OOH Insider - Episode 016 - How to do 3D billboards for 90% LESS money!

Welcome to the out of home insider show where the loudest voice and out-of-home. And today we're going to talk all about one of the most legendary campaigns we've ever seen. Right. Filet. Everybody knows them. We wait outside for their sandwiches for hours on end. We're going to talk about what worked for Chick-fil-A, how you can use it, and ultimately how the economics make sense for any advertiser to consider doing 3d.

And with me is the king of 3d Eddie, Carolyn from soft signs, 3d Eddie. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey, chip. Good to be great to be here. Absolutely. We had a great conversation, uh, offline and all about Chick-fil-A and I know you've got so much great insight into that Chick-fil-A campaign. And why don't you just bring us that little bit of history behind Chick-fil-A what worked so well.

Uh, and, and what is that opportunity for brands today to be like Chick-fil-A in their own. Yeah. So, you know what we're, we're, we're just, we're just raving fans of at great at a home in great marketing. And Chick-fil-A just ticks all those boxes. I mean, yeah. They, they, um, they, they moved from like mall locations into standalone, uh, restaurants and, and, uh, uh, that's a really, really tough go.

If you're in that restaurant business, it's super competitive and you're up against giant corporations. Big budgets and, uh, yeah, you want to move into that? That's that's gutsy. It really is. And so they moved into that and, uh, what's, what's most amazing is that they actually had. Headwinds big headwinds, not industry headwinds, their own headwinds.

They don't discount. I mean, like industry is nine for discounting. Uh, they closed on Sundays. I mean, yeah. I mean, think about that as a percentage of, of, uh, of sales that's, you know, that's, it's like 15% of your, your time be closed when your competitors, and then you're moving into this market and you're out.

More than 10 to one. Um, and, and they went in and, you know, I mean, I, if I was looking at that business case, I wouldn't have invested, I would have got off, but they did it and they did it on like great food. We get it. But they did it with billboards. They did it without the Anaheim industry and they just got great, great, great creative it.

Put it up. Put some 3d behind it. And then, you know, go back to, you know, same source, same store sales in 2030. And so the data I have, um, we 1700 stores. They outsold KFC 4,600 stores. I mean, incredible. Um, just, just an amazing success story, especially for the out-of-home industry. Just like mind numbingly successful, you know, to the point of how successful it was.

Um, you know, and we talk about some, some, some, you know, a quote from chap Bradford, the manager, media integration. Yeah. People don't like ads, people aren't trusted. People don't remember it. If it looks like an ad, a smells like an ad, people will tune it out. What will make your ad different? Chick-fil-A is there.

I ended up being in calculus and Chick-fil-A was the largest seller of calendars in the U S the people liked the ads. We created a show, much. They bought calendars of the ads. They bought the ads. They bought the ads. The cows became that famous that a and D outsold. What was the largest selling calendar that was selling millions and millions of people were paying to buy.

They're creating that. What we did do that. You can't do that with a Facebook ad. You can't do that. You know, an Instagram story, all of those things have value, but in terms of legitimising advertisers quickly at scale, in a way that's memorable out of home really has no second. We see a second example of that with Brex.

Uh, you know, that's a, that's a day that we've talked about, right. In a, in a pretty specific niche, right. If you're not familiar with Brex specifically, Targeting the San Francisco business startup community, um, with business credit, right. Is I get that about right? It's a credit card, right? It's a credit card for high tech startups.

So why would they be using. Right there. They're in the tech business, they're in the social media, they're in the, you know, the, that, that whole space, uh, you know, Google ads, Facebook and Twitter. And, and they did, they put all their money in billboards and grew from zero to $2 billion in two years in, they keep referring to show many great articles that people want to search.

Uh, billboard campaigns, the wall street journal did an amazing, uh, uh, video with them and they just explained it. And he said, you can't, you don't get anything more powerful than what are the key takeaways that I really appreciated about that was when, when they speak about how it made other things in their marketing work better, how their cold email outreach was received better.

When their teams were cold calling on potential clients, they were already legitimized in the eyes of their prospects because the prospects had been seeing them up on billboards. And anyone can be on a Facebook ad, but not everyone's on a billboard. So if you're on a billboard, you must be legit. So. Not only did it help their growth, but from a standalone component.

But if you look at it holistically, what it did for their business, it made everything else work that much better and scale that much quicker. Would you, would you agree that that's pretty consistent? Yeah. Without a doubt. And it's really not what we say, but what they say and they say it a lot. We couldn't believe one how cheap it was.

