If you've ever driven on highways through the rural Midwest, then you know that billboards outnumber trees on many of those roads.
There will literally be 20 or 30 billboards in a row at times, to the point where it's impossible to pay attention to any one billboard in particular.
And that's the problem with billboard advertising. It's impact becomes largely subliminal, seeing as how drivers rarely focus heavily on the billboard at all. Not to mention that due to safety concerns, drivers can't look at a billboard for more than 2 seconds or so.
But Bloom Grocery may have solved this vision impairment billboards face, when they recently put up a billboard in North Carolina to promote their new line of beef. The catch is that the billboard actually emits the smell of cooking steak to entice drivers.
The aroma was artificially created and is stored in tanks behind the sign, which is then wafted with industrial fans.
While this will probably disgust vegetarians, I'm sure it will attract more than a few meat-lovers, if only out of curiosity over steak-scented sign. More importantly however, this is a new venture into a largely untapped resource: the power of smell to attract customers.
If this billboard is successful, we could end up seeing many more of these scented billboards spring up across the country.
I just hope my local Waste Management company doesn't decided to go this route.
