Gallup gets bold on billboards

Theo Bremer-Bennett, right, and David Glenn Taylor look over a project at Glyph Engine Creative Services Thursday. Glyph Engine is the Gallup graphic design firm that worked on the new advertising campaign that includes billboards and magazine ads for the city. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — People don't have much time to read the fine print or decode the semantics of a roadside billboard when they're driving 75 mph down the interstate.

It's one of the guiding principles Gallup Development Commission Director Glen Benefield, his staff, and the creative minds behind local design firm Glyph Engine put to work on the new billboards the city is putting up around the state this month and next to draw visitors to the area. To that end, they all feature colorful, panoramic scenes with one no more than two images and the city's name splayed prominently across the center in bold, fat letters.

"You don't have much time to see a billboard," Benefield said. "We wanted something that would catch a person's eye ... see what it was about real quick."

They're replacing the darker, more somber-looking billboards the city has been using to lure drivers off the highways for the past three or four years, advertising Gallup as "genuine" and as "the source."

With life expectancies of only one or two years, the vinyl images some have faded and fallen off were already well past their prime, Benefield said. But their main shortfall, he said, was that they were confounding the very people they were intended to attract.

"People were asking 'genuine what? The source of what?' People didn't understand," he said.

Those catch phrases are what advertising executives would call the brand, the first thing that comes to a customer's mind when he thinks of a product, the product in this case being Gallup.

"We were branding 'genuine' and 'the source'," Benefield said. Now, he added, by making the city's name the unmistakable centerpiece of the new billboards, "we're branding Gallup."

But the city also wants the prospective visitor to associate particular things with that brand.

"We took a direction with the Gallup Development Commission to try to develop Gallup as a destination point rather than a single industry ... to try to get people to come here for a multitude of reasons, while recognizing that jewelry is still a big part of it," Benefield said.

"We've got to make (Gallup's image) more diverse," agreed David Taylor, who owns Glyph Engine with Theo Bremer-Bennett. "We want to shine a light on the other things in Gallup, like the mountain biking and climbing."

As a result, they're two of the activities the new billboards feature, next to the tag line 'genuine adventure.'

Benefield doesn't expect the billboards to work on everyone. In general, he said, they're most affective on those highway travelers who've already heard something of Gallup, have probably driven through a few times before, "and say, 'Gee, let's stop by this time.' "

And with gas prices not likely to fall much, and more likely to keep rising in the long run, the city is focusing on the Four Corners area. The 'genuine adventure' versions, in particular, will probably be placed along Highway 491 so that they reach the large market of adventure tourists from Colorado.

Of the 13 new billboards the city plans to install, Benefield said, four are already up: two near Grants, one near Moriarty, and another near Tucumcari. He expects to have the rest for a grand total of approximately $9,500, including all the design, print and installation costs up within the next month.