A few months ago, I started noticing billboards around town with a photo of a guy who looked kind of like Davy Crockett and a message: “Jim Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake.“ I didn’t think much of it.
But I kept seeing them — you can’t drive five minutes in town without seeing a billboard with Jim Bridger’s face on it.
So then I got curious: Who was spending all this money to promote an explorer who died almost 150 years ago?
Turns out: It’s actually an experiment in proving that advertising works.
There’s a company, Reagan Outdoor Advertising, that owns all these billboards. They had a challenge: How do you prove the ROI, or return on investment, on a billboard to an advertiser?
So they came up with their own experiment.
They told the Salt Lake Tribune that they surveyed locals about Jim Bridger before the billboards went up, and they’ll do so after the campaign is over. Then they’ll have data to share, showing that locals went from knowing nothing about Bridger before to knowing at least a little bit about him after. A lot of locals are going to say, “Yeah, isn’t he the guy who discovered the Great Salt Lake?“
And then they’ll make the pitch to local businesses: If these billboards could have that kind of impact about a previously-anonymous 19th century explorer, then they could surely have similar impact for a modern brand.
It’s a great reminder: If you’re going to make the claim, you need the data and the story to prove it first. And if you don’t have the data, well: You might need to get creative to dig it up.
———
I took that photo of the Jim Bridger billboard in Salt Lake. It’s the same billboard everywhere — same copy, same yellow background, same drawing of Bridger.