Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Billboards Are Always in Bloom

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

Billboards are one of the biggest creative challenges in the marketing world. They need to be seven words or less. They need to contain an idea. And they need to communicate quickly as people speed by. This week on Under The Influence, we look at the most creative billboards from around the world. We’ll talk about a car maker that used tiny billboards to get inside their competitor’s vehicles. How one airline used a billboard that could detect planes passing overhead. And we’ll tell you the hilarious story of a billboard stunt gone wrong that involves a giant… muffin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. This is an Apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose You're not you when you're hungry You're a good hand with all teeth

You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Back in 1962, a schoolmaster in Oxfordshire, England, had an idea. He recruited three other schoolmasters who had good singing voices and formed a group. They called themselves the Master Singers. The founder of the group, John Horrocks, was particularly drawn to Anglican psalm chants, almost Gregorian in nature. The group's four-part harmony sounded beautiful.

But if you listened closely, something was amiss. The chant Horrocks wrote was titled The Highway Code. His group began their somber church chant, but the lyrical content was a litany of road signs, the typical signage

you would see on a highway. On a pavement or footpath, do not walk next to the curb with your back to the traffic. Do not step into the road without first looking Where there is no adequate footpath Walk on the right of the road to face oncoming traffic The idea of marrying mundane words with deeply harmonious church chants was highly entertaining.

The master singers were often asked to perform it at church socials and informal school events. To celebrate their school's 400th anniversary, the master singers were asked to sing the highway code for Princess Margaret. At that performance, a rough tape recording was made. Two years later, that recording somehow made its way to the BBC, where it was played on a program called This Time of Day.

The sound of Anglican church chants set to daft words got a lot of attention. It became so popular, the Sunday Telegraph's radio critic said the song put the radio show on the map. It also caught the ear of producer George Martin. Before you cross, stop at the curb. Look right, look left and right again. Do not cross until the road is clear. George Martin brought the master singers to Abbey Road where he recorded them singing The Highway Code. The year was 1965. George Martin was at the height of his powers, and the master singers couldn't believe they were in a studio with the Beatles music producer.

While Martin was an incredible music producer, he was also a successful comedy producer, having worked with the likes of Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. As a matter of fact, it was Martin's comedy background that had impressed the Beatles so much. Martin released The Highway Code as a single on Parlophone Records, the same label the Beatles were on. Then, the most unexpected thing happened. You have the right of way.

The song hit number 25 on the UK singles chart. Not only that, it began to outsell the Kinks and Bob Dylan. With that success, Martin recorded the master singers singing The Weather Forecast. Good morning, here is the weather forecast for today until midnight. First the general situation. A ridge of high pressure over the Azores

is moving slowly northeast. George Martin had plans to record a third single with the group. This time, he wanted them to sing The Phone Book. But the legal department put a stop to that idea, citing privacy issues. While the weather forecast reached number 50 on the charts, it was the road sign hit that put the master singers on the map. The marketing industry has also had a lot of hits with road signs. Ever since the automobile was invented, companies have sought to use billboards and posters to advertise their wares.

Sometimes billboards are huge, and sometimes effective billboards and posters to advertise their wares. Sometimes billboards are huge, and sometimes effective billboards can also be tiny. And with digital technology, billboards are making a huge comeback as one of the most creative mediums around. You're under the influence. As an ad writer at advertising agencies, I wrote ads for all mediums. My favorites were radio and billboards.

Probably because they posed the biggest challenges. With radio, the task was to use audio to make people visualize. With billboards, it was the forced brevity. As a rule, a billboard idea has to be seven words or less, and it has to communicate to people who are quickly passing by, spending only a few precious seconds in front of it. Most billboards are terrible. They're poorly designed, loaded with too many words, and lack an idea. And that's a shame, because billboards offer big opportunities.

