Smoking ad joins the ranks of distracting, new wave of billboards
You get the sense that, with each new innovation, marketers aren’t nearly done with their billboard experiments.
Consider: that sign in Charlotte earlier this year that spewed the smell of peppercorn steak with a fan and some air cartridges. Like the scented ads in magazines, only fifty feet high in the air, right?
Well, it appears advertisers aren’t finished with their billboard tinkering, after all. Last week, in South Dakota, drivers met the world’s first smoking billboard.
Yes, to promote its Avera emergency medical services brand, U.S. ad agency BVK put up the billboard you see to your left, depicting the scene of a car accident, smoke and all.
With a smoke machine hidden behind the billboard, the ad gave off the appearance the accident had just happened, and the wrecked car was really smoking.
Sounds innocent enough, but good Samaritan drivers in South Dakota kept calling 911 on the billboard, leading to its being shut down by the Sioux Falls Fire Rescue only two days after its debut.
Though that’s not to say the billboard wasn’t a success. While distracting, the provocative billboard was quite effective in promoting Avera.
According to BVK: “It worked, driving thousands of people to go online in the first week of the campaign.”
So, then, with an interactive visual in South Dakota – and a mouth-watering scent in Charlotte – it’s worth wondering which senses advertisers will try to feed next.
Maybe it’s already among us. In London, AdWeek notes, there’s now a billboard for the Wonderbra … in 3D. This is one idea, surely, Everydaymoney gives its full support.
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
(*Image courtesy: Adweek.com)
Posted by: don | Sep 22, 2021 1:51:03 PM
Isnt this a distraction to drivers? Isnt this polluting the air?
Posted by: Anon-e-mouse | Sep 23, 2021 5:28:43 AM
By no means is the concept a 'world's first'.
Here in Montreal, for MANY years (as in the 1940's through the 1980's) there was a billboard atop a downtown building (corner of the main shoppoiing street and next to the old Montreal Forum, where the Canadians used to actually win hockey games) advertising a restaurant. And that sign bellowed smoke as a function of it's message.
Both the building and the restaurant are long gone.