Texas based ad agency, t:m advertising walked away with the 2008 single entry: billboard Obie award for their fantastic Nationwide Insurance paint spill wallscape. Our friends at Orange Barrel Media contracted with Commerce Color to print the extra large wallscapes. We were also called on to print the previous triple paneled wallscape depicting Fabio’s rapidly aging romance novel covers.

For years, Columbus, OH-based Nationwide Insurance has executed  humorous TV, billboard, and print-ad campaigns that feature the company’s slogan, Life Comes at You Fast. TX-based t:m, the advertising firm that developed the creative content for the campaign’s other formats, and Orange Barrel Media, a billboard sales company out of Columbus, OH, developed wallscapes for a building that faces High and Spring streets, two primary Columbus thoroughfares.

Their initial wallscape featured a popular Fabio based romance-novel theme, but Nationwide wished to push the envelope. Using the photographer’s original image files, t:m used Photoshop to subtly manipulate a paint spill image before sending it to Orange Barrel, which punctuated the design with 100 gallons of paint (PMS-matched to the wallscape’s paint shade) that drenched the wall, parking lot and several prop vehicles below. All told, the spectacular’s area encompassed 15,000 sq. ft. According to Pete Scantland, Orange Barrel’s general manager, eight employees worked on the project for one week. Check out the fantastic time lapse wallscape installation You Tube video.

He said the project, which will remain in place for approximately six months and would generate approximately 1.5 million impressions monthly. Scantland said, ‘Motorists are getting out of their cars to see if it’s real. The buzz it creates yields a win-win-win situation for the client, t:m and Orange Barrel Media.’

As for the 2008 Obie award, it apparently started out as a wallscape. But when the ad experts inquired about extending it to the parking lot, the guy who owns the building, owns the parking lot. So it became a wall-car-parking lot-scape.

If you want to learn more about how to buy one of these monster signs visit our own How to buy wallscapes and Building Wraps Squidoo lens. And don’t forget to stop our Wallscapes page if want to see a bunch more wallscape and building wrap samples.