WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE ─ PhotoSails
COME
SAIL AWAY PhotoSails takes billboard advertising out to sea. By Richard Romano
P
42
hotoSails (www. photosails.com) was an invention born of necessity. In the late 1990s, Aaron
Kiss ran a sailboat chartering company in Ft. Lauderdale, and one of his promotional strategies was handing out pamphlets on the beach. These
WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage | May 2020
PhotoSails founder Aaron Kiss
ended up littering the beaches, so the city passed an ordinance banning the handing out of print pamphlets. “I needed a way to get to the people without littering or causing problems with the city,” Kiss said. “So we decided to paint up a sail with my logo, my slogan and my phone number and started sailing up and down the beaches. I increased my income by 400% in six months and put five other boats out of business.” The effectiveness of sailboat advertising thus proven, Kiss started working with other local businesses. “I had some friends who owned their own businesses and asked me if I could make a sail for them,” he said. “They couldn’t really afford what I wanted to do, so I made a giant 600-square-foot Velcro sail with stick-on letters and numbers, and I would write messages and put logos on it. When people wanted to hire me for a day of sailing, I’d charge them my charter rate.” Things were moving along swimmingly until there came a turning point.
