• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, February 8, 2011

Stripes Convenience Stores knows customers love its take-out tacos. So when it went looking for a way to share that enthusiasm with a wider audience, it chose a novel approach: Using digital billboards, streaming their Twitter comments for all to see.

"Stripes really wanted to push the envelope," Ian Dallimore, digital strategist at Lamar Advertising in Baton Rouge, tells Marketing Daily. "It wanted to communicate with consumers and let them know that the company is listening to them. They said, 'Let's have our customers write the digital copy through tweets.'"

The campaign, created by Firehouse Agency in Dallas, invites fans to tweet what they love about the tacos. Tweets, which go through a filter at Lamar to keep conversations G-rated and pro-Stripes, are then streamed on to eight digital displays in the Corpus Christi, Brownsville/Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa and San Angelo markets. The billboards are on surface streets near red lights, so people have a chance to read them, he says.