I feel like SF has been full of frequently inscrutable billboards as long as I’ve been coming here — at least a decade.
It’s maybe got slightly more extreme recently, with an even larger percentage of them being inscrutable to me as someone who both works in tech and has a decent grasp of current industry trends.
I’ve never really got it — if even I don’t know what you’re advertising (or often, who is advertising!), how does this help your sales?
Keep in mind that marketing is not just trying to teach you about someone you're unaware of, but is also in part about assuring you (and your boss) that you're about to make the right choice when their sales team is already talking to you, and even in part about ensuring that you (and your boss) continue to feel confident that you did make the right choice (or alternatively make you have doubts about having picked the competitor) after you made the buy.
Making their sales peoples job easier, in particular, can be a lot cheaper than getting the marketing on its own to sell someone on you. They want you to go "oh, yes, FooBar Inc, I recognise that name" instead of your reaction being "who?!?".
A lot of marketing without calls to action fall in the latter two categories. In that case they don't need to tell you who they are. They just need you to notice that they're there enough that they seem like a player that is a good choice. You don't even necessarily want to come across as caring too much about explaining who you are - you just want to portray the silent confidence of someone buyers should already know.
(I have no idea whether the specific billboards you're talking about succeed at this)
And I get it — when the name of FooBar Inc is on the billboard. When there’s neither a product name nor a company name, which seems to be happening more and more often, I just don’t get it!
In the SF tech scene they talk about this -- startups say they will put up a billboard for one CTO.
I don't even think that's an exaggeration. I watched a YouTube video about a startup that wanted to land a major client, figured out the CTO's commute, and put up billboards along the way.
Then they called the guy and he told them "I see your ads everywhere." They had an in.
The economics likely make sense when a contract is easily worth tens of millions of dollars. They're trying to create the perception that they're established in the mind of one person.
I sort of look at it as putting a flag on the moon. Billboards are how tech companies claim ownership of SF and the tech sphere, any consumer influence is incidental.
I remember seeing an advertising exec talk about spending more money in the area the execs lived so they felt the impact of the advertising, regardless of how effective the spend actually was. This is likely more of the same - making the investors and C-Suite get warm fuzzies.
Comments
I feel like SF has been full of frequently inscrutable billboards as long as I’ve been coming here — at least a decade.
It’s maybe got slightly more extreme recently, with an even larger percentage of them being inscrutable to me as someone who both works in tech and has a decent grasp of current industry trends.
I’ve never really got it — if even I don’t know what you’re advertising (or often, who is advertising!), how does this help your sales?
Keep in mind that marketing is not just trying to teach you about someone you're unaware of, but is also in part about assuring you (and your boss) that you're about to make the right choice when their sales team is already talking to you, and even in part about ensuring that you (and your boss) continue to feel confident that you did make the right choice (or alternatively make you have doubts about having picked the competitor) after you made the buy.
Making their sales peoples job easier, in particular, can be a lot cheaper than getting the marketing on its own to sell someone on you. They want you to go "oh, yes, FooBar Inc, I recognise that name" instead of your reaction being "who?!?".
A lot of marketing without calls to action fall in the latter two categories. In that case they don't need to tell you who they are. They just need you to notice that they're there enough that they seem like a player that is a good choice. You don't even necessarily want to come across as caring too much about explaining who you are - you just want to portray the silent confidence of someone buyers should already know.
(I have no idea whether the specific billboards you're talking about succeed at this)
And I get it — when the name of FooBar Inc is on the billboard. When there’s neither a product name nor a company name, which seems to be happening more and more often, I just don’t get it!
In the SF tech scene they talk about this -- startups say they will put up a billboard for one CTO.
I don't even think that's an exaggeration. I watched a YouTube video about a startup that wanted to land a major client, figured out the CTO's commute, and put up billboards along the way.
Then they called the guy and he told them "I see your ads everywhere." They had an in.
The economics likely make sense when a contract is easily worth tens of millions of dollars. They're trying to create the perception that they're established in the mind of one person.
I sort of look at it as putting a flag on the moon. Billboards are how tech companies claim ownership of SF and the tech sphere, any consumer influence is incidental.
I remember seeing an advertising exec talk about spending more money in the area the execs lived so they felt the impact of the advertising, regardless of how effective the spend actually was. This is likely more of the same - making the investors and C-Suite get warm fuzzies.
More ego than practical.