And we couldn't believe that we should buy as much as we could. And then we could let that, we just own the city. We own the audience. Right. And we know outreach Jack trout, right? 22 laws of marketing. Mine's Sherry was market share. And when you own that theater of the mind, and if you own it without door, uh, you can have so much fun with it.

And one of the things that really own that theater of the mind with, with Chick-Filet specifically where the cows, right? The video 3000, that we've got to sit now back in storage. Um, but it's pretty expensive, right? Like, let's be honest. It's been pretty expensive to do 3d billboards. Yeah. That's that's.

Uh, the 3d business, it was because of that. We were in, we just put, why Gina, why do we not see so much more 3d? We've got these wonderful canvases everywhere and we can make them just, oh, Paul, uh, make them memorable, use some 3d. And then when we discovered it was just way too expensive. The, it just wasn't fitting in any of the marketing ratios, the working the non-working.

Um, and I think that that's the courage that, you know, the courage and the market is it, uh, I mean the Richards group in, in Chick-Filet, they invest in a lot of money. This. But it worked, but we've, we just went, you know, what can we reduce the costs? And we have we've, uh, we, you know, the way 3d vinyl is set up, we are at least 90% less than, than traditional builds.

And, um, again, coming from operations, we, we realized that yet cost was the first obstacle, but there were more obstacles as transportation. You know, if we look behind you see that big 35 foot long shark, I mean, we sent that down and on a 42 inch 42 inch pallet down to the, uh, the, uh, guys standards, um, Tampa bay.

And that would, if that was made out of foam, that that things might attract the trailer. That's one big trailer. And so, you know, having operations there, great idea. We're going to live a hit. We'll do some 3d. You know, that's going to take a team of six, got minimum two days plus engineering on the frame itself because you got to put it up.

They crimes like just an enormous amount of work. And so we went, could we get it down to zero? Why not try then we pretty much did. So now we've, uh, incorporated the 3d, uh, element within the bottle itself. And, uh, the we've patented the Parsis and, uh, the reinforcing. And so what would the installers do? We ship it to them and they just post it like a normal model, plug it in and away they go.

And so we've taken all the obstacles out of doing it. And now the biggest obstacle we face is just getting out to the industry. God, wherever the business. Let's let's look again, Tim. We love. The only thing we love more than that homes, people that love out of home. And, uh, we believe as a world where people are excited, they're driving and they're excited to see what's coming next.

What's the next bill. We're gonna really entertain them. Um, tell them some stories in great creatives and we can help amplify that messaging. So. Excuse me for somebody potentially listening. Who's who's got a great campaign. Who's got great creative, but wants to add an element that wants to add 3d. And maybe before it wasn't economically feasible.

I mean, just some of the things you talked about with engineering to the structure. So many considerations. Is there anything that needs to be considered like that? Or this could pretty much go up on any standard bulletin across the country, around the world. Any, any standard bulletin it'll go out on in de know, there is absolutely nothing to do to hurricane pipes.

All they do is hang them off. So it's just zero engineering. It's it's virtually zero install, a few extra ratchet straps. It's all the ops guys. Um, and they're off to the races. Uh, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's awesome. It's fine. And again, there's videos of those installations. Uh, the ops guys take them for us and, uh, you know, they're, they're readily available on our, on our websites.

So get in, have a look at them, they quite assuming. And, uh, yeah, yeah, but you know what? Yeah, we talk about that. Cause I'm thinking of the videos that are on the website, the light bulbs. And, and I think we might've just briefly talked about that, but if, if, um, if people go on the website, click on the light bulb on the top, right?

Tell everybody what the what's the URL. Oh yeah. Just the stop signs. Stop signs, uh, 3d guard con. All right. And the light bulb, right? The light bulb is it's a light bulb store in Texas. No, it's, uh, I think the juicy, uh, on that. And, um, they had ran the same campaign for three years, a directional and they just popped the interstate.

And, um, the, so they had the same billboard three years. The, the, uh, the young ag went to them and said, uh, Hey, we should do a 3d light ball and we will lie now. The store on us and be crazy. Why would I do that? You know what? We've already invested on mine. Yeah. We just put a new bottle. Cause it was time to change the bottle out.

No, you're crazy. We're not going to do it in the age, his position, persisted long story short. They did go ahead with it. And now this video of what I'm going to say is actually on our website. So if you find it, you'll get it on the testimony. Um, fast forward, 12 months later, and a member, he had the same campaign, same vinyl.

