digital marketing apprenticeship grand visual

our team

Steve

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
I’ve been at Grand Visual for just shy of a year, working as a Creative.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
My favourite GV campaign is Sky Q Summons. Using Augmented Reality to create an interactive experience and allowing people to meet their favourite TV stars was awesome! Seeing the surprise on their faces really made all the hard work worth it!

If you weren’t in the Creative Team, would you rather be in the Finance Team or Operations?
I’d rather be in Operations … spreadsheets and I wouldn’t get along.

Would you rather hear the good news or the bad news first?
I’d rather hear the bad news first!

Would you rather live without the internet, or live without AC and heating?
I could live without AC and heating … watch me put four jumpers on as I find something to watch.

 

our team

Jackie

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
I’ve been at GV for 11 years and I’m the Finance Manager – or anything no-one else wants to do!

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
The Augmented Reality experience that we did for Angels.

If you weren’t in the Finance team, would you rather be in the Production Team or the Tech Team?
The Tech Team.

Would you rather be completely invisible for one day, or be able to fly for one day?
I’d rather be able to fly.

Would you rather be able to control fire or water?
Water!

Spider-verse times square augmented reality digital ooh

This first appeared in Broadsign on 28th February 2019.

Ric Albert, Creative Director at Grand Visual discusses the recipe for a great digital OOH campaign.

“Tell an amazing story.”

To get people engaged, and to give your campaign another life, a solid story is a must. This is how a piece of digital out-of-home content goes from a simple advertisement to having a true impact on people’s lives.

Ric took part in our Broadsign Summit Creative Panel this year at ISE, along with Keith Nilsen from voodooh, and Oskar Op de Beke from Kinetic Worldwide, to chat about how creativity and dynamic content are the building blocks of a successful digital OOH campaign. If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to watch the panel, and check out our Q&A with Ric below, where we pick his brain to see why he thinks is a creative DOOH campaign is important for brands to tell their stories.

Why should a brand add digital OOH to their marketing mix?

Digital out-of-home has a different type of reach than any other medium at the moment. With digital signage, we’re able to create real-life experiences and interactions that aren’t quite possible in the world of print and online. OOH can evoke emotions and can add contextuality and relevancy, much of which is lost with other channels.

Digital out-of-home is still a fairly new medium and is showing impressive growth. It’s less saturated than other media channels and has yet to encounter the same ad-blindness and scroll-past effect that online channels are currently struggling with. Out-of-home is a great tool to cut through ad clutter and is a smart addition to a multi-channel campaign.

What is the recipe for a great digital out-of-home campaign?

There is one main ingredient for a DOOH campaign to be amazing, and that’s a great creative concept. The technology or anything else involved in the campaign is merely a tool to build a story that will truly engage the audience. They are what helps the story to come to life.

At Grand Visual, we craft stories that lead to a valuable end-experience for the user, and that’s whether we’re working on a campaign for a few people walking by or a group of people gathered in Times Square. No matter the screen, the goal is to create something that the audience wants to interact with.

We often see digital OOH campaigns that are too focused on the tech aspect, not really thinking about how the creative concept will fit in. For a campaign to be a success, you need to first consider the story that needs to be told. Then you need to think of how technology will bring you there.

Now once you have your story settled, another ingredient necessary for a successful campaign is a collaboration between all different media partners. This can be a large list, from screen media owners to in-house creative agencies to developers, so it is important to select partners that are all aligned with the campaign vision.

The best campaigns are those where you don’t necessarily notice how it’s built or why it’s built – they just leave you with a smooth, creative and interactive campaign. And if you have a campaign that engages people, you’ve done what you needed to do.

How do brands determine the goal of their digital out-of-home campaign?

As with any channel that doesn’t provide a clickable link, having purely quantitative numerical results can be a bit difficult with digital out-of-home. While the launch of a campaign can definitely be correlated to values like sales uplift, an increase in store foot traffic or website visits, it’s also important to have goals based on how successful the campaign was at storytelling or audience engagement.

