At the start of September, we partnered with the OAAA for the launch of their OOH campaign designed to increase voter registration and encourage people to vote in the Presidential election this November.

On September 6th, the campaign blanketed Times Square with OOH ads covering billboards, bus shelters, subway cars and more throughout New York City. The ads show that no matter what ‘labels’ Americans have, the only label that really counts is Voter.

The event in Times Square was the official launch of the campaign with a team on the ground encouraging passers-by to submit their own ‘labels’. The dynamic creative then updated, broadcasting these personalised ‘labels’ live to the thousands of people in Times Square.

Nancy Fletcher, president and CEO at OAAA, said

“We are completely nonpartisan in this effort, we are not trying to boost the standing of any party or candidate, rather use OOH, a highly engaging and effective medium, to provoke action in a way that is constructive during a time that really matters.”

OAAA Labels 940x520

The OOH ads will drive digital engagement by directing viewers to VoteToCount.com where they can access their state’s voter registration pages. An interactive label generator allows visitors to choose their own labels, showcasing what they value and believe, and share on social media.

In the lead up to election day on November 8, the campaign will roll out in major cities including Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago and Las Vegas.

A photo of crowds enjoying the Times Square Disney Inside Out interactive activation

Have you ever wanted your face up in the lights of Times Square? Ahead of the launch of Disney•Pixar’s original new movie “Inside Out” on June 19, lucky passers-by will be given this opportunity.

This month at the Disney Store in Times Square you are able to have your selfie appear on the Disney Store’s digital billboard, along with the colourful characters from “Inside Out.” During the promotion, an events team on the ground will invite passers-by to “Meet the Voices Inside Their Heads,” using the hashtag #InsideOutSelfiesNYC.

Images submitted will then be analysed and assigned their very own Emotion from “Inside Out,” based on the facial expression in their selfie.

The digital billboard above the Disney Store will be broadcasting #InsideOutSelfiesNYC the weekend of June 13-14, and on the film’s release date, June 19.

Not able to make it Times Square? You can still enjoy the fun by visiting www.insideouthq.com and taking your selfie there, which can then be shared across social media.

Creative Technology Director at Grand Visual Dan Dawson, said:

“This execution is a fun way for people to interact with the characters in ‘Inside Out,’ and getting your face up in the lights of Times Square—well who wouldn’t want to do that?”

Latest from Ben Putland, COO & MD USA

In the last 18 months, I have read the word “programmatic” more times than I have had hot dinners. But the majority of what I have read on programmatic and DOOH is all about the buy; however that’s only part of the story. Imagine if Amazon had launched their business but not had partners in place to ship the product to the end user, the business would not have lasted long.

Programmatic advertising is a way to increase efficiencies, relevancy and reduce waste. Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, made possible through the intelligent use of data and insight. If Digital Out of Home is to align more with traditional digital then ideas and content need align too, which will drive media value.

More Digital than TV and Print

The DOOH content in the US today is heavily influenced by TV and Print. However, as the market becomes more programmatic the market should align more with programmatic campaigns, where relevance and dynamic content is the norm. We can already see this trend in the UK market with 80% of the projects we delivered in 2014 being similar to online and only 20% similar to TV or Print. Over the past two years, advertising spend in digital has grown substantially. Aligning Digital Out of Home with the intelligence that has spurred growth in traditional digital is a sensible strategy.

DOOHVennDiagram_2015-03-17

Using those four weeks effectively

Changing the creative throughout the campaign is known to be effective in creating brand awareness and moving consumers closer to the end goal. With most US campaigns running for four weeks there is a perfect opportunity to use the classic marketing and advertising funnel to be more effective. Here’s a basic example for the launch of a film or TV show.

MarketingFunnel_2015-03-31

The investment to deliver this level of creative would be minimal versus the cost of media, but response rates would be far higher and measuring success would be very easy…

Plan Ahead

Whilst the ability to programmatically buy media for the next day is great, if the placement is a repurposed ad it will quickly turn into a piece of wallpaper. If you want to deliver a high-quality piece of digital content then you need to time to create it – no shortcuts. Allocating time for production must be accounted for when making strategic digital buying decisions to ensure the growth of the medium. Consider the classic project management quality triangle.

