The Billboard is Back

And I watched it happen from my couch

The Coolest Thing at Coachella Isn't a Band

When was the last time you actually had a reaction to a billboard? For me, it was this weekend, from my couch, where Radio and I “watched” Coachella unfold through the internet. While I’ll attend more than my fair share of concerts this summer, online is how most of us mere mortals attend the three-day California music festival.

And if social media is to be believed, billboards are taking the biggest stage at the show. Rolling Stone and Billboard are documenting the most clever billboards. Fast Company put out a video. And never before have the words “cool” and billboard shown up together in the same Instagram post. The digital buzz started about two weeks ago on Reddit as the billboards started getting installed along I-10, on the drive from Los Angeles to Indigo.

On its own, Coachella is always alluring. It’s essentially the official start of the summer music season, drawing 250K people for the first weekend. The people watching is top-notch and the outfits are jaw dropping. And the spending? Real.

GA Passes for the first three-day weekend is $549; $1,199 if you go VIP. A one-day suite costs $40K. All are sold out. This year ticket sales alone will amount to $120 million. That’s before fans spend another $375 on food and drinks, all in the hopes of not passing out in the desert heat.

All a perfect setup to my favorite billboard: “Still here when the festival payment plan kicks in.”

It’s from the ramen noodle brand Maruchan, inviting fans to visit their MaruMart pop-up for a DIY ramen station, merch and snacks to-go. All for free. The stop is stationed at a nearby outlet mall and built out of a shipping container that gets tugged by an Airstream where the ramen is cooked.

How a ramen noodle brand outsmarted the internet from a desert highway

Cheap, clever, and aimed directly at people who just blew four figures to watch bands play super short sets in what feels like a sauna.

Why is a 190-year-old medium having a moment?

The Coachella billboards return to what made billboards interesting when they were first introduced in 1835, advertising a circus coming to town, of all things.

By 1900, Palmolive, Kellogg’s, and Coke were plastering them coast to coast and by 1956 the country was saturated by more than 500,000 lining our highways. Now we’re down to 354,000 billboards nationwide. In 2024, $6 billion was thrown at them, but spend is softening — down 5.1% last year.

The Coachella billboards work because they’re atypical, to the point of being disorienting. They break through the doldrums, returning to what made the roots of the medium work in the beginning: they’re specific to where you’re going and funny, but only in context. They couldn’t exist anywhere else and still work.

A ramen brand mocking a festival only makes sense when you’re near the festival and can visit after the bands end for the night. It’s the opposite of a banner ad on a website shown to the entire world, begging to be ignored. Ramen is never ignored, just ask Radio.

Turns out the most interesting billboard in the world only works in one place. No AI figured that out.

What are your thoughts on billboards? Music festivals? Did you attend Coachella? The lineup didn’t do much for me, but if I was there, I’d see:

• Iggy Pop

• Devo

• The Strokes

• Interpol

• Jack White

update: One more to add to my list above: Nine Inch Noize. Apparently the set was beyond — in a good way. I’m a big NIN fan and love me some Trent Reznor, having seen him multiple times, but I’m a bit of a traditionalist. Old school NIN. I was a bit skeptical of this mashup with German Iraqi electronic producer Alex Ridha, a.k.a. Boys Noize. Sounds like I was wrong and this was a set worth seeing. Tour please! read the review