Speaking of big, the rock and roll industry discovered the power of billboards back in 1967. It first appeared on the most famous street in Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard. It happened on a supersized billboard measuring a whopping 4.2 by 14.6 meters or 14 by 48 feet. It was historic, as it was the first billboard to advertise a rock and roll album. The New York-based founder of Electro Records had recently moved to Hollywood to open an office there, and he was observing the unique car culture of Los Angeles. Everybody drove. He looked out his window and saw endless billboards all along Sunset Boulevard, but noticed none of them advertised records. So Electra decided to rent a giant billboard to advertise The Doors' debut album. The billboard would put the album in front of thousands of potential buyers, it would demonstrate the label's commitment to its artists, but most of all, Elektra knew many

of the top radio stations were close by and influential DJs drove up and down Sunset Boulevard every day. What made the Doors billboard so spectacular was the fact it was hand-painted. Unlike the smaller printed billboards, hand-painted boards were unique. Each required a team of illustrators, stylists, typographers, technical advisors, retouchers, woodcutters, quality control inspectors, and installation crews. But most of all, the success of the billboards rested completely on the talent of highly skilled artists. Hand-painted billboards had a remarkable depth, sheen, and texture that a printed billboard could never match. These gigantic signs had to be legible from far away,

so the painters used a reducing glass, which was the opposite of a magnifying glass. It allowed them to view their work as if from a distance. While the doors broke the ice for rock and roll, there were many other historic hand-painted billboards on the Sunset Strip over the years. One of the most famous was for the Beatles. The giant billboard showed the Fab Four crossing Abbey Road, but their heads protruded above the board, using the real sky to stand in

for the blue sky on the album. As we mentioned in a past episode, Paul McCartney's head went missing one night, but Capitol Records chose not to replace it. At that time, the Paul is dead rumor had been flying around. The headless billboard fueled even more record sales. For a billboard advertising ELO's Out of the Blue album, a huge $50,000 plexiglass spaceship was attached to the board. Another sign that went up just showed a white brick wall. No words, no title, no band. Then, over time, bricks were slowly removed,

revealing Pink Floyd's The Wall. Dole has been posting interesting outdoor posters in the UK recently. The fruit company is waging a war against malnutrition. Research revealed that 3 million Brits are affected by malnutrition due to unhealthy diets, as the UK consumes more junk food than any other country in Europe. Dole wanted people to pay more attention to what they eat and came up with a dramatic way to make their point. Here's what they did.

They put various fruits into a blender and created colored printing inks out of the juice. Then they printed posters using that nutritional ink. Dole positioned the posters near places where people typically buy unhealthy food. For example, one said, Every word on this poster contains more vitamin C and A than the chocolate bars in that vending machine. That's because the ink we used here was made with grapefruit and blueberries. Another poster was positioned next to a fast

food restaurant and said, the words on this poster contain more vitamin A and C than a chicken nugget because the ink they are printed with was made from oranges and red grapes. At the bottom of each poster, Dole invited people to favor more fruit when it comes to snack choices. Dole believes people don't pay enough attention to nutrition labels, and most don't realize the long-term effects of poor nutrition. Dole's Nutritional Inc. campaign encouraged people to change their habits. The quality of billboard ideas these days has taken a big creative leap, all due to digital technology.

One of the most inventive boards of the last few years was done by British Airways. The digital board showed a young boy sitting on a white floor. But when a British Airways plane flew overhead, the little boy came to life, pointed up at the plane, and literally followed its trajectory across the sky. Then, words appeared on the billboard that showed the actual flight number and destination of that plane. Then it showed the lowest fares available at that time for that location,

all in real time. The billboard detected every British Airways plane that flew by. It tapped into that longing we all have when we see a plane, wondering where it's headed, dreaming that it's probably off to an exotic destination, as we all sit stranded in traffic. It was a first, not just for British Airways, but for the advertising industry, as it employed new technology that could actually track planes. Sometimes billboards are huge, and sometimes they're tiny.

