An Education in Digital

In November, I was invited to speak at Seminole Vocational Education Center by commercial arts director Chris Juul. Throughout the semester, his students work on creating a marketing campaign to promote SVEC, including a digital billboard which we offered to display on one of our signs for a few weeks in December. Chris brought myself and our Senior Graphic Designer Richard Homer to speak to the students about what works and what doesn't when it comes to outdoor advertising.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to share my experience with the class, and was intrigued by their level of exposure to and interest in digital outdoor advertising. When I asked the class to raise their hands if they had ever noticed a digital billboard, nearly everyone's hand shot up. It was eye-opening to see such a response. A year ago, only about 20% of the room would have responded in the affirmative to the same inquiry. It made me sad in a way, knowing that my presentations will no longer be an introduction to a whole new advertising era, now that the majority of people are familiar with digital outdoor. On the other hand, during that day at SVEC, I got to spark the imagination of the classroom on how to use the power of this new medium.

The design that was chosen was created by third-level designer Chandler Burke (pictured), who used the tagline "Build Your Future" to drive traffic to the school's website. Thank you to Chris and his class for being such a welcoming and engaging audience. I look forward to coming back to share again next year.

You can read MSN's article on SVEC's billboard project here.