Billboards—you remember them? They’re those colossal, in-your-face ads that line highways and dominate cityscapes.
Malaysia’s vibrant advertising market, with over 34.1 million people largely concentrated in urban centres, offers ample opportunities for out-of-home advertising and digital billboard campaigns. Major cities like Kuala Lumpur drive significant economic activity, particularly in the high-traffic Klang Valley region. As urban development surges, advertisers can expect broad reach and strong brand recall, especially with the growing popularity of digital billboards in these areas.
Billboard ads thrive on bold, impactful messages. With just a few seconds to catch attention, your brand needs to make a lasting impression. Here are 7 brilliant billboard advertising examples from around the world to inspire you.
Peru –Water from Air – University of Engineering and Technology of Peru
Billboards don’t just have to be eye-catching in how they look, how about jaw-dropping in what they can do? This innovative billboard designed by the University of Engineering and Technology and Peru not only shows the wonder of engineering that students can learn at the institution, it provides a huge public service by literally drawing water from the air and providing it free to passers-by.
Malaysia – Imagine – Lego
When it comes to billboard placement, advertisers are generally more concerned about where it will catch the most views rather than how to make it work in the environment around it. That’s what made a campaign run by Lego in Malaysia back in 2011 so wonderfully unique. By literally ‘building’ Lego into an imaginative landscape that fit the real-world around it, these billboards created an attention-grabbing representation of the wonderful imagination that Lego inspires.
Sweden – Are You Fast Enough? – Reebok
International sportswear brand Reebok decided to combine their billboard advertising with an eye-catching stunt, using an interactive billboard that managed to builds its own audience. Located in the heart of the Swedish capital Stockholm, this innovative billboard campaign challenged passers-by to test their speed against the billboard, if they managed to beat the clock they won themselves a shiny new pair of Reebok trainers. This demonstrates a perfect way to integrate eye-catching billboard design with a more immersive marketing campaign.
Canada – Fighting Billboards – Daredevil
Building social media interaction into billboards is an exciting new opportunity for advertisers. When you’ve got a hit show like Netflix’s Daredevil, you’ve already got an invested audience to build into that idea. The Fighting Billboards campaign took pride of place in downtown Toronto, and invited users to tweet with specific hashtags in order to vote for their favourite characters. Whichever character won the vote that week inflicted ‘damage’ on the rival characters, creating an interactive billboard ad campaign that stayed fresh and interactive while continuously engaging the audience.
Indonesia – Builds Strong Teeth – Formula
Let’s face it, toothpaste isn’t everyone’s idea of an exciting product. So it’s particularly impressive how Formula managed to create an eye-catching and teeth-rending billboard that really stands out. The Builds Strong Teeth billboards integrate a powerful USP of the product with the physical dimensions of the billboard itself to create a big, bold advert that really gets the message across. You’re not likely to forget this kind of brand marketing in a hurry.
Global – Thanks 2016, it’s Been Weird – Spotify
It turns out Spotify users can be a little weird, which means Spotify has some intriguingly weird data to play with when it comes to marketing. So that’s just what they did. Crafting an innovative billboard campaign, Spotify combined data analytics with hilarious insight to provide an amazing campaign that showcased weird and wonderful facts about Spotify users and their listening habits. This is simple, fun and effective. Who thought billboards and data science would be such fast friends?
UK – Light Bulb Moment – Economist
If you’re a media brand built on the idea of valued insight, how do you craft a digital billboard design that drives home your understanding of complex issues in a simple way? That’s where the Economist’s light bulb moment occurred. The 3D bulb and illumination provides a near universal visual story of a good idea, so by linking that billboard into a sensor that triggers when people pass by, they’ve created a powerful message that really delivers on the magazine’s brand value.
Coca-Cola – “Real Magic” Campaign 2023
Coca-Cola embraced digital billboards in major cities worldwide as part of their “Real Magic” campaign. They used data to show personalised messages depending on the location and time of day, creating a more relatable connection with their audience. In New York’s Times Square, digital billboards interacted with users through their smartphones, inviting them to create and share custom messages that appeared live on the billboard.
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