2017: A Year in Digital OOH at Grand Visual

Well, that was 2017. What has been a tumultuous year in the real world, has been one of relative growth, prosperity, opportunity and creative development in Out of Home media, the world over.

Scalable Stories

At Grand Visual we continued to expand and break creative milestones. Our mission this year was to advocate scalable use of the medium and to help clients craft smarter stories. Campaigns that span the diverse and rich OOH media landscape, making the most of its ubiquity. Our focus paid off and we delivered campaigns to over 48 countries this year.

Our work for a larger entertainment client saw us craft creative for a host of new markets and unique formats from Indonesia to El Salvador. We also produced “Smart Linear” campaigns for the likes of Google, Suzuki, Sainsbury’s and Bheard all of which embraced tactical storytelling at scale, pushing the breadth of previous projects and reaching new OOH audiences, some picking up creative effectiveness awards along the way.

Our Digital Director, Ric Albert, said:

This year, we’ve delivered projects to more countries and more screen formats than ever before. From international rugby matches to press junkets, the largest outdoor screen in Europe (Kazan Stadium), to a building projection in Puerto Rico, our scalable stories have filled digital canvasses across the world.

Tactical Messaging

2017 was a record year for tactical, dynamically delivered digital OOH campaigns at Grand Visual. It’s encouraging to see the accelerated adoption and more varied application of data by leading brands in the OOH arena. Forward-thinking brands continue to increase their digital investment and embrace the opportunity to be smarter with their digital OOH communication.

Highlights this year include McDonald’s tactical messaging, to remind consumers ‘how long until breakfast finishes’ in the mornings and ‘where they can pick up the latest limited edition sandwich’ at midday.

Keira Kane, our technical director, adds:

“This year we integrated a wider variety of data feeds into our Digital OOH campaigns to deliver striking, contextually relevant messages for consumers. Brand campaigns that are useful, relevant and aligned with the consumer mindset can deliver a compelling call to action that boosts the performance and effectiveness of brand messaging dramatically.”

Engaging Creative

Our interactive work this year took us around the world with projects for Disney, amongst others. For too long, interactive DOOH projects have been viewed as special, one-off, premium activations. But now, digital OOH can deliver memorable, personal, and interactive experiences across multiple markets. A modular, tiered approach to interactive projects allows territories to push the technology envelope as far as their local limits allow. This is exactly what we did to help an entertainment client promote an upcoming release. We produced an interactive Augmented Reality execution which was deployed across Spain, Mexico & Brazil. A social video of the Madrid execution received over 100,000 natural views in just two days on Facebook.

Dan Dawson, our Chief Creative Technology Officer said:

Engaging campaigns serve multiple purposes. It’s often our most shared and awarded work, so it’s great to see the appetite for this extending into new territories and markets. Indeed we spotted this trend a few years ago, and clients and agencies are exploiting our ability to serve multiple levels of interaction to multiple territories from concept to execution. This can help shift engagement levels from hundreds of thousands to millions, at a small incremental cost, and is a testament to our hard-working and knowledgeable team.

The Future

2017 has been an exciting year in digital OOH. The market has moved on. From single location stunts and fixed brand messages, to tactical, plugged-in, interactive and always on campaigns that span multiple formats and territories.

As digital reaches the tipping point, set to smash 50% of UK OOH spend next year, with other key markets to follow, 2018 looks set to be our most exciting year yet. It is all to play for. Simple, scalable, tactical and engaging stories is where it’s at and we can’t wait to see where digital OOH takes us in 2018.