No fame. No gain.
If people don’t know you, they won’t remember you.
If they don’t remember you, they won’t think about you—when they need you. Or when someone they know needs you.
It’s a game of recognition. Either stand the f*ck out, or fade into the background.
1. The Fame Gap
Most local businesses aren’t aiming for fame. They’re aiming for foot traffic, coupon redemptions, and maybe—if they’re feeling bold—a spike in website visits. And sure, those things matter. But they’re outputs, not strategy.
Somewhere along the way, the marketing world convinced everyone that growth lives inside a dashboard. That if you just obsess over cost-per-click long enough, you’ll hit it big. The result? Local advertisers have become expert optimizers of small outcomes.
But here’s the problem: performance marketing doesn’t scale unless people already know who you are. Growth doesn’t start with tracking. It starts with being known.
2. The Case for Fame (Backed by People Who’ve Read a Book)
Let’s bring in Byron Sharp, author of How Brands Grow. His research shows that brands grow by reaching more people and becoming “mentally available”—in other words, famous. Not micro-targeted. Not hyper-personalized. Famous.
Fame is what makes someone think of you without Googling. It’s what keeps your name in the conversation long after the sale. It doesn’t fade after the campaign ends. And unlike clickthrough rates, it can’t be gamed.
Bob Hoffman put it even better:
“If I was a CEO, I’d call my agency into my office and give them a three word brief: Make us famous.”
(Still the best strategy document ever written.)
3. OOH Is a Fame Multiplier (But Only If You Make It Count)
Out-of-home—bus shelters, wallscapes, wild postings, subway posters, and all the rest—is a powerful tool for building fame. Not because it’s tall or wide, but because it puts your brand in the physical world, where people live their lives and form their impressions.
But just being there isn’t enough. You’re not checking a box. You’re entering public space—where your message has to earn attention.
OOH works when it makes people feel something. When it makes them smile, think, chuckle, get annoyed, feel seen, or just feel anything other than indifferent. The worst outcome isn’t being controversial. It’s being forgettable.
That’s the bar. Interesting isn’t a style choice—it’s the cost of entry.
4. OOH Makes Digital Work Harder
If you’re already investing in digital, here’s the part you should really care about: OOH makes all of it better.
Nielsen found that nearly half of adults search online after seeing an OOH ad. Comscore found that OOH lifts online search by 38%, and social media engagement by 20%.
Translation: the click didn’t start with the click. It started in public.
Local advertisers often chase the last touchpoint like it’s the full story. But that last click? That only happened because something earlier made you seem legit. And nothing manufactures legitimacy faster than being seen in the real world.
5. What Not to Do (Unless You’re Trying to Be Ignored)
Here’s the classic move: Buy a digital billboard for eight weeks. Upload 37 ads. Each one a different message. Different colors. Different fonts. Different layouts. One talks about your pricing. One says you’re family-owned. One has a quote from a happy customer. One just says “Call Today!”
It’s not a campaign. It’s a group project where nobody talked to each other.
OOH can build reputations—but only if you give it something to build with. That means consistency. That means a voice. A tone. A recognizable thread people can follow and remember.
The billboard is just the medium. The impression is the message. And if your ad reads like a PowerPoint slide that lost its will to live, don’t expect anyone to remember it.
6. Want to Grow? Be Talked About.
If your growth plan depends entirely on the people who already know about you, congratulations—you’ve built a ceiling.
But if you want to be the name people bring up when a friend says “Do you know anyone who…,” then you need to be part of the cultural wallpaper before the need arises. You need to be familiar. Not just findable.
OOH doesn’t work like digital. That’s the point. It’s not here to drive sales this week. It’s here to make next month’s sales easier, next quarter’s brand stronger, and next year’s expansion obvious—because everyone already knows your name.
Fame is the goal. OOH is the lever.
What would you do if more people knew about you?
Expand your product line? Build another store? Take home more in distributions? Pay your employees more? Buy that new van? Send your kid off to that other college—the out of state one? Or take a vacation? The possibilities are near endless when your advertising actually works, and works hard for you.
We’re here to help with that. From creative execution and planning to out of home specific creative and sales training—we want to free up your efforts with OOH-sh*t billboard ads. The kind that get you famous. The kind that get your name on peoples’ lips. So let’s get people talkin’. Let’s get up to something.
