News May 7, 2018

Listeners have helped triple j’s Gen And Lewis unveil their new billboard

Image: Jane Longhurst

Have you ever sat back and wondered why you’ve never seen a billboard promoting triple j? If you drive though any major city in Australia, you’re bound to see giant advertisements promoting Triple M or Nova, but never triple j. Well, thanks to one charitable Tasmanian, the town of Dover now features its very own billboard, emblazoned with the faces of triple j’s Gen and Lewis.

If Mad Men has taught us anything, it’s that the world of advertising is a cutthroat industry in which money talks and, well, you know the rest. So when it comes to a government funded station like triple j, you can begin to understand why they might want to focus their financial efforts on more important things than billboards.

However, a campaign spearheaded by triple j’s Gen and Lewis has resulted in the pair now having their own billboard at the end of a dead-end highway in Dover, Tasmania.

As Gen Fricker explained, with the faces of commercial radio hosts looming down at the general public from almost every available surface, the pair began to look into their own humble billboard. However, they quickly discovered that billboards are a little bit expensive – which is hard to overcome when your budget is all of $0.

“Finally a kind man named Mark from Dover, Tasmania, kindly offered his council-approved, former community noticeboard,” explained Gen. “It’s even on a highway, albeit a dead end highway that becomes undriveable in the winter. STILL A BILLBOARD THO.”

The pair then put their plan into action, undergoing a photoshoot, and asking listeners for captions and a final design for the billboard. Just check out some of the best submissions that they received for the end result.

One of the submissions for Gen & Lewis' Tasmania billboard

Images courtesy of triple j

However, in the end, the most humble billboard won, with Jordan from Brisbane submitting the winning design, which is adorned with the tongue-in-cheek slogan, “Wake up with Gen and Lewis. 3pm weekdays.”

“These were all of a higher quality than we deserved, so we went with the design that had the most on it. More bang for our lack of buck,” Gen explained.

“And now we are very happy to announce that The Little Billboard That Could has found a home in Dover, Tasmania, the southernmost community of its size in Australia,” she explained. “One day we might even raise enough money to cover the whole thing.”

With the billboard being unveiled on Friday morning, it’s undoubtedly a little bit strange seeing the faces of Gen Fricker and Lewis Hobba on this lonely stretch of Tasmanian road, but if anything, this proves just how dedicated triple j listeners are when it comes to making the dreams of the station come through.