Billboards, They’ve been around forever. You see them everywhere. Some are interesting. Most are not. For the most part, once you’ve passed by one, it no longer exists in your mind.
That’s changing as many brands are finding unique ways to bring new punch to one of the oldest mediums in the world.
Working with DDB New York, the U.S. Open has brought the lowly billboard, and the tournament, itself, to life with #StoryoftheOpen. Over the course of the tournament, painter Josh Cochran is highlighting the tournament’s daily high points with a hand drawn mural on a billboard atop New York’s Midtown Tunnel.
100 ft in a bucket! Also sweating profusely here. Day 3. Some progress made #StoryoftheOpen @usopen pic.twitter.com/AG9UbbBp6X — Josh Cochran (@joshjcochran) August 27, 2014
On the billboard, Cochran is capturing the highs and the lows such as Roger Federer’s selfie with Michael Jordan, Gael Monfi’s 110 mile per hour serve and the on-court craziness of 15-year-old Catherine Bellis.
Each day for 15 days, Cochran climbs up the billboard and his work is live-streamed to the U.S. Open Facebook page and, later, produced into videos which live on the brand’s YouTube page. In the videos, Cochran talks about the day’s events and shares interesting U.S. Open-related tweets. He even uses a paint brush cam!
Paintbrush-cam! #storyoftheopen @usopen pic.twitter.com/1nVRrjvkOZ — Josh Cochran (@joshjcochran) August 31, 2014
The entire effort is a brilliant “socialization” of a very unsocial medium. And, perhaps, it brings the excitement and further awareness of the tournament to those who, otherwise, would not have given it the time of day.
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