Not all billboards are gigantic. Car maker Skoda chose to go tiny. First, the company created miniature versions of its traditional billboards. Then, Skoda placed the tiny digital signs in parking spots around town. But here's the best part. As drivers backed into those parking spaces, the movement of their cars triggered the billboard to light up. Then, the image of those tiny billboards appeared on the drivers' reverse dash cameras.

The billboard said, Look, we got into your car, now get into ours. When the press caught wind of the clever idea and asked Skoda about it, the company simply said they just wanted to thank their competitors for the free ad space. Speaking of cars, Audi created an unusual billboard back in 2015. The German car manufacturer had just unveiled its new H-Tron fuel cell engine, the most environmentally friendly and progressive engine Audi had built at that time. The new hydrogen engines left nothing behind but water vapor, not fumes. Audi wanted to advertise the innovative engine in an innovative way,

so it created disappearing billboards. After dark, Audi positioned fog machines at strategic locations in busy cities. When the machines emitted a burst of white steam, an image of a new Audi A7 Quattro was projected onto the steam, along with a zero-emissions message, using the steam as a projection surface. The image would linger in the air for a minute, creating a lot of attention and photo opportunities. Then it would disappear into the night,

leaving nothing behind but water vapor. In early 2015, Britain was looking forward to witnessing its biggest solar eclipse in 16 years. But the weather report wasn't looking good. The forecast said overcast skies, as usual. So Oreo cookies decided to create their own eclipse that everyone could enjoy. On the appointed day, March 20, 2015, Oreo chose strategic digital billboards positioned high above various cities. The image on the board showed an Oreo cookie pulled apart,

a bright white Oreo bottom on the left and a black Oreo top on the right. Then, using real-time astronomical data perfectly in sync with the actual eclipse, which no Londoner could see through the cloud cover, the black Oreo slowly moved across the billboard to cover up the bright white Oreo. It was an Oreo eclipse in real time. Oreo also figured out how to pinpoint the exact timing of the eclipse in different regions of Britain. A few minutes earlier in Edinburgh, a few minutes later in London. But all perfectly in sync of the Oreo eclipse and posted them on social media.

Over 20 million people watched and shared those videos, and year-over-year sales jumped 59%, making March 2015 Oreo's biggest sales month ever. Oreo had managed to give the UK the eclipse that Mother Nature had denied them. For more than 20 years now, beauty brand Dove has been striving to redefine beauty standards. It's an uphill climb, as the proliferation of things like social media continually push harmful beauty advice and celebrate unrealistic standards. Research showed that one-third of Canadian girls are unhappy with their appearance. 74% of Canadian girls aged 14 to 17 want to change at least one thing about their bodies. And more than 50,000 Canadian girls 14 to 17 received injections for cosmetic reasons last year alone. So Dove's advertising agency Ogilvy created

the Injectable Billboard The billboard was placed in Toronto's busy Square One Mall It featured the face of a teen girl with a simple message that said Over 50,000 cosmetic injectables were performed on our teens last year. While the message was shocking, it contained one more jarring element. Upon closer inspection, the entire billboard was made of colored syringes, piercing the girl's face with thousands of needles. Social media videos were filmed

showing teen girls walking up to the billboard and being genuinely shocked to discover it was made of needles. The videos directed teens to Dove's website where they could download a confidence kit to help them build body confidence and self-esteem. Dove's injectable billboard brought attention to the toxic beauty issue by actually visualizing it. One day, an advertising agency named Boone Oakley was asked to create a billboard for their client, Bloom Supermarkets.

Boone Oakley is a very creative ad agency we've talked about before, and they're known for their stunts. The supermarket wanted a billboard for the big delicious muffins they baked every morning. So ad agency co-founder David Oakley came up with an idea. It would show a huge muffin pan with six giant muffins in it held by a gigantic oven mitt. Words on the billboard would say, Jumbo Muffins, always in bloom.

