Message on a Billboard

It seems that everyone and everything is making a come back nowadays. Take That started off the craze, but recently we've seen comebacks from the likes of Blur, Spandau Ballet, The Verve, Spice Girls, and even a one off gig from Led Zeppelin. Apparently 90s boyband 5ive also made a comeback, although you'd be excused for not noticing. And it's not just in the world of music that we've seen a revival of the old; TV shows like Doctor Who and Gladiators have returned to our screens, and Wispa chocolate bars are back in the shops. The latest piece of 20th Century nostalgia to return is the Wispa Gold, riding on the huge success of the original Wispa comeback, the Wispa Gold is the same thing, but filled with caramel. It was discontinued in 2003, but after a petition on Facebook, Cadbury's have announced it's return this September.

So how will they go about marketing the return of yet another classic chocolate bar? After their successful For The Love of Wispa TV/viral campaign, this time round they've opted to harness the power of outdoor advertising. Cadbury's have bought advertising space around the country, and are letting the public decide what goes on it. In their own words:

"We’ve decided to give our advertising space to you guys as a thank you for all the love you’ve shown to Wispa. We've bought thousands of billboards all over the UK and Ireland so that you can share your special messages with the world. Yes that’s right, you let us know your special message and if it gets selected we will post it on a real billboard in the location of your choice."

So you simply upload your message to the Wispa Gold Messages website, and it could end up on a billboard somewhere. The idea seems very similar to some people's responses to our recent Third Space university brief, set as part of the ClearChannel Student Design Awards. I know several people on our course came up with the idea of opening up the advertising space to the public and letting them put their own pictures/messages on it.

It's a decent concept; if you include the public in the campaign itself and get them to interact with it, then they're much more likely to spread the word. There haven't been many entries on the Wispa Gold Messages website so far, but then the campaign was only launched a couple of days ago. Most of the entries so far appear to be messages declaring Person A's all-consuming never-ending love for Person B.



And there's no need to worry if you're not artistic, you can send in a plain, text-only message, and if selected to go on a billboard, Wispa's team of graphic designers will help spruce it up a bit for you by adding some lovely clip-art or some interesting typography, or maybe even both.


Lucky 'Jas' could be getting a message on a billboard from his beloved 'Harps'


Oh Glenn, you're a true romantic


An example of a message spruced up by Wispa. Look, they even added a lovely gold Wispa frame

Amongst the love messages there's also plenty of pictures of people's families and children, as well as an occasional nugget of wisdom or advice that somebody obviously felt ought to be shared with the world in the form of a 48 sheet by the side of a dual carriageway.


Someone's child dressed as young Clark Kent there


Yes, it's important when imparting wisdom to start every single word with a capital letter

Wispa have actually allocated hundreds of advertising spaces around the country for this campaign, including six 'Big Ones', presumably 96 sheet or above, and a large number at underground tube stations in London, as well as countless roadside billboards. You can see all the locations on their interactive map, and there really are quite a lot of them. Come October our streets will be flooded with messages from the public, courtesy of Wispa Gold, which could either be highly interesting, or highly annoying, although I'm sure either way it will generate plenty of publicity for the revived chocolate bar.

I just hope that between now and the beginning of October, Wispa receive some messages that are actually entertaining. After rummaging through all the clichéd love messages, and the occasional picture of someone's cat, I managed to find one message that almost put a smile on my face:

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