If someone told you today that a new, brightly lit neon sign was going up across the street from where you live, you might react with disgust at the thought of such a commercial eyesore invading the skyline of your community. Yet when some older sign or billboard is threatened, everyone is suddenly up in arms, rushing to its defense. How does something as mundane as outdoor advertising grow to become considered an essential piece of the urban fabric? [More]
billboards
McDonald’s Billboard Offers Free McFlurries For The Hot & Hungry
By 7.20.15
Everyone likes to get free stuff, especially if that stuff happens to include food and drinks. Earlier this year companies began using “drinkable” billboards to dispense beverages to thirsty consumers. Now, McDonald’s has taken that idea and made it their own by giving away free McFlurries to pedestrians when the temperatures reach scorching levels. [More]
Carlsberg Outdoes Coca-Cola With Free Beer-Dispensing Billboard
By 4.15.15
You might remember that earlier this month, Coca-Cola experimented with a billboard that dispensed free samples of Coke Zero to thirsty visitors near the site of the final games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Why can’t the same technology work for more adult beverages? [More]
Coca-Cola Makes Splash At Final Four With “Drinkable” Coke Zero Billboard
By 4.3.15
The whole point of food advertising is to make you crave the product and buy as much of it as you can right then and there. But for this weekend’s Final Four of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, Coca-Cola is showing off a billboard that actually satisfies that craving by dispensing the beverage on the spot. [More]
Esurance: No, Our Billboard Didn’t Actually Suggest You “Cover Your Home In A D**k”
By 9.5.14
Gather round to hear the tale we like to call, “Not Everything You See On The Internet Is Real.” It’s a story that has been heard round the world, and is ever-changing in its sneakiness. This installment of NEYSOTIIR, Esurance says a billboard reading “cover your home in a d**k” was Photoshopped, and didn’t actually suggest potential customers do such a silly and impractical thing. [More]
Cannabis Company Unveils Country’s First Marijuana Billboards In Seattle
By 8.6.14
Back in my day, the only billboards along the side of the road were for things like light beer, ambulance chasers, adult video stores, fast food and car dealerships. No longer will roadside advertising be limited to such things, as a new era of everyday legal marijuana use in Washington has made the country’s first cannabis billboards a reality. [More]
FX Realizes Maybe People Don’t Want To Look At Billboards Of Worms Coming Out Eyeballs
By 6.30.14
There are lots of reasons to have a problem with a billboard. Maybe because it tricks you into thinking there is a suicidal dude perched on top of it, or because it inadvertently mocks someone’s language, or advocates for public urination. But billboards for FX’s upcoming disease-based show The Strain are just good ol’ fashioned gross. [More]
Billboard Campaign Shames California Commuters For Texting While In Traffic
By 3.26.14
You shouldn’t text while driving, period. But you definitely shouldn’t do so while driving on the 101 Freeway in San Francisco unless you want your picture plastered across the city. [More]
Cryptic Billboard About Blueberries Is Profound Statement About Life Or Something
By 10.21.13
“I’m concerned about the blueberries.” That’s what the billboard said. It went up on I-69 outside of Flint, Michigan with no context. Just a blue billboard with most of a white circle and the words “I’m concerned about the blueberries” in plain white text. What did it mean? Who put it up? Its sponsor remained anonymous and its message made no sense. [More]
Advertisers Set Up Bogus Storefronts To Skirt Seattle Billboards Laws
By 11.14.12
You know those huge billboards you occasionally see on the sides of city buildings? In Seattle, these are required to advertise something sold inside the building on which the sign is placed. But one outdoor ad firm has found a way around the law — just send a guy from store to store (and some places that aren’t even stores) to sell gift cards for whatever is being advertised outside. [More]
Finally, A Use For Pennies: Glued To A Billboard
By 11.7.12
Finally, a use for those copper-colored zinc discs of filth: decoration! For a promotional campaign they’re calling “penny-a-print,” printer/copier leasing company Zeno Office Solutions put up a billboard in Winter Park, Florida decorated with 120,000 hand-polished actual pennies. [More]
Vodka Company To Take Down Billboard After Complaints Of Anti-Semitism
By 11.23.11
Yesterday, we brought you the story of the Wodka (a brand of Vodka and not a typo) billboard that advertised “Christmas Quality” at “Hanukkah Pricing,” which more than a few folks took as playing up the stereotype that Jewish people as cheap. After initially attempting to defend the ad by claiming that the idea was to say Hanukkah’s eight nights of festivities are a better bargain than the one day of Christmas, the makers of Wodka announced last night that they will be taking the billboard down. [More]
Coca-Cola Plants Living, Breathing Billboard
By 7.8.11
Advertising, especially of the outdoor variety, is often viewed as being anti-green, a signifier of befouled outdoor spaces. But this Coca-Cola billboard is trying to turn that image on its head — and sell some Coke while it’s at it. [More]
Do Not Air Your Fight With An Ex On A Billboard
By 6.7.11
After a New Mexico man put up a billboard deriding his ex for having an abortion, a domestic court official recommended that the message be taken down. [More]
Funeral Home Patrons Find 'Walking Dead' Billboard Offensive For Some Reason
By 4.14.11
Remarkably, no one at ClearChannel Advertising seems to have realized that it might be a bad idea to post a giant ad for a zombie-themed television program on the exterior wall of a funeral parlor. That’s precisely what happened in the town of Consett in England. The advert for post-apocalyptic drama The Walking Dead has now been taken down, and the company responsible has apologized, but how on earth did this happen in the first place? [More]
New Billboard Smells Like Steak, Sort Of
By 6.7.10
If you find yourself driving down River Highway in Mooresville, NC this summer and suddenly smell a vaguely steak-like odor, don’t worry, you’re not having a stroke. You’re passing by the billboard for Bloom, a supermarket chain that’s owned by Food Lion. The billboard went up last Friday and poots out a charcoal-and-pepper fragrance from 7 to 10 a.m. and again from 4 to 7 p.m. [More]
Demon Dogs Enjoy Coffee Mate, Owners Too
By 4.30.10
Someone San Franciscan decided to interpret this Coffee Mate ad’s suggestion of “add your style/flavor” as an invitation to do just that to the billboard itself. Unfortunately for the powdered liquid non-dairy creamer, this person’s personal style seems to be something involving the forces of Satan. Our headline is a little misleading, though. To be more accurate, the depiction is of a demonic pet “guardian.” [More]