As one of the media channels showing the most growth, brands clearly understand the value digital out-of-home brings. With its reach and storytelling potential, DOOH is particularly strong for brand awareness and retention campaigns.

Of course, campaign goals have an impact on the type of story you want to tell with a DOOH campaign. Do you want to use your DOOH campaign to create social media buzz? Do you want participants to interact with the screen in the moment? Do you want to amplify a multi-channel campaign? These will all influence the storytelling approach you take.

The main thing brands need to do here is work closely with their DOOH creative agency or team to determine the appropriate messaging for their needs. DOOH is definitely not one size fits all and each campaign should be unique in its strategy and resulting campaign creative.

How does digital out-of-home work in a multichannel campaign?

What’s interesting about digital OOH is that it can be a bit of a chicken and the egg situation. Which comes first? A great DOOH campaign that gets shared on social media or makes the news? Or a cool social campaign that drives dynamic DOOH content?

At Grand Visual, we’ve worked on campaigns from both of these angles. Whether we’re creating an original piece for digital out-of-home, or working with existing content from TV or online, the key here is to make sure messaging is consistent across all channels, but at the same time tailoring it for DOOH.

What are some of your favourite digital out-of-home campaigns?

I love campaigns that can evoke a reaction or some sort of emotion. As an industry, we should collaborate and celebrate everyone who pushes the creative limits of the medium, from media owners to tech platforms to creative agencies.

One of my favourite campaigns in the last year was by Spotify. The campaign was dynamic, clever and used user-generated data. They were able to create a story that was completely localized in each country and delivered to digital OOH screens around the world ensuring a global impact.

I also loved the campaign for Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse, where visitors at Times Square were able to transport themselves into the movie’s animation style in real-time. There’s something so exciting about thousands of people interacting with a campaign. An advertisement that really becomes part of someone’s life is one that truly has strength.

our team

Gwen

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
I’ve been at GV for five years now and I am Head of People.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
That’s an easy one! My favourite GV campaign is the Let The Memories Begin campaign that we did for Disney.

If you weren’t in the Operations, would you rather be in the Finance Team or the Tech Team?
If I wasn’t in Operations, I would rather be in the Tech Team as they are always building cool stuff for our campaigns.

Would you rather live in a place that is always cold or always hot?
I would rather live in a place that is always hot than cold.

Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or fly through the air?
I would prefer to breathe underwater than fly through the air.

 

our team

Ric

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
I’ve been at GV for 6 years and I’m the Creative Director.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
Probably the Augmented Reality campaign that we did for Doctor Strange as it had a load of awesome things going on in it.

If you weren’t in the Creative Team, would you rather be in Client Services or the Production Team?
That’s a difficult question. I think I’d rather be in Production rather than Client Services as I don’t think I’d enjoy communicating with clients on that side of things!

Would you rather be the first person to explore a planet or be the inventor of a drug that cures a deadly disease?
I have no interest in trying to discover new planets so I guess it would be curing a disease.

Would you rather be completely invisible for a day or be able to fly?
I think I would get up to terrible things if I was completely invisible for a day so I’d stick with flying for a day!

Dan Dawson CCO, Grand Visual

This first appeared in MarTech Series on 21st February 2019.

Our Chief Creative Technology Officer, Daniel Dawson discusses technological advancements in the Out-of-Home (OOH) industry in 2018 and his predictions for AdTech with MarTech Series.

Daniel Dawson ADtech OOH

Tell us about your role at Grand Visual and the team/technology you handle.

I head up all creative technology projects at Grand Visual and I am lucky to have a diverse team with a broad spectrum of creative, technical and coding backgrounds to work with.

Besides working on our own AdTech platforms and systems, we also explore, implement, and hone a whole range of innovative engagement techniques such as Augmented Reality, Touch & Gesture, Face Tracking, Video, and Mobile to drive interactions. Engaging stories allow consumers to change or personalize experiences in various ways, creating greater brand recall and changing consumer behaviours. 

