The customers that get it, get it. The ones who don’t, Google.
Bonjour Millionaire,
You know what they say.
Dance like nobody’s watching.
Love like you’ll never get hurt.
Market like a San Francisco billboard.
Imagine you’re driving around SF (or fine, riding a Waymo and trying to look relaxed).
You look up and see this:
Get it? It’s okay, if you don’t.
Because Vibe.co didn’t put up these billboards for EVERY person.
They bought them for a very specific TYPE of person:
Silicon Valley tech people, VCs, and the marketers who orbit both.
Those people? They instantly recognized Marc Andreessen’s shiny head.
They probably even knew how to spell Andreessen. (I did not).
They got the joke – and they also understood it’s meant just for them.
If you’re not in this bubble, the creative might feel like it’s written in cuneiform.
And that’s the point. It’s so niche, so weird, it went viral:
Okay, how about this billboard:
It’s obviously about Elon Musk…but what’s the deal with the sink?
Ask the target audience. I promise you, they get it. I got it (proud of that).
More importantly, they are picking up on exactly what Vibe.co is putting down.
For the target audience, it’s peak IYKYK OOH.
If You Do Not, In Fact, Know This Out of Home? You might still Google it out of spite or curiosity. IYDNIFKTOOHYMSGIOOSOC.
4 of these billboards ran in SF.
The entire thing went from ideation to execution in 3 (three!!) days.
I love it when a brand who has freedom, ACTS like it.
The billboards almost immediately broke through on the internet & in the trades. It’s my new favorite example of the “IYKYK principle.”
Whatever industry you’re in, there’s a lot to learn from this campaign.
Let’s talk about it.
LESSON 1: DON’T MARKET TO EVERYONE
“Everyone” is not a target audience.
Not even for the very biggest brands. Not even for the most universal products.
If you’re speaking to everyone, you’re usually speaking to nobody, because your marketing becomes…flat. Unmemorable. Generalized. Pandering to the lowest common denominator.
You must find your specific people.
For Vibe.co, a CTV ad platform, that means marketing to marketers.
We are NOT an easy bunch to impress. We’re not a monolith. We’re professionally judgy.
But Vibe.co acted with the confidence of a brand that knows its audience deeply.
Vibe’s prospects are in SF. So are their VCs. It’s a hub for the most terminally plugged-in marketers you’ll ever meet. Translation: the stuff people talk about here, goes WIDE.
Vibe.co knew tech marketers would immediately recognize the people mentioned on the billboards. Even without their full name or face.
They let some people feel confused, so the RIGHT people could feel smart. They rewarded insider status.
That is how you create something worth talking about.
LESSON 2: NOT BEING BORING IS A STRATEGY
Most B2B ads are BORING.
Like, they suck.
They’re all “revolutionizing the future at scale with next-gen business solutions,” you know?
The benefit of boring is clear: it feels safe. It offends no one.
But it also has a hidden cost: nobody remembers it.
Meanwhile, “don’t be boring” is Vibe.co’s marketing philosophy.
Their goal was awareness, so they went for an attention-grabber instead of trying to talk about the technical product details.
Their internal KPIs were, and I quote: “Site traffic and NOISE”
This phrasing is so dear to me.
I think we’ve all been part of teams where we SAY we’re running top-of-funnel campaigns, but then judge them like they were supposed to drive conversions immediately.
Vibe.co didn’t do that.
The next step they wanted after someone saw the billboard was not “schedule a demo.” It was: look us up. Be curious. Fire off a tweet, maybe.
That’s how grown-up awareness works.
And, not to worry: Vibe.co backed it up with the unsexy stuff. They tracked site uplift in specific locations, as well as social engagement.
While the billboards were live, they adjusted their paid search & social & retargeting, so all that curiosity had somewhere to go.
In this case, they knew the billboards would go over the heads of some people. Figuratively and literally.
But with 1 big, un-boring swing, they drove the message home: With Vibe.co, you can reach tech VIPs on TV.
That’s a powerful value prop.
LESSON 3: THE PROOF IS IN THE PUNCHLINE
Vibe.co’s strategy is to meet marketers where they are, both physically and intellectually.
Just like marketers can use Vibe.co to meet their audience where THEY are: watching TV. It’s all very meta.
Not Mark’s Meta. “Meta” as in self-referential.
There’s a parallel between the way Vibe.co markets to marketers and what its platform can do for brands:
🔭: OOH and CTV both work when the goal is awareness and exploration.
🎨: Success comes from thoughtful targeting + creative that matches the context.
🧙: Even when conversion isn’t the goal, awareness often boosts social + search.
The results on the billboards prove this out:
People started reaching out directly to Vibe.co & co on WhatsApp and LinkedIn, saying it was fun, that it stuck in their brains.
Then came direct traffic lift. Then social engagement. A lot of it.
Then, the trades.
The conversation built from there.
And yes, it got loud on X, with millions of organic impressions & hundreds of threads.
We do not need to treat that like a scoreboard, but it’s very much proof of concept:
A billboard became an object specific people wanted to talk about.
Now Vibe.co is on everyone’s radar. Ours included.
P.S. I asked Vibe.co about the costs here, and they’re illuminating: The whole campaign was roughly $120K, which gave them 4 weeks on 4 premium-placement billboards.
And, lest we forget, this went from idea to billboard in 3. Working. Days. Not a 6-week agency RFP process. The CEO came up with the concept. The team whipped up visuals, from the forehead to the sink. Then they called their billboard guy.
As the French say, voila.
LESSON 4: CULTURE IS THE FLEX
The billboard here is not the point, really. It’s the proof.
I think we can agree, many of us talk about boldness in a campaign, but have had to walk it back to beigeness before the rubber meets the road.
The ability to act with speed and create something worth talking about is another meta-signal to marketers.
It says: this team ships fast. It commits to big, creative swings. And it knows TV & out-of-home aren’t the slow, old-timey channels they used to be.
It shows this team knows there’s only a teensy window to earn attention before your audience scrolls away.
This changes the conversation from ad tech (BORING), to a culturally-aware inside joke.
BEING INVISIBLE IS A FATE WORSE THAN FAILURE
The fun twist is that this rule-breaking stunt is actually Vibe.co’s repeatable GTM strategy.
Their CEO dressed up as Sydney Sweeney recently, as an homage to controversial advertising. They’re a marquee sponsor of new media, like TBTN.
And, a few months ago, they paid $50k to send 12 LED trucks circling the block for day 1 of AdWeek:
Each time, they were showing (not telling): there’s life beyond Google & Meta. Creative OOH can work for B2B. It gets press attention, drives future sales convos, and sucks up more mind share for your brand.
Just like this time: they got MARKETERS talking.
They created a permission structure to use CTV in the 1st place.
They weren’t afraid to alienate the wrong audience.
When your budget hits the table, it’s worth asking:
Is this buying polite performance with a paint-by-numbers strategy?
Or, is it telling a story people will remember?
Think about the jokes, languages, and references people you care about (YOUR target audience) will understand – and that separate them from out-groups.
And…make them! Have fun. Use meme logic.
Find bolder, more creative ways to show up where they are.
And, if that’s CTV, now you know Vibe.co.
Use your marketing as proof of concept, whatever you’re selling.
Because the customers that get it, will get it.
And the ones who don’t – they aren’t your customers anyway.
If you want to meet the people behind this playbook, this is where to start.
Yours,
Ari