Researching Similar Products - Billboard Advertising

As part of my ancillary task I must also create a billboard advertising design and also the first two webpages for a regional magazine website. In regards to the billboard advertising I decided to look into trying to find existing examples of regional magazines which use this type of advertising.

After extensive research into magazine billboard advertising I could not find any relevant billboard advertisements which advertised regional magazines. I believe that this was due to the cost of billboard of advertisements, regional magazines are not a very profitable media product in most circumstances and often rely on adverts within the magazines to cover the publishing costs. Because of this most regional magazines use cheap/free advertising methods such as social media, websites and even word of mouth. These reasons are probably why I found it difficult to find any existing examples, because it is not a very cost efficient advertising method for regional magazines.

However as research is very important I decided to look at billboard advertisements for other products to see how they are structured and such. Billboard adverts are adverts placed around popular places such as city centres or near roads where people may notice them. Due to this they are often very large and in vibrant colours or contain a particular image/text to help promote the product/service. Below is an example of a Coca-Cola billboard advertisement.

This particular billboard advert has a very minimalistic look to it due to the popularity of Coca-Cola. A less well known brand will most likely feature more information regarding the product but because Coca-Cola is so well known it doesn't really require a description. This advert is also Christmas themed with the iconic Coca-Cola Father Christmas.

Billboard adverts are also very popular with media with adverts common for TV, Films and Games. Here is an example for the movie: Anchorman 2.

This advert differs from the Coca-Cola one as it takes a screenshot from the film but more importantly includes more information. Below the title of the film is the Paramount logo and the directors/producers/actors within the film. There is also a release window for the film stated as: This Christmas.

Finally another example billboard I found was for Apple's iPad Mini. 

This follows a similar idea to the Coca-Cola advert where it uses a minimalist style. The billboard is plain white and only includes an image of the iPad and the title of the iPad. This style is used because of the popularity that Apple has, they are that popular that they don't need to address what their product is. In terms of my product I will most likely have to go into more detail to describe what my product is due to the fact that my product will be much more unknown in comparison.