A hometown horse touted on an Atlanta billboard brought home a major win this month, reigniting the discussion on bringing horse racing to Georgia.  Mucho Macho Man, owned by a Sugar Hill couple, won this year’s Breeder’s Cup Classic.  He was featured on a metro billboard seen by millions, with the hope that people would tune in to the race and be interested enough to want to be able to attend races locally. The horse’s owners have been actively working over the last 2 years to bring horse racing to Georgia.  They say there is a wide ranging benefit to adding racing to the list of attractions Georgia has to offer.  To find out more about what’s being done to bring the races to the Peach State and the benefits that could come with it, click here.

She’s in a fight for her life and hanging her hopes on billboards. Since the age of two, Gwinnett county resident Mandie Hale has been dealing with setbacks and symptoms from kidney failure.  The treatments have taken such a toll on Mandie’s body that her options are running out.  Not knowing where else to turn, she and her mom are hoping outdoor advertising will prompt a donor to make the call that will save her life.  All around Atlanta, billboards can be seen showing Mandie Hale’s face and asking strangers to help save her life.  It is just one more plea from Mandie’s mother, Joanna Cotes, who has been fighting for years to keep her daughter alive.  Cotes has already given her daughter one of her own kidneys. But Mandie’s body rejected it, leaving the family with the knowledge that the lifesaving organ would have to be given by a stranger.  For more on this story, click here.

The long arm of the law is going digital…and even the criminals admit it will be much harder to hide.  The FBI is posting photos of their most wanted on digital billboards in Atlanta and around the county.  FBI investigators say the results are remarkable!  They say it all began as a one city test and because of that success, they have now expanded their billboard campaign to over 40 states! Officials say the billboards can be directly credited for solving over 35 cases in just 2 years.  The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has a similar plan with the Outdoor Advertising Association of Georgia, which also is partnering with the FBI, says the billboard association’s Executive Director Conner Poe.  Click here for the full article.

They are the “first to respond and the last to get paid.”  That’s the message the wives of Atlanta policemen and firemen want to make clear to city council and Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed.  They have taken that message to two Atlanta billboards in hopes of getting a raise of more than one percent for their spouses.  But the city is holding fast to their position that they have given as much as they can.  A statement from Mayor Reed’s office reads: “Under Mayor Reed’s proposal for the FY 2014 budget, first responders would receive another 1 percent raise bringing their increase to 4.5 percent since he has been in office. We believe that in these tough economic times, the proposal shows mayor reed’s commitment to fairly compensating the women and men who protect our city.”    The wives say that one percent won’t even pay for a tank of gas.  Read more on their efforts here.

Big Market, Small price

Atlanta might not be the first place that comes to mind when considering large markets for billboard advertising, but according to local media buyers, it is the best priced!

It’s no secret that Atlantans spend a lot of time on the road with exposure to hundreds of billboards…with over 5 million people in the metro area and surrounding counties, Atlanta’s billboard market is one of the country’s best priced out of home advertising markets around. There are nearly 3,000 static billboards and over 200 digital boards in Atlanta alone.  Putting your company’s logo or product on one of these boards allows tens of thousands of people to see what you have to offer!

Not to mention the thousands of visitors who fly to Atlanta for meetings and conventions. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport also offers a wide variety of advertising options.  The airport greets travelers with signage at gates, concourses, and near escalators, signs suspended from ceilings, window signs, underground shuttle signage, and ads in executive club lounges.  Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the world’s busiest airport with 95.5 million passengers in 2012.

This content has been rewritten from an article by Toni Fitzgerald  in Media Life Magazine

For more than a decade, Atlanta attorney Tamela Adkins made a living as a hard nosed attorney fighting battles for people waging a war on their spouse through bitter divorce proceedings.  She worked in Buckhead as a contested divorce attorney.  When she tired of the rat race and moved to the suburbs, she wanted a slower pace, but to still continue to practice.  She began to advertise her services as a now uncontested divorce attorney on a billboard on I-85.  As a result, she found out first hand how effective Atlanta’s outdoor  billboard advertising can be.  Her decision to offer a $499 uncontested divorce on an Atlanta billboard advertisement helped launch her business and her income back to the level it was in Buckhead.  To read the full article, click  here.

A local company is not only helping the environment, but also reaching out to our distant cousins….Gorilla Sacks takes used billboard vinyls and turns them into usable products like tote bags, messenger bags or even covers for tablets.  Companies who’s billboard ad campaigns have ended can contact Gorilla Sacks and have their vinyls turned into products to promote their brand, be given away or even used as gifts for employees.  Companies can also simply donate their vinyls without ordering products.  This helps the environment by not having the used vinyls thrown into landfills and also because Gorilla Sacks donates a portion of their profits to various organizations that work to protect gorillas around the world.  To learn more about their products and mission, click here to visit their website.

Live updates aren’t just for media outlets like internet, television and radio anymore!  Now, sports fans in Atlanta can get real time updates outdoors on giant billboards!  Fox Sports South is now live streaming scores straight to billboards around the city of Atlanta! From the Atlanta Hawks to the Atlanta Braves, sports fans will have a hard time missing the 40 foot updates on billboards throughout the city.  Read more here.

Billboards have long been used to help travelers with decisions on where to eat or sleep, but now they are being used to help with even bigger decisions, like where to get your higher education.  Colleges and universities in Missouri and other states are vying for ad space on billboards to get their names in front of prospects far and wide.  And it’s not just the giants like the University of Missouri that are buying them…it’s everything from trade schools to smaller, discerning institutions, like Webster University.  Their ad campaign has garnered a lot of attention after they put two chess players dressed in athletic gear on their boards.   The University of Missouri’s campaign involves buying several billboards in a row and putting just one letter on each, to spell their nickname, “Mizzou.”  These campaigns come at a time when the pool of prospective students is shrinking because of a drop in the college aged population, making it even more important to have your name in the mix.  To do that, many schools are also expanding their campaigns to neighboring states hoping to attract out of state talent from places like Florida and Georgia.  Read the full article here.