Do you have the time?
Billboards need to be short and to the point. It can’t have too many words because the cars driving by would not be able to read them. How about the only words on the advertisement is the company’s tag line. The McDonald’s golden arches with their tag line “I’m lovin’ it” are the only words on the ad below. McDonald’s is a household name. This ad isn’t trying to show a new product, or show an improvement to a current product. This ad shows their creative advertising. It is colorful and has pictures of items off their breakfast menu, with numbers by each. These numbers represent the time. The billboard has a working sundial built into it. The shadow shows what time it is and points to one of the breakfast menu items. The tip of the sundial has an M on it. At the very last time the billboard works, which is a little past 11 AM, the M casts a perfect shadow of the golden arches. I think the effective part of this ad would be when the average person drives by they will look down at their clock to see if the sundial actually works. At that point maybe they realize, I have enough time to stop by McDonald’s this morning. At the very least this ad has the customer thinking of McDonald’s. I think the advertiser could have spent a little more time on the actual menu items. The pancakes especially don’t seem that appetizing. The unique idea would have got their attention, but the food needs to be what draws them in. Creative adverting, yes. Effective advertising, I’ll say maybe slightly effective. For a better look at the billboard go to: http://adsneeze.com/media/2007/09/sundial.jpg