QualityTriangle_2015-03-17

Look back to see ahead

Digital Out Of Home can learn a lot from the early days of digital and this study from Google shows dynamic ads achieved better results than static. This research was done three years ago, but still relevant to DOOH today.

Creativity is what makes a difference to a campaign’s effectiveness.

The latest thought piece from our Chief Operating Officer, Ben Putland, in our New York office.

A few weeks ago I swapped the freezing temperatures of New York to bask in the warmth of LA. Whilst I was there I had a guided tour of the digital installation inside the Thomas Bradley terminal at LAX courtesy of our friends at JCDecaux.

I remember when the terminal opened in September 2013 it was billed as the largest media installation of any US airport with the objective to enhance the passenger experience and bring back the romance of air travel. But it’s the content running on all that hardware that creates the romance and wow factor.

Awe inspiring scale

If you’re arriving or departing the terminal the first thing that hits you is the scale of the Bon Voyage and Welcome Walls. The difference to other giant screens is that these are sympathetic to the environment and don’t have to compete with other screens or media. The giant goldfish swimming through the sky is totally surreal and the other abstract concepts are calming and pleasing to the eye.

LAX1
Bon Voyage and the 8 Storey Welcome Wall 

A dash of dynamic DOOH

If you’re departing you get to see the rest of the experience as the other three parts located in the Grand Hall. Personally the Time Tower was the strongest part of the installation. It’s the best use of an elevator shaft I’ve ever seen; it felt so alive with seamless transitions from state to states with the nice touch of a clock that tells the right time. The Destination Board has some elegant dynamic features such as weather updates for the departure destinations but they’re not the classic vector images and weather icons, they are made up of great images that make you want to keep looking.

LAX2
Time Tower and Part of the Destination Board Time Tower

Potential earned media

Head to the north or south concourses and you will pass the Portals, which are eight individual towers that as you approach appear to be a single screen. It makes them quite fun as you can have a single image running across them all or eight individual images. There are motion sensors built in so that some of the graphics react as people walk past and they also include some subtle touches to do with the destinations. But what they really packed was a punch of vibrant colour and that colour attracted people like flowers attract bees, of all the parts of the installation this is where I saw the most people taking photos.
LAX3
The Portals

It’s not Advertising, so what is it?

It was Jef I Richards who said “Creative without strategy is called art. Creative with strategy is called advertising.” Now there was a strategy for this installation but it’s definitely not advertising and it feels more like art. It’s an experience that blurs the line between art and advertising, it’s something you are happy to be around, it’s intriguing and creates wonder. This is the new standard in large-scale digital installations and any new installation needs to be as least as good if not better.

How can it work for brands?

There is a huge opportunity for brands to deliver a jaw-dropping experience (not an ad) at this gateway to Asia, but getting the creative to work half as well as what’s there is definitely a challenge given most campaigns have only a few months of production time available. By using our 2015 mantra “SMART” – Strategic, Measurable, Artistic, Relevant, and Technological – we have a framework to deliver effective and engaging experiences on time and budget. Here’s how I would do it.

  1. Strategic content creation. It needs to be subtle but entertaining content that gives a nudge and a wink towards the brand so it dovetails with the environment and existing content, definitely avoid using any “make my logo bigger” cream.
  2. Measurement can be achieved by the user engaging through another channel such as social media or an online activation that can be directly tied back to LAX and then cross-referenced with existing footfall figures.
  3. Artistic flare is extremely important, it must appeal to a wide ethnic diversity, hold their attention, invoke emotion, create a sense of wonder and feel like magic.
  4. Relevant to the terminal but also to the traveller and their destinations, the current content already does this but there are lots of ways to push the concept further. Knowing how to tell your story across the seven screens and not loose the relevance is an art in itself.
  5. Technology must go hand-in-hand with creativity but can also be linked to measurement. How about Tweeting and/or texting to change the state of the Time Tower.

