How Do Billboards Talk?

sign language

MINI drivers, already known as ready to enɡɑɡe with anything MINI-related, will find themselves greeted by name on personal message boards in four major cities. It’s no surprise to the driver; the messaging program is user-triggered by a personalized key fob that contacts the billboard database, which then transmits a personal message to the driver, as in “Hi Jim, great day to be a lawyer.” Or something like that.

It is MINI’s version of interactive billboards, a campaign called Motorby via Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners. The program was launched Monday with one billboard each in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami.

Drivers signed up for the program this month and answered a number of questions such as a pet name for their MINI or their profession, info that was downloaded on a network.

MINI spent $13 million in advertising last year through November, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus, after spending $19 million in 2005.

Automakers have found billboards to be one more tool to enɡɑɡe their customers over the last several years. Honda last March rolled out 162 “talking” billboards, a campaign via RPA, Santa Monica, promoting the Element SUV in which drivers were invited to tune to a specific radio frequency to hear a Honda message. The program ran for 30 days, “and was not continued, with no plans to do it in that form again,” a Honda rep said.

Ford has also experimented with billboards, with an effort in fall, 2005 via Ogilvy, Belgium, that used interactive posters in train stations. The small billboard signs were made interactive and the voice and facial movements of the fellow on the billboard were controlled by an actor in a control booth, hopefully enɡɑɡing potential customers. That work never made it to the U.S.

Where you can find Motorby:

CHICAGO: I-294 (North Tri-State), .25 mile south of Wolf Road, south of Chicago O’Hare airport (faces southbound traffic).

MIAMI: Palmetto Expressway, 25 feet north of NW 50th Street (faces northbound traffic).

NEW YORK: 10th Avenue & 30th Street, just before the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel (faces northbound traffic).

SAN FRANCISCO: 1-80 Skyway at 4th Street (faces eastbound traffic). All locations can be found on the MINI Web site.

They use sign-language.

how incredibly cheesey

sign language

I talk thru my mouth. Thank you very much.

with speakers