What were the most significant technological advancements in the Out-of-Home industry in 2018?

There have been some high-profile advancements in the testing of programmatic platforms for automated media trading. A significant and necessary step forward for the industry, in terms of connecting real programmatic media to programmatic creative — the holy grail.

Google Maps DOOH 2019

What are your predictions on the state of AdTech in 2019?

AdTech systems are already changing the way brands plan, book and use the Out-of-Home medium. OOH specialists have begun to buy a sustained presence across the year for heavy OOH users such as McDonald’s, Coca Cola and Google, with these brand’s implementing a longer-term intelligent planning approach across their brand and product portfolios. In 2019, these backend AdTech systems will make huge steps in terms of their interoperability. This will see improvements across inventory management, transactional exchanges, data management, creative logistics, creative optimization and, of course, reporting, all areas for systemization. Consolidation of networks, agreement on standards, and system integration will show Digital Out-of-Home gearing up to be a real force this year.

How would the AdTech industry further grow with the maturity of data science and analytics?

In the Digital OOH (DOOH) space, we are rich in data. While data aggregation and uniformity is still a challenge, especially with some campaigns using up to 15 separate data feeds, we have the benefit of permanent screen technology and can, therefore, build a data picture of the location, the changing conditions, and audiences. Audience insights boost our ability to make advertising creatives contextual and relevant, and more impactful. It also enables targeted Out-of-Home ad buys, which are only activated when the conditions are right, leading to improvements in audience targeting efficiency.

Real-time campaign reporting from third-party verification platforms such as PlayTrack also offers advertisers the ability to assess campaign success and optimize creative on the go. This level of transparency and accountability is crucial for the programmatic future of Digital OOH. Further down the line again — increased data sharing through the blockchain will fuel omnichannel and omniscreen campaigns with much smarter cross-platform audience planning. With more electronic devices in everyone’s pockets, connected, cross-platform digital platforms campaigns will become a programmatic reality.

Spotify 2018 Wrapped Digital OOH

Tell us more about QDOT.

QDOT is an AdTech business designed to facilitate smart, scalable campaign management for digital OOH. These digital-asset management tools were originally developed and used as in-house processes, for Grand visual clients. But as the market grew and evolved to become a flexible, tactical, and real-time platform, just like other digital mediums, Out-of-Home required the infrastructure and creative toolkits to handle the growing volume of creative. That’s why we launched QDOT and opened up our platforms and services to the entire market.

To deliver Spotify’s Wrapped campaign, for example, over 7,640 personalized playlists were shared globally. OpenLoop, the smart campaign management platform from QDOT, allowed users to submit their personalized Wrapped stats and see them published on iconic digital billboards around the world. OpenLoop ingested the data and automated the delivery just moments later. Before OpenLoop, campaigns like this would have been a logistical nightmare. It’s about providing ease of use and driving creativity.

How did you prepare for the execution of the ‘Wrapped’ campaign?

Spotify sent us a version of their data schema and a mock-up of the creative. We tested the schema across our platforms and suggested refinements. Our software is very versatile and is able to ingest feeds to match them against physical locations and media plans. Pairing this with our creative and content development made the whole process very smooth for us and the client.

McDonald's McWeather Digital OOH

At Grand Visual, how do you combine creative technology with data? Could you lead us through your data analytics operations before launching any DOOH/OTT campaigns?

Data crafting is part of what we do. We evaluate all the sources of data that are available and decide how and what to use in order to enhance the brand story and bring the campaign to life. It’s not about using data and technology for the sake of it, we approach data carefully with the brand story always at the heart of what we do. It’s rule-based and creative-driven data science.

How do you prepare for an AI-focused world? Which technologies are you most keen to learn more about?

Grand Visual’s job is to craft creative stories based on the data sources available. So, we’re interested in Machine Learning algorithms and Predictive Analytics based on historical data. Both on a media buying level as well as content creation. If we can predict consumer behaviour — we can base messages on real-world outcomes.

