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#10 Designing Tips for Brand Building in OOH Advertising These 10 rules will help to make sure your billboard is memorable and lasts long in the OOH (Out Of Home) space

By Deepti Awasthi Sharma

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You only get 5 seconds for your billboard design to make an impact on the viewer. The age-old phrase – "First impression is the last impression" holds true here. These 10 rules mentioned below will help to make sure your billboard is memorable and lasts long in the minds of the viewers.

1) Billboard must keep words to a minimum if they are to effectively engage customers, which encourages brands to retain concise and punchy messages keeping in mind the effectiveness of the product.

2) Look at a busy traffic junction, and 3-dimension installations in place of flat hoarding are the common norm nowadays. It is believed that the brands need to undertake innovations so as to stand out in the increasingly cluttered OOH (Out Of Home) space.
OOH innovation has always been a marketer's weapon and has been successfully used by all the esteemed brands across various product categories. Clutter-free innovation helps drive buzz, creates viewers' curiosity, builds the brand value and also being alive the concept of the show.

3) What sort of feelings and emotions do you want people to experience while they view your Billboards? What sort of things do you want them to associate your brand to?
More and more companies are focussing on building a personality and carving a story into every Ooh creative. This arouses an emotional reaction from the viewers. Personality turns a lifeless product in soulless corporation into more than sum of its parts. Conveying the company's personality helps create an emotional connection with the audience.

4) The choice of a good colour palette is key in branding and making the creatives.
Colour stimulates various emotions and carries with it subconscious association to various things and characteristics. Billboard creatives colour should be eye catchy, bright and vivid in order to grab the most of the attention from the audience.

5) Language of OOH creatives should be simple and try to convey the message in as less words as you can. Punch line or simple message in creatives is recommended in the native language of the branding region for a direct connection with the audience.
6) The message to be displayed on the OOH advertising is something which can create the curiosity in viewers. It should be able to create an aura around itself and that too with very few words. It should be engaging so that viewers are curious and try to check out more about the products from other sources.

7) Within few words, try to explain what works for the product and how it is going to impact the customer. Explain how it is different from other products of the same line.

8) Stress more on customer service, product quality and its effectiveness rather than its price. If the product stands firm on customers' "expectation" level, shelling few extra bucks is not an issue.

9) The billboard should be visible from a distance. The text message should be in a neat and legible font which can be read from a long distance. A nice picture conveys a lot and is worth a thousand words.

10) The billboard should be in such an area where it can connect to the customers on a personal level. For e.g. An OOH billboard promoting an educational institute works well where lot of students stay. Both the time and space continuum should be kept in mind while putting an OOH billboard.

Deepti Awasthi Sharma

Co-founder, Gohoardings.com

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