A golden period for billboard promoting?
Last year something unexpected happened: the oldest advertising medium became an advertisement for the entire industry by helping to bring the UK together.
The posters were really amplified, offering insight, beauty, information, celebration, charm, wit, warmth and elegance to the country at a time when these things were badly needed. (By the way, I believe something similar has happened in other countries outside the UK, but as a Los Angeles resident, I can tell you that the only unusual outdoor advertising I saw was billboards that stayed up for months and advertised poignantly . & # 39; Coming Soon & # 39; Movies That Never Made.)
In terms of quality, the UK was spoiled for choice: B & Q, KFC, Ikea, Apple, SHN, McDonald's, Justice4Grenfell, Banana Scoops, the PlayStation's Oxford Circus signs, and stunts like the BBC's Dracula and the recent Marmite Dynamite posters showing giant post-explosion Marmite lids embedded in cars and stuck in trees to promote a limited edition chilli-flavored Marmite.
But outside of the corporate world, there were also impromptu billboards that made the nation feel a little better when cooped up at home.
Above: BBC One's Dracula series poster campaign; Above: Poster of Apple's "Behind The Mac", "Made in the UK" campaign