Unified programmatic planning and creative optimization is the end goal, where Planning, Buying, Distribution, Playback, and Reporting are programmatically achieved using real-time audience information and data insight to drive the decision-making process. So. right now creating standards, is a core challenge for the industry. Globally agreed standards for independent 3rd-party verification of advertising play-outs (down to a panel and individual play level), will support the growth of the digital OOH market globally. Making it easier to run digital campaigns at scale across all DOOH channels.

Grand Visual OOH

our team

Matt

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
I have been at GV for just under 3 years. I am the Management Accountant, which means I report the monthly/yearly performance of the business. I also look after the day to day functions of Finance.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
My favourite campaign would be the work that we did for the film, The Accountant. It’s nice to see a film show our profession in a good light. Even if there were not enough explosions to do us justice.

If you weren’t in the Finance Team, Would you rather be in Client Services or Operations?
Client Services defo! I love eating/drinking in new places and entertaining clients. That’s all there is to it right?

Would you rather be an amazing dancer or an amazing singer?
Singer, it’s where the ££££ is at!

Would you rather become twice as strong when both of your fingers are stuck in your ears, or crawl twice as fast as you can run?
Crawl twice as fast as I can run. I’m quite fast at running, so my crawl would be insane! Plus I’m sure my kids would love to jump on my back while I whizz around.

 

our team

Nadiya

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
Almost 6 years! I’m the Production Director.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
Our Augmented Reality campaign that we did for Pepsi Max Unbelievable bus shelter. It was truly a media first that opened so many doors for GV!

If you weren’t in the Production Team, Would you rather be in Operations or Client Services?
Client Services.

Would you rather be the first person to explore a planet or be the inventor of a drug that cures a deadly disease?
Invent the drug that cures a deadly disease.

Would you rather be completely invisible for one day or be able to fly for one day?
Be able to fly.

Grand Visual Team Promotions
At Grand Visual, we like to think that people are at the heart of what we do.

It’s the people behind our campaigns that really matter. Without them, transporting New Yorkers into the Spider-Verse and enabling shoppers to dance with Mickey Mouse wouldn’t have been possible! 

Each year, we have grown from strength to strength, not only as a company but as a team. Here at Grand Visual, we are invested in developing the careers of our people, and fully recognising the efforts and growth of individuals over the last 12 months. With that being said, we are very proud to announce that:

 

Gwen Kotschy, Head of People, Grand Visual & QDOT commented:

The many promotions across Grand Visual are a testament to not just our wonderful team but also how the business rewards and acknowledges it’s talent. And with further growth across Production, Creative and Technical teams planned for this year, we’re looking forward to a people-focused 2019!’

 

If you would like to join our team then please keep an eye on our Current Openings, Twitter & Linkedin.

 

digital marketing apprenticeship grand visual
Seven months into her apprenticeship, our Digital Marketing apprentice Charlotte shares her experience of working at Grand Visual and thoughts about apprenticeships.

digital marketing apprenticeship grand visual

A lot can change in a year. If you told me this time last year that I would leave my local retailer to pursue a career in the city, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I did – and here I am. Fast forward to 2019 and I’m a Digital Marketing Apprentice, working right in the heart of London.

Originally, I’d hoped to be a Forensic Scientist and had even secured a place at University. But as September came closer, I was unsure whether this was the right choice for me and I deferred. The next year, I withdrew from University altogether and began my search for fresh career decisions. This is when I found Whitehat, an organisation dedicated to matching young people with their perfect apprenticeship.

Working for Grand Visual is way better than I could have ever imagined (and I’m not even exaggerating). In my day-to-day role, I look after the company’s social activities, contribute to the website and assist the team with amazing Digital Out-of-Home (OOH) campaigns for huge clients! Choosing an apprenticeship was definitely the way forward for me, and the experience of working within the Digital OOH industry is also an added bonus!

