Anh Phoong, California’s Billboard Queen, Launches a Design Contest

Update, Jan. 29, 2025:

After backlash from artists on Instagram, Anh Phoong has increased the first prize of the design competition to $5,000. “We apologize if we offended any artists,” she wrote in a comment on KQED Arts’ Instagram post about the contest. “Without the creatives in this world, the world would be bland, but with you all, it is colorful!”

Original story, Jan. 28, 2025:

On Monday, Anh Phoong, the personal injury attorney and billboard queen of Northern California, announced via Instagram that she’s hosting a design competition for her next billboard.

Artists who submit their entries before the Feb. 10 deadline will be judged based on their “creativity, originality and alignment with the theme,” reads the post. The first-place winner will receive $500, as well as the chance to have their work seen by millions of Californians. Second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $150, respectively.

Phoong is the head of the Sacramento-based Phoong Law Group, and her ads above major freeways and intersections across the state have become part of California’s cultural fabric.

The 2023 film Hit Man referenced Phoong’s billboards. That same year, drag artist Alpha Andromeda dressed as Phoong for an epic number at San Francisco’s Oasis. (It wasn’t the first time Phoong has been imitated: In a 2024 Los Angeles Times profile, Phoong recounted how she caught another attorney impersonating her online.)

Last May, Phoong was the honorary guest at another drag party at The Stud in San Francisco, where she joined fans for selfies in an ensemble of pink highlights and a leather corset. A few months later, East Bay hip-hop artist and illustrator Señor Gigio paid homage to Phoong by featuring a drawing of the billboard baron in his music video for “Bay Area Blue.”

Most recently, comedian JR De Guzman uploaded a video of him singing a song dedicated to his “ex-girlfriend,” Anh Phoong. In a fictional account of a romance gone wrong, the comedian plays a guitar and sings about how he can’t stop seeing her face in different places — because her advertising is just that damn good.

During a 2024 interview with Dregs One, Phoong said she’s invested millions of dollars into her billboard campaigns. Proudly, Phoong told Dregs, “I’m going to spend money on myself and bet on myself before anyone else.”

Originally from San Jose, Phoong explained how she got a discount on billboards during the COVID-19 pandemic. She bought 300 boards in the Bay Area alone, which allowed her to ramp up her business. “The biggest risks,” said Phoong, “get the biggest rewards.”

She’s since scaled back her operation in the Bay to about 100 billboards, she said. But she’s also expanded to Southern California in the past few years, and is looking to become more visible throughout the Central Valley as well.

With her new competition, Phoong gives artists an opportunity to have their work featured across the state, behind one of the most recognizable faces in local advertising.

Anh Phoong’s billboard design competition is open now through Feb. 10. Submission form here.