'Say, looks like
they're playing our song'
Billboard streams titles of songs being played by a radio station
By Toni Fitzgerald
Aug 4, 2011
You're driving home from work one afternoon, clicking through the stations on the car radio trying to find a good song. You flip past a rap station, an oldies station and a talk radio station.
Then, looking up, you notice billboard on the side of the highway. It's for your local country station.
But it's a digital board, and it appears to have a message just for you. Under the words "Now Playing" is the name of your very favorite bands and one of its most popular songs.
And so it is. You flip to the station and indeed that song, one of your favorites, is playing.
There are all sorts of ways to get folks to tune into a radio station, but this is the newest and undoubtably one of the smartest.
Expect to see a lot more such campaigns.
This campaign is taking place right now in Louisville, Ky., on behalf of the Cox radio station New Country Q103.1. It's located on Interstate 65 by the grounds of the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center.
It's set up via a digital feed from the station to display the names of the artists and songs as they're played.
The idea works because it's a call to action that people can answer immediately, unlike the vast majority of billboard messages, which tout products the consumer may choose to buy, or not buy, at some future point in time.
It's part of a trend in emphasizing live content on digital billboards, made possible by the ability to swap information in and out so easily.
Earlier this year Turner Networks posted up-to-the-minute scores from its NCAA men's basketball games on 19 billboards in major markets including Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas.
Last month Domino's began running a live feed of customer comments from its web site on a billboard in Times Square.
And last year the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitor’s Bureau uploaded new pictures each morning to digital billboards around the Southeast to show that its beaches were oil-free after the BP oil spill.
|
|
|