However, I recently stumbled across an article in Campaign highlighting the Government’s campaign to revitalise apprenticeships. Over the past academic year, apprenticeship sign-ups have decreased by around 24.1%. As an apprentice myself it is only natural to question, why is this number so high?

I decided to undertake my own research to investigate how others felt about their apprenticeships and how this compared to my own. The overall majority were happy and similarly to me had applied to a University before choosing an apprenticeship. Their reasons for not going to University were all pretty similar to mine:

I asked my fellow apprentices if they still felt the same way about university after enrolling in their apprenticeships. Almost everyone believed that their apprenticeship has offered something University never could.

Since becoming an apprentice, I have not hesitated to recommend this experience to others (admittedly even more so after a few glasses of gin). With two other apprenticeship sign-ups already under my belt, it’s clear that I’ve assumed the role of advocate. And I’m not the only one, almost everyone I have spoken to was likely to recommend an apprenticeship. Personally, I believe this is because apprenticeships are no longer limited to trades and now offer a wide range of courses with roles found in some of the UK’s biggest companies.

Choosing an apprenticeship has brought my Digital Marketing qualification to life and has inspired me for the future. Instead of learning about the industry in a purely educational environment, I am learning whilst working amongst professionals – and the best part? I get paid to do it!!!

Integrated Systems Europe is the world´s largest AV systems integration show, taking place in Amsterdam from 5-8 February. Jon, Creative Technologist, and Collins, Technician went along to check out the latest cutting-edge technology. We’ve shared our highlights from the show, so if you couldn’t make it or just want to check it out again, see our key takeaways below. We’re already looking forward to ISE 2020!

digital marketing apprenticeship grand visual

our team

Lisa

How long have you been with GV for and what’s your role?
I have been at GV for just over 4 years and I am the Head of Marketing.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
My favourite GV campaign would probably be the Angels campaign which is a really old one – but was the first campaign that made me aware of who Grand Visual was.

If you weren’t in Marketing, would you rather be in Tech or Finance?
FINANCE!

Would you rather control Space or Time?
Mmmmm… time!

Would you rather hear the good news or the bad news first?
The bad news.

 

our team

Ben P.

How long have you been with GV for and what’s your role?
I’ve been at GV for 2 and a half years and my current role is Client Services Director.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
My favourite GV campaign is our recent campaign for SONY for Spider-Verse. It’s an awesome campaign that basically gave people the opportunity to enter into The Spider-Verse.

If you weren’t in Client Services, would you rather be in Creative or Production?
Definitely Creative.

Would you rather control Space or Time?
Time.

Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or fly through the air?
Definitely fly.

mcdonald's digital ooh
The McDonald’s Big Mac range is back and it’s even better with the addition of bacon, but our latest digital OOH campaign asks – is it still a Big Mac?

As well as adding bacon to the classic Big Mac, McDonald’s have also brought the Mac Jr. and Grand Mac back and added bacon to them too! It’s the first time the brand has changed its statement recipe in 51 years and it’s definitely got the nation talking. To fuel the debate, McDonald’s have launched a live poll across social channels and OOH with contextual call-outs and live poll results.

McDonald's Digital OOH

Created by Leo Burnett London and produced by Grand Visual, the OOH creative features a hero image of the limited-edition Big Mac Bacon “to be enjoyed until 19th March.” The live poll garners opinions across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, asking the audience, “which side are you on?”

OpenLoop processes the real-time results from Mention Solutions’ API, and displays the percentage results for #NotABigMac versus #StillABigMac live across digital OOH screens in London, Nottingham, Cardiff, Newcastle and Liverpool.

McDonald's digital OOH

We all know and love the Big Mac burger, so it’s a great campaign for meat fans inviting them to engage and share their opinion on the new recipe. The campaign is driven by real consumer engagement and the localised call outs to have your say keeps the campaign contextual, fresh and relevant.

Ric Albert, Creative Director at Grand Visual