The only difference is we might the light bulb in it dimensional and lit it up. They doubled the same more sales in the next 12 months. And we have got litany of stories like this with people that just amplified the creative use in 3d and just the results of display. I mine, my numbing Chick-fil-A. Yeah.

So what's really exciting, right? To take the same creative right over. I already believe in out of home. I like my design, but I would like to sell more stuff too. So just that I've got the same campaign, same creative. We make one element 3d. It's a light bulb. We light it up. Cause that makes sense. And the double seams or.

Companies would kill for that sort of growth. If you could double the production of one retail location or multiple, or the entire business unit, if you could take your existing campaign and get 10 to 20 to 15, you know, uh, different locations, what, what would that do to your business? Just get those small incremental gains from something you're already doing, but doing it a little bit.

Yeah, lots of stories like that. One of my favorites is a, the centipede, right? That's what you see on the website. Yeah. Yeah. Th that, that St. Pete is just amazing. It's just incredible. So, so we're on to, um, version two of that now. And funnily enough, I'm just waiting for pitches tonight. Uh, the next month posting today for can't talk about until I see the pitches and it's posted, so we've changed the creative by time now, but close to there's no operational issues.

So there's no, there's no obstacles to the operations, the preventative. Right creative. Like they just, they stuck to, the more, less is more. They just kept it very client. And all we did was put this 50 foot long centipede on a, on a vinyl and, uh, shifted down to them. We now you can't have movements of the legs.

We, we just let them free from. And in the breeze, they would shimmer, just like I said, a P they put it up Albuquerque, Albuquerque, and then the beauty of it, put it out for six months, pull it then three months later up in another location. So they moved it around. 3d vinyl is as simple as moving alone. Wow.

Yeah. So they just, they just, and they ran that for two years and we just, we waiting today. I'm just waiting for bitches. Um, there's a new one posting today with a new theme, a new giant bug, but they aren't Albuquerque. You think of pest control Albuquerque. It's the RIA, the Santa Pete guys preventative.

Just bottled with it. Like we were in a funny industry, serious. So here's a client that didn't have to do, you know, they're not on four or five bulletins and 20 posters. They're on one really powerful bulletin that they can move around the market. They're not confined to one location. Because of all the work that we've traditionally gone into a 3d billboard.

So they're able to move it around and repurpose it. Really. When you start to MRIs out that the cost savings doing it your way. I mean, we're probably talking about really significant 2030, maybe a hundred thousand dollars, depending on the size of the campaign, what you'd be saving by a hundred thousand.

Wow. Hungry. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. How much more can you do if you could, if you saved a hundred thousand, what could that mean operationally for your business or has it is with discussing earlier? You know, we, we get to see, uh, quotes that crock clients bring us and say, oh, and you know, we're looking at 3d with doing it now here's a quote.

And, uh, we would just, uh, again, I can't mention it because we just, we haven't submitted it yet, but, um, the client was they using it 3d now and they're paying, they had quite a few units out. What they paying for the shipping of the 3d unit, just the 3d unit from the production facility to the billboard specifically, just the shipping.

Is what it costs for us to produce. Attach it to the vital supply, the bottle shipper and have it installed. That's incredible. That's incredible advantage to that advertiser to attack, be able to get that much value for less money. And I feel like we could, we could probably do this, uh, for a few hours and, and I know we're going to do some more conversations like this.

If someone wants to get in touch with you. Find out more about soft side. What's the best way for them to do that? My edits of science.com, not 3d edges idiot. Stop signs.com and is eating EDD Y um, go to the website and that stop signs, 3d.com. Uh, yeah, that's, that's probably the best ways to reach out and, uh, get a hold of us.

And we, as I said, we love what we do. Uh, if any inquiries at all, just send us the creative. We'll send you 24 hours. We'll turn around. Estimates. Boy, we love looking at it. We just, we love the space. It's just so much fun. It really is. That's great. Well, we're going to try and keep you busy. I'm going to make sure that all of your information are inside the show notes.

So if you're listening to this, you didn't catch it the first time. Just checking the description wherever you're listening to or watching this, and you'll be able to get in touch with the editor. Pretty out of home insider show for Eddie, Carolyn of soft science 3d. Thanks so much. If this information has been helpful to you, please, we encourage you to share it with a colleague, with a client, with somebody that could benefit as always thank you for your support from the loudest voice in out of home.