billboards

Eye catching billboards

It seems to me that the majority of eye catching billboards have something coming of the board that really makes it stand out. There's often one bold primary colour (often red) that is used to make the billboard really pop and stand out against whatever Sky the weather has treated us to. Text is kept simple and bold, you might have a lot to say about your amazing product but you don't write it on a billboard as the purpose is to stand out and catch someone's eye as they pass by. So a catchy phrase works wonders. 

Wine related

 

Wine ads/billboards almost always feature the wine bottle itself, for obvious reason, to show the person passing by exactly what the product is. They do often feature a stunning woman laughing/smiling while holding a glass which is a great eye catching idea because who doesn't want to look at a pretty woman smiling? Men want to look at her and woman want to be her. Smart move. The Moet and Chandon ads stick to there style perfectly throughout the ads, keeping it classy and elegant as per usual. Personally, my favourite has always been Moet as it is just so classic, it's so simple but most people will know what the bottle is just from the colours and lettering. 

You might also notice I've placed some very old ads from the 60's in there. I originally chose to look at these because of how sexist some were! And from there I really got hooked (if you look past the sexist comments) I really like the style. I like the sepia tones and the classic looking woman holding a cheeky glass of wine as though that single glass is the reason for there existence, as though even though they don't have the same rights as men they can enjoy a glass of this amazing wine with them and everything will be ok. 

Unfortunately under careful consideration I realised that really this old style didn't really fit with my product, nor did the classic. As you see my product is a bit more funky based on mythology and astronomy so I thought better to stick with what I know and what fits best with my product. 

Women laughing while eating salad

As I mentioned previously a common factor is pretty women smiling/laughing into there wine which is what made me think of these types of photos, women laughing at salad. A few years ago on social media these photos were brought forward and eventually turned into a gallery then a meme. It pointed out the weirdly high amount of images that were dedicated to women laughing alone with salad. These sorts of photos became comical which struck another idea with me. Parody billboard advertising. In the Netherlands a billboard company had vacancies on several large billboards. So with this thought on there minds, what did they do? They changed the images constantly with the text 'the sooner you advertise here, the better'. And what image did they use you might ask? Overweight half nudist images that's what. It definitely piqued marketers interests across the globe and inspired a lot of other people to push the boundaries of what is culturally acceptable in marketing. 

Here's just one attempt at pushing the boundaries within advertising. 

Without a doubt, it's eye catching. But the man who put this particular one up had to battle a court case on whether or not he was allowed it. So maybe I won't go quite so far with overweight nudists but the ideas there. Some comedic structure to really make my as talked about.