpi-sf.com) and Blue Wave Printing & Display (www.bluewaveprinting.com) — are now promoting high-quality banner and flag production too.

Capturing attention with canopies and awnings

If appropriate for your business, consider using an awning or canopy (most telephone directories list providers under the Awning and Canopy heading). For retailers, awnings and canopies often provide the boldest and most attractive form of roadside sign. Office sites may also find awnings and canopies valuable.

Awnings combine structural value with marketing value by shading the interior; they can even extend the floor space of your store by capturing some of the sidewalk as transition space. An awning can perform all the functions a sign can, and more, and it can do so in a way that’s highly visible but not intrusive. Yards and yards of awnings don’t look as crass and commercial as huge signs because your eye accepts an awning as a structural part of the building. So you get the same amount of advertising as with a big sign — without looking pushy.

Eyeing different alternatives

Although flags and awnings may be the main types of outdoor messages that immediately pop into your mind (see the previous sections), you can also maximize other types of outdoor advertising. Take a look around you to see some of the many creative, and often less expensive, alternatives available, including the following:

Banners in metal stands (which can be placed temporarily at crowded events)

Bicycles pulling small signs through downtown areas

Carpet and rug graphics

Cinema ads

Fuel pump signs and handle markers

Garage-door vinyls

Hubcap ads

Human statues (hired dancers) and pavement artists

Inflatable signs, blimps, and models of your product

Shopping center and kiosk signs

Sports stadium signage

Urinal advertising (perfect for the male audience)

As you walk, ride, and drive around, take note of any such signs that catch your eye and may fit your marketing program. You may be amazed at how many options are available to you. If you can imagine it, you can probably find someone who brokers the option. All of the options presented in this section can probably be found in your city of choice with a short Internet search.

Keeping Your Message on the Move with Transit Advertising

Transit advertising is any advertising in or on public transportation systems. These ads can appear in buses, taxis, commuter trains, and subway systems, along with airport, bus, train, and ferry terminals. Transit advertising delivers high frequency of viewer notices in a short period of time. Public transit vehicles generally travel the same routes over and over, so almost everyone along the route sees an ad multiple times.

Keep this high frequency in mind when designing transit ads — you want to make sure your ad doesn’t become tedious or irritating upon repeated exposures. Avoid cheap humor and overly simplistic gimmicks.

Transit ads work well if you get the people in transit to take an interest in your product, from consumer products to business services. I’ve seen transit ads generate sales leads for local real estate agents and for international consulting firms. Yet few marketers make use of them. Consider being an innovator and trying transit ads, even if your competitors don’t.

Standard options — the ones most easily available through media-buying firms and ad agencies — include shelter panels, bus and taxi exterior signs, and posters and back-lit signs in airports.

In most U.S. cities, shelter panels are 46-x-67-inch posters that appear at bus-stop shelters. (Different standards may apply in other cities.) You can mount them behind a Lucite sheet to minimize the graffiti problem. In many cities, designers have back-lit some of the shelter panels for nighttime display. A one-month showing typically costs anywhere from $500 to $1,500, depending upon the city. You may need as many as 100 to 300 panels to achieve enough exposures to reach a 100-percent showing in a city, depending upon the city’s size (see the earlier “Blanketing the area with a 100 showing” section for more on this tactic).

Bus signs come with well-accepted standards in North America — although some local bus services now offer the option of full-bus painting or shrink-wrapping too. Here are the typical bus sign standards:

Large bus poster: Also called a king-size ad, a large bus poster is a 30-x-144-inch poster in a frame mounted on the side of the bus. This poster can be displayed on the street side or curb side (in the United States, the street side is generally the right-hand side).

Medium bus poster: Sometimes called a queen-size ad, a medium bus poster is a 30-x-88-inch poster that’s especially suited for the curb side of a bus. If you want to make sure bus passengers and other pedestrians on the route see your poster, then the curb side is for you.

Small bus poster: Also referred to as a traveling display, a small bus poster is a 21-x-44-inch poster on the side of a bus. If you have a simple message and a tight budget, this format may be big enough to give you the visibility you need.

Front and rear bus displays: These ads measure 21 x 70 inches and give high visibility to drivers near the bus. A front bus display can also go by the name headlighter. A rear-end poster (or tail-light ad) gives great exposure to people in cars behind the bus. But if the bus exhaust is messy, your ad may not look so great after a few days. Check that out before buying a rear bus display.

Combinations: Sometimes advertisers combine a front bus display with a curb-side ad to maximize impact on pedestrians as they watch the bus go by. Add a shelter poster to the mix, and you have incredibly good coverage! Such combinations can be effective, especially if you think your ad may be challenging to read or if you want to display two or three complementary ads to the same viewer.

If you’re advertising in a European or other country, these U.S. standards may not apply. Outdoor ads in general, and especially transit ads, aren’t fully standardized in all countries. So check with the bus line, billboard owner, or whoever controls the ad space before you design your ad.

Want a relatively well-to-do audience with a rich mix of tourists and professional travelers? Then enquire about airport advertising options. Contact media firms such as Clear Channel Outdoor (www.clearchanneloutdoor.com), which can place your posters in hundreds of airports. Also, note that some airports are making video advertising available at baggage carousels to reach travelers while they wait for their luggage. (For tips on creating a video ad, flip to Chapter 9.)

When engaging in transit advertising, consider breaking the rule of outdoor advertising that says you have to make your design clear and simple. You may be better off layering your design so you provide a clear, large-scale, simple message for first-time viewers plus a more detailed design and message for repeat viewers to find within the poster. You can do something like hide a Waldo-like character in your ads for people to find or include a riddle or puzzle for viewers to solve. Do whatever you can to allow viewers to go deeper into the design each time they see it. This attraction should help keep the ad fresh and build viewers’ interest in the ad and its message.