I travel often between Kalamazoo and Detroit on Michigan’s International Speedway better known as Interstate 94.
If you have driven that busy highway before you know there are a ton of unsightly billboards.
The other day I took a survey with myself. About half of the billboards I could not read at 70-80 mph and the other half did not connect in terms of the company’s brand message. Yet the majority were produced by an agency or communication company that is supposed to be an expert at this stuff.
I have great eyesight, a strong sense of aesthetics and I am a sales & marketing guy. I really pay attention to this stuff and I missed over half the “messages”. For God’s sake what happens to the rest of traffic speeding by? Nothing!
I think of the millions of dollars that are wasted because someone did not pay attention to the basic scale of the billboard, speed of the audience driving by, the color palette and easy-to-digest copy.
I also see a ton of industrial web sites that have the very same issues.
Worse…not only are the web sites void of a strong brand message or call-to-action they don’t even get the traffic because they have ignored good SEO practices and opportunities to cultivate a new channel to market.
