There are a lot of ways to get people’s attention in outdoor. A smoking billboard however, is not something drivers see everyday. For two days, people honked, stopped and craned their necks to get a better look at the board everyone was talking about in Sioux Falls, SD. The billboard campaign, for Avera Health, was created by BVK to draw attention to the importance of having an emergency medical plan for your family and create awareness for Avera’s emergency services. The boards showed a woman sitting on a gurnee in front of a terrible car crash, with one of the cars smoking behind her — smoke, that billowed off the photo into the sky, thanks to a hidden smoke machine behind the board.
TV, radio and newspapers all covered the effort that had the people of Sioux Falls buzzing. The campaign also drew an unintended consequence. It got the attention of the Sioux Falls Fire Department which asked Avera to eventually shut the smoke down. So now, the campaign continues sans smoke, but still driving people to the website WhyImAlive.com, where consumers can read about more of the amazing life and death stories of people saved by Avera’s emergency department.
