50 Clever Billboard Designs That Definitely Didn't Go Unnoticed

To find out more about the secrets of creative billboard advertising, Bored Panda reached out to Tomas Nemura, a marketing strategist and partner at Choco Agency, which specializes in social media strategy, digital design, and content production.

Tomas said that when it comes to advertising, it’s always beneficial to address people from several means of advertising simultaneously. “This is where outdoor advertising comes into play. As an advertising medium, it has been growing for the last several years.”

However, in order to measure its efficiency, Tomas suggests looking at the overall context of a given campaign. “It’s not the billboard itself that works, it’s the ad on it. When assuming it’s done properly,” he said.

When asked what it takes to create an innovative billboard, Tomas said that “as a general rule of thumb, I would recommend not showing the product.” “We should not assume that people walking by our billboard are currently in the market to purchase our product so the billboard, like any other form of advertising, should create value to every passerby,” Tomas explained further.

Meanwhile, different things work in different contexts. For example, “a joke which makes your day, a question which makes you think, a relatable moment which helps to realize something. You either enjoy the ad or you ignore it. The latter is more common.” Tomas believes that if every ad was signed with the name of whoever created it, there might be more creative ads to enjoy.

On the other hand, Tomas said that coming up with a memorable and one-of-a-kind ad is becoming very hard since “everything has been done already and people almost never pay attention to ads.”

But it turns out that the originality of an idea is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to challenges a creative faces throughout the creative process. “Where are those super creative ads (apart from this list)? In ad festivals? Isn’t it the case that people outside the advertising industry don’t even get to experience them? Creatives have to tackle a lot of issues with every project and I’d say that the originality of the idea is the least of their problems.”

Tomas explained that among the challenges are intense timing, multitasking, various limitations, the subjectivity of involved parties, etc. “You have to loosen those limitations, let everyone clear their minds, and enjoy themselves in order to get something attention-worthy,” he concluded.

Previously, Bored Panda also spoke to Luke Leonard, the Senior Director of Marketing of Vector Media, who explained how creativity does wonders when it comes to advertising. When commenting on bus advertising, which is another form of OOH (out of house) ads, Luke said that the key lies in “warping people’s perspective of what they think they know they're looking at.”

He suggested employing doors, wheels, lights, and even the passengers inside the windows in an ad that’s visible from the outside. Creative billboards work in the same way: they bend viewers’ perception in such a way that they create a whole new reality out of all the elements. It can be street lights, the placement of the billboard, or the time of day—nothing is off-limits.

Billboard ads don’t necessarily mean they engulf only the billboard as a canvas alone, quite on the contrary. A creative billboard usually surpasses its initial setting and brings out the unexpectedness. Contextual relevance is an absolute must in any memorable billboard ad.