Outdoor advertising, such as billboards, has been known for years. Different kind and size of billboards have populated our environment, filling every intersection of our cities. While billboards give significant benefits to local government and sponsored brands, the excessive location often cluttered our landscape and points of view. Alternative outdoor advertising aside of billboards need to be considered if we want to please involved stakeholders. Local government needs the tax revenue, advertising agency needs the placement fee, the institution needs to have their brand exposed to gain people’s awareness, and the public needs their clear-of-sight environment.

Today, where TV commercials are already cluttered, institution need to broaden their brand awareness to channels that people can experience directly. They launch below the line campaign programs such as direct marketing and guerilla marketing. In developed countries, such campaigns are adapted to our every day environments. You could see a custom shelter bus with branding elements, or trash bins modified and painted with branding messages. In a park, you could see sidewalk and even fountain used creatively with brand messages. These kinds of campaign stimulate and excite people, since the products are part of what people interact everyday. Even billboards are designed interactively. When you point our cellphones to a billboard, the cellphones will directly browse to a website relevant with the billboard’s message.

Such alternatives of outdoor advertising needs to be planned and designed carefully. Brands love to use current type of billboards since they require minimum maintenance and attract many public eyes, regardless the consequences to environment. The advertising agency should educate the institutions that the alternatives will have similar impact to brand awareness, while local government should make policies to forbid any further billboard constructions. The design exploration of shelter bus, trash bins, sidewalks, fountains and other outdoor elements should also anticipate how public in developing countries react. They should anticipate people’s bad habits of sticking posters, graffiti, and littering. When designing alternative outdoor medium could fulfill every stakeholder’s expectations, hopefully we can have the pleasure of enjoying a place with quality of life amenities.

(a Media Ide’s abstract for International Seminar ‘Arte-Polis: Creative Culture and the Making of Place’ in Bandung - denied)