Final Project- billboard campaign

Jerra Kofford

Comms 303

Prof. Cutri

12/18/13

FINAL PROJECT

For my final project I created three billboards to campaign for Cubby’s restaurant in Provo.  My objective was to target the adult male audience and promote Cubby’s by emphasizing the ‘Chicago beef’ aspect.  I did this in a couple different ways.  The restaurant has a very cool Chicago style which makes it unique so I decided to play off of that and make the billboards look like chalkboards.  Cubby’s menu is written in chalk and the store is lined with light and dark paneled wood.  So the billboards are black and lined with a wood border (ideally it would look like the wood in Cubby’s but that’s all I could find.)  To get ideas for the three billboards I asked 10 men on campus, 10 men around Provo, and 10 men from BYU Athletic Marketing what the first three things they think of when they here the word Chicago.  All of them said similar things, which led me to the following three billboards.  (In designing these I used typography elements, composition, as well as a different Gestalt principle in each of them.)

Billboard #1:

This billboard was to capture the essence of Chicago coming to Provo.  I tried for a very long time but could not create a quality city drawing of Chicago so I used a picture.  My idea is there, although if it were really created in real life we would have a professional draw the city of Chicago and have wind blowing to the right to incorporate Gestalt’s element of continuation.  My idea is to also have the typography match the font on Cubby’s menu but of course that was impossible to do on a computer.  The typography is also waved in a curvy line to sort of match the curvy lines of the ‘wind’.  The bottom of the billboard shows the slogan of the campaign along with Cubby’s logo.  The slogan “da beef.” is meant to promote Cubby’s beef and is put in Chicago slang by using “da” as “the.”

Billboard #2:

This billboard is also one where I couldn’t execute my idea very well on a computer.  But Cubby’s is also a restaurant that has TV’s constantly playing ESPN and sports channels and the most common answers I got from the men I talked to had something to do with sports. So I decided to have a cool portrait of Michael Jordan since he’s someone that almost everyone is familiar with, and one that people quickly associate with Chicago.  I wanted the portrait to be drawn with chalk and to be drawn with only dots to use Gestalt’s closure principle and to create a cool unique portrait that isn’t usually seen on billboards.  The message is meant to portray that Cubby’s beef is just as good as Michael Jordan by essentially saying,  “even though we didn’t get Michael Jordan to play basketball here, it’s okay because we have Cubby’s beef which is just as good.”  The slogan and logo again are featured at the bottom right corner.

Billboard #3:

On this last billboard I tried to put a white silhouette of a bear and a bull on both sides and then the Cubby’s logo at the bottom to create symmetry and to incorporate Gestalt’s similarity principle.  Ideally I would like to have the bear and the bull to be drawn with chalk like the logo to create more similarity.  Lots of people think of the Chicago Bears or the Chicago Bulls so I played on that idea and used the logo and slogan to tie them all together.  

(The font in the last two billboards are different from the first one but that’s because I worked on these over several days and couldn’t find the font I first used, but like I said, my idea is to have the font mimic Cubby’s menu.)

Hopefully you can see my idea and concept even though I couldn’t execute them the way I would have liked to.   I felt limited and inexperienced with the software but I tried my best.  Of course if I were to create these in real life it would be done with better execution of details and quality and obviously it wouldn’t literally be drawn and written with chalk because is to easily diminished, but the billboards would be printed to look like it was a real chalkboard.

The overall idea is to promote Cubby’s as a sporty, Chicago-styled restaurant with delicious Chicago beef.  My billboards involve icons and popular Chicago “trademarks” that will resonate with the public immediately.  I used simple composition and short messages because all of this is what makes billboards easy to read and easy to register to someone who is driving by and only glances at it for only a few short seconds.