James Ready - share our billboard
Billboards have been around forever, but there's actually a tech story behind this out-of-home campaign. When I was working on this, I tracked down the print producer at the time, Kim Burchiel, to ask her how many different executions we could afford. She told me the out-of-home company had just switched to a fully digital printing system. They would be printing directly from a digital file, so, perhaps jokingly, “if it's three different billboards or 300, Kim said it would be the same price.” Bingo! I knew at that moment we would be doing a campaign in which each billboard was unique. Later that Tuesday afternoon, Paul G. and I thought we should allow beer drinkers to split the billboards with James Ready. By helping the brewery keep costs down, we could help keep their beer a buck. It was perfect timing for a discount beer brand to do something with a big brand idea behind it. Someone told me this was the most awarded out-of-home campaign in the world that year. I was just glad one of our billboards helped a guy sell his pickup truck.