Deliverables

Outdoor | Billboard | Corona Extra (SAB Group) | Alcoholic

The Brief

SAB issued a proactive pitch across all their agency roster, challenging every brand in their portfolio to put forward their best outdoor idea for a single, unique billboard site in Johannesburg. The winning concept would be produced and flighted. For Corona, the creative challenge was specific: Johannesburg is a landlocked city with no beach, yet Corona's entire brand identity is built around coastal living, sunshine and the This Is Living philosophy. The brief was to make that tension work in Corona's favour, in a single outdoor execution, at a highway junction where the road physically splits toward Cape Town in one direction and Durban in the other.

The Execution

Two oversized wooden directional signposts were mounted either side of the billboard, one pointing toward Cape Town at 1568km, the other toward Ballito at 632km. Between them, a Corona bottle, a beach backdrop, palm trees and the line This Is Living. The site did the creative work. Standing at that exact highway split, every Johannesburg driver stuck in traffic knew precisely which road led to the coast and which led home.

The billboard didn't sell Corona so much as remind every person who saw it where they'd rather be. Produced through Dentsu, where my copywriter and I developing the concept as freelancers on the account.

The Outcome

The idea beat five other global agency submissions to win the pitch and was subsequently produced and flighted from October through to February, covering the full South African summer holiday season and reaching Johannesburg commuters at the exact moment the coast felt most out of reach.