Billboards
We’ve received a lot of positive feedback to our announcement of the billboard project. It was a lot more work than expected, but so is everything we’ve been trying to accomplish, so what’s the difference?
We currently have three digital billboards running. Many of you have asked where you can find them, but we would like to let them run for a bit longer before jeopardizing our current placements. Based on the trolls who comment on here, the FAC forum appears to be equally interesting to vigilantes as it is to advocates. For that reason we don’t want to draw too much attention to them until we have more placed. Currently they are just outside three major cities, along roads with high traffic counts.
The URL we are displaying on the billboard points to RegistryFacts.com . If you visit that site, you will see it is basically a slideshow of statistics on the registry with the sources. No position, just the facts! The ad runs on a large digital billboard during off-peak hours (peak hours are much more expensive and we would rather focus on the number of times it’s been displayed, rather than the number of commuters who have seen it, at least until our messaging is perfected and we see the value of the more expensive ads.)
When it’s displaying, it remains on the billboard for roughly 8 seconds before rotating to another ad. To date (it’s only been a week), the ad has been displayed almost eight thousand times. We are receiving visitors to the site, but it is difficult to distinguish whether the visitors are from those seeing the billboard or those finding the site in this post. For that reason, if you have any desire to check out the site, click on the link above, rather than typing in the URL, this way we can see that FAC is the referring source for the traffic.
As we further develop this project, we would like to improve the artwork for the billboards, improve the artwork for the site, and make it a tool that can be used by affiliates outside of Florida also. With the generic name “registry facts” and the universal message, we welcome other affiliates, even national affiliates, to participate and add billboards in their states. Because consistency is key, and it will take seeing it a few times before being curious enough to visit the site, it’s likely better to have a consistent brand throughout the US, as opposed to different states doing different things.
We are completely open to ideas and suggestions. This is a measure that benefits all of us, so if you have a creative tagline, graphic or color scheme that would draw interest, please feel free to share it with us. If you are a graphic artist and can turn the ideas into design in several pixel dimensions to accommodate different billboards, please share your talent. If you are a webmaster and can build a more appealing and functional site than what we scrambled to put up on RegistryFacts.com, we need your help.
What we’ve learned so far is that positive messages are better than negative messages, 7 words or less (or nobody will have the time to read them), avoid the use of the term “sex offender registry” or just even just “sex”, clean and legible. If anyone has ideas, please share them in the comments, if anyone would like to submit design ideas, please write “contact me, I can do [graphic design/web development/marketing analytics, etc.]” (we can get your email from the back end of your comment) or email info@. and if you’re a leader from another state who would like to develop this method of getting the word out in your state, please reach out to us.
Seriously – great work on this. Definitely a model we should be following in other states with local relevant data beyond the national stats.
The only suggestion I would make is on the website have links to the articles cited in the scroll. That would help to remove any friction for those visiting and finding the data.
Agreed. The scroll is actually a graphic. It’s like a movie that loops. It’s not text and it’s not clickable. If there’s a developer who can correct that, we’d love it.
The alternative was to just make a list, but that would not have been as aesthetically pleasing.
I love the loop! But as this develops that might be a good idea to make each one clickable. It is noted where you get those facts in the loop, which is good.
Already a beautiful site. Let the more verbose slides display a few seconds longer.
Agree, just a few seconds more would help.
Totally agree. Love it but even though a fast reader, I cant get through the past part of the longer messages. The shorter ones are fine timewise. That a great idea FAC !!
Hi,
just want to mention that the message on that link (RegistryFacts.com) goes by too fast, people reading wont be able to read it well, please leave the longer messages longer in order for everyone to read without rushing!! Thanks
One idea for a name would be ” truth vs. Fiction” another is ” don’t believe the hype – research shows” or you can replace research with the word statistics. Another good stat would be how many ” re arrested are petty ftr’ s vs. Arrests for actual new charges by the person’s forced to register that these ahem.. Law enforcement officers brag that they arrested after one of their registry compliance jokes
“The list is myths based on half-truths.”
“The list doesn’t do what you think it does.”
“This label comes with the most baggage.”
“Your kid’s safety in a post-registry world.”
“The list doesn’t make your children safer.”
I haven’t seen the billboards or how you are driving traffic to the site from them, if you are using a QR Code, consider adding a tracker to the QR Code so you can distinguish who scanned that as opposed to who entered the URL. Probably not the drivers, but their passengers may be visiting the site from the billboard and a QR code will not only track that they just came from a billboard, but you can have a different QR on each billboard so you know which one they came from.
Love it! The messages do go by a little too fast for me to keep up with, but I hope we can keep this up for a long time. Should we do a billboard sustainer?
What ever happened to these media billboards? Are they still being utilized?