Time is not money, time is art.

Grand Visual New York, which opened its doors earlier this year, can announce that its Digital Out of Home campaign management dashboard, OpenLoop, is now interconnected with media owners accounting for around 80% of the DOOH inventory in the United States. Those media companies include; Adspace Networks, Inc., Branded Cities, Captivate Network, Outfront Media (formerly CBS Outdoor), Cemusa, Clear Channel Outdoor, Clear Channel Spectacolor, EYE Corp Media, Gas Station TV, Lamar Advertising, Titan and Zoom.

With connection to more than 40,000 screens owned by these media companies, advertisers using OpenLoop can reach 92% of US DMAs via 12,000 locations including high visibility pedestrian areas, roadside, retail, office, cinema, gas station and transit environments. A full-scale campaign can deliver as many as 1.4 billion impressions during a four week period.

OpenLoop is a platform that can maximise the use of the advancing DOOH technologies and innovation across any media owner’s portfolio. It was conceived to open the traditional Out of Home loop so that brands and agencies could actively manage content, feeds, and creative in real time during a live campaign.

Grand Visual launched OpenLoop in the UK in 2012. It is already integrated with all major UK DOOH networks and has been used extensively by UK creative and media agencies on campaigns for brands such as Google Outside, Audi Dashboard, Nike and the Huffington Post. Enabling the medium to play a key role in delivering responsive integrated campaigns has been a game changer for the UK market.

As advertisers increasingly adopt dynamic and/or interactive DOOH campaigns, OpenLoop can communicate intelligently across platforms with timely, relevant content. Whether it’s part of a regional, national or international campaign, creative changes can be done from one dashboard. OpenLoop enables campaign managers to create campaigns, manage users, upload a variety of formats including feeds such as Twitter, Instagram and RSS, and then publish the files to any media owner who is set up in the system.

Barry Frey, President and CEO at Digital Place Based Advertising Association (DPAA), said: “It’s great to see our members working alongside each other and we expect this new opportunity for clients and agencies to bring additional growth to the digital placed based advertising market.”

Stephen Freitas, Chief Marketing Officer Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), said: “Scale and flexibility are important because they give advertisers the ability to deliver nationwide campaigns across multiple out of home networks. Technology that reinforces out of home as an innovative and progressive medium is always a positive message.”

Ben Putland, Chief Operating Officer of Grand Visual in New York, said: “The process of integrating our software system with US media owners, has been under way since the start of the year. We have been delighted by the warm reception it’s had here and we’re confident that there are still further major media owners who will adopt it in the coming weeks.”

An infographic showing the  extent of the OpenLoop integration with US DOOH networks

The Grand Visual New York team – Ben Putland, Jennifer Bolnick, and Rebecca Jean Louis – by the Brooklyn Bridge

July saw the launch of Grand Visual’s New York office. The initiative brings our unique, award winning creative services and technology to the US out of home advertising market.

Ben Putland, previously Production Director has relocated from London to head up the office – and has been bumped up to COO.

Jennifer Bolnick, has been recruited as Account Director for Grand Visual NY. With over 16 years working in New York planning, buying and selling OOH media, she has a comprehensive background in OOH innovation through work for MediaCom, Kinetic and on direct sales for Outcast and General Growth Properties.

Joining Ben and Jennifer is senior producer, Rebecca Jean Louis.

Neil Morris, Founder of Grand Visual said, “This is a natural next step for the company, we have been servicing US clients from the UK office for the last few years. With a strong leadership team in place to guide the new office we are excited to begin this next chapter.”

Ben Putland added: “Clients are challenged today by the variety and complexity of Digital OOH communication opportunities. With our unrivalled experience in DOOH production together with our bespoke platforms and technology, we can help clients and their agencies to be more agile in overcoming the challenges and exploiting the medium to its full creative potential.”