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Boardwalk owns billboards in car parks, lifts, stations and street corners. When a big client left in January, a lot of them went blank overnight.

The problem

An empty billboard looks like a business in trouble. Boardwalk needed to sell the space without paying anyone to fill it.

The process

So the boards started talking about themselves.

1. Big type only. No photos, just huge words and one shape, so it works on a lift screen and a twelve-metre board.

2. A sun on every board. A bright burst marks the posters as Boardwalk’s own, so people learn to spot the free spaces.

3. Lit at night. The lightbox versions glow in the dark like a comic panel someone left on.

The result

Most of the empty boards were booked by March, mostly by people who had read them at a bus stop.

Two were booked by the bus company.