Cover Story
September 2017
form of Henry Ford's Model-T in the first
quarter of 20th century gave rise to a steady
increase in the use of billboard advertising.
Before and a er images by Marcelo Palinkas of the São Paulo City Council
HISTORY OF BILLBOARD ADVERTISING
H
umans have been creating wall art
since the time they lived in caves.
What the wall art was used for, and at
what point it crossed from artistic display to
marketing for a business is an interesting
question. During the time of the ancient
Egyptians the government was using images
carved into stones to post the laws and
regulations of the land. This carving into stones
may, in a way, have been the oldest form of
outdoor advertising. The modern-day billboard
advertising approach can trace its roots to
lithography, which was an invention of the late
1790s. The genius of this invention is that it
made it possible to mass produce as many
posters and announcements as a business
needed. There was one major limitation to the
outdoor billboards being produced at the time,
and that was the quality of the posters; they did
not stand up when exposed to the elements for
prolonged periods of time.
The circuses were one of the first businesses to
profit from this new form of mass marketing,
and so outdoor advertising underwent a major
innovation which brought us the modern
billboard advertising that we know today. The
earliest use of the billboard by the circuses
dates back to 1835. Prior to the invention of
lithography, billboard copy could only be
produced on a very small scale which made it
significantly less effective as a marketing tool
than it is today.
AN INDUSTRY IS FORMED
Fifty years ago Lyndon Johnson introduced the
Highway Beautification Act aimed at ensuring
there were not too many billboards on US
highways detracting from the natural beauty of
the Country. Ironically within the same Act it
provided for the screening of junkyards from
specified highways with of all things billboards.
It did not apply to every highway but its aim was
to limit billboards to commercial and industrial
l o cat i o n s . T h e re we re co m p e n s at i o n
provisions for owners of existing boards but the
penalty for States not taking control within
their boundaries was the loss of revenue from
the highway budget from Federal Government
.
Billboards were being used as a very successful
form of advertising even before the start of the
1900's. They were in essence just large posters
attached to a permanent fixture such as a
building. The arrival of the motor car in the
Billboards were placed at the sides of roads to
capture the attention of passing motorists. As
the speed of the motor car increased with its
development, billboards needed to be larger.
The billboards needed to be larger so as to give
the passing motorist enough time to take in the
advertisement. The largest standard-size
billboard that were used on highways were the
Bulletin which is 14 feet x 48 feet in size.
THE HISTORY OF THE BILLBOARD IN
NIGERIA AND THE FORMATION
OF OAAN
Billboards became a feature in advertising as
early as the mid 1860's, and over the years have
become a popular and effective form of
outdoor advertising. The golden age of
billboard advertising took place in the 1900's,
and those who first saw the potential of this
method of advertising wanted to know how to
rent billboard space and how to rent a billboard
sign. Outdoor advertising in Nigeria started
with the establishment of the West African
Publicity Company by the United African
Company in 1928, the company which
combined mainstream advertising with
outdoor did not develop outdoor advertising
beyond the posting of double and quad crown
posters on wall at strategic location, it is
important to note that there were also
Hercules Neon Sign during this period.
The industrialization of the 1950s introduced