6 words 6 seconds

Robert Fleege on billboard creative. www.fleege.com

The Golden Rule.

The single most important aspect of creating a great billboard is simplicity and respecting the golden rule of outdoor advertising creative; 6 words, 6 seconds. It used to be known as the 7 words 7 seconds but since its conception, the speed limits have increased and more driver distractions have been added. The rule simply implies that you shouldn’t use more than six words to get your point across since you only have six seconds to deliver your message. (that is if you even cut through the clutter and earned an impression in the first place) This doesn’t mean that one can’t make intelligent, complex, and intriguing statements (I don’t understand half the billboards on US-101 in SiliconValley) or that you can’t communicate a technical benefit or feature. You can indeed, but the key concept is ONE. As decorated copywriter Timo Everi of Hasan & Partners, Europe stated: "The number of ideas to implement in advertising design should be odd - and three's too many”

Have you ever experienced somebody throwing two or more balls at you at the same time? Unless you are an expert juggler you probably didn’t catch many, let alone one. Buying billboard media space is like buying the rights to toss logo stress balls at 200,000 people passing by. If you throw one ball at the time chances are most of your audience will catch it and walk away with your message. If you throw two or three different colored balls with different messages at the same time, very few people will catch any of the balls.

“Outdoor is not print – even if it’s printed on paper.”

-Robert Fleege