The billboard checked all the boxes. It contained seven words or less. It had a big, eye-catching visual. The type was simple and legible. It was good, but it wasn't great. It needed something extra to get people talking about it. Then Oakley had another idea. What if one of the jumbo muffins fell off the billboard

and crushed a car? A car that was innocently parked under the billboard. Now that would be memorable. But why would a car be parked under the billboard? Wait, what if it had a for sale sign on it?

That was perfect and it would explain why the car was sitting there. The folks at Boone Oakley found a red Kia in a junkyard for 200 bucks. They had it towed one night and parked it under the billboard.

Then the ad agency bought a prepaid cell phone and put the phone number on the for sale sign in the car's window. Oakley recorded a phone greeting that said, if you're calling about the Kia for sale, leave a message. Now all they had to do was wait a week and let people get used to seeing the billboard and the car.

A week later, it was time for the muffin drop. The ad agency and billboard company arrived at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night. Using a 50-foot cherry picker, they removed one of the styrofoam muffins from the billboard. It was about half the size of the Kia. Now all they had to do was smash the top of the car, place the giant muffin on it, and leave. Easy breezy. One of the billboard guys took a sledgehammer

and whacked the top of the car. Nothing happened. Then Oakley climbed up onto the roof and jumped up and down. Nothing. The billboard company found a 10-foot section of steel pipe, had the cherry picker lift it 15 feet above the Kia, and let it drop. The pipe bounced off the roof.

So they dropped it from 30 feet. Not even a dent. It was slowly turning into a commercial for Kia. Time was ticking by. It was almost daylight. They had to get the roof to collapse. Then someone spotted the problem. It was the car's I-beam.

It was a safety feature that keeps a roof from collapsing in the event of a rollover. So the billboard crew pulled out an electrical saw and, with sparks flying in the dark, cut the I-beam. Then they dropped the steel pipe again. This time the roof collapsed and the window shattered. Then the jumbo muffin was placed gently on the roof. With mission finally accomplished, the ad agency jumped into their cars and parked down the road a bit to watch the rush hour reactions. As the morning traffic started to get heavy,

car after car began pulling off the road to take pictures. A big crowd gathered. The press showed up. A woman who was interviewed said she saw the muffin fall. Luckily, she said, there was no one else around. An attendant at a nearby Shell station said he heard the crash and thought it was a car accident. But it was just the muffin.

He said it was the damnedest thing. The Bloom supermarket client showed up, saw the crowd, and high-fived the ad agency. The billboard was clearly a big success. Time to go home. Just as David Oakley was getting in his car, his prepaid cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

There was a message on it. A voice said, Dude, I don't know how I'm going to tell you this, but I hope you have insurance, because a gigantic muffin fell and crushed your Kia. I am not lying. A thousand people passing a billboard is not an audience of a thousand. The quality of the idea determines the audience. A billboard has to work hard to be noticed in a busy city and work even harder when cars are whistling by at highway speeds. That's why creativity is the key. When the doors opened the doors to rock and roll billboards,

it began a 20-year run of spectacular hand-painted magic. While rock and roll went huge, Skoda hitched a ride by going tiny, and Audi managed to leave a lasting impression with a fleeting message. Dole made a statement about malnutrition by creating posters that were so healthy you could eat them. And Dove used an inventive billboard to make a point about toxic beauty. These days, digital technology has revolutionized billboard advertising, opening up possibilities that were previously unimaginable.

Billboards can now detect planes in the sky, and they can even move in perfect sync with a solar eclipse. And every once in a while, a billboard muffin can give you trouble while you're trying to make a dent. When you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio.

Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Jeff Devine Under the Influence Theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre Tunage provided by APM Music Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence This is Season 12.

If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy Come Fly With Me Airports Are Now Brands Season 9, Episode 10 You'll find it in our archives. You can also find our podcasts on the new Apostrophe YouTube channel. And if you think there are too many ads in a show about advertising, well, they've been vaporized. You can now listen to our podcasts

ad-free on Amazon Music. See you next time. Fun fact! When it comes to Oreos, women are more likely to twist them apart. Men tend to pull. And that's how the cookie crumbles.