Cancer Research UK is launching ‘The Breath Test’ – a new interactive outdoor, experiential, social, guerrilla, press and radio campaign. ‘The Breath Test’ aims to promote the effectiveness of local Stop Smoking Services to smokers who’d like to quit.

Posters at bus stops and in shopping centres were created that invites passers-by to take a deep breath and read the text on them aloud, in one go, without stopping. The visual style mimics the typography and graphic design of a cigarette pack health warning.

A bespoke 6 sheet that people can interact with has also been created. It is the very first digital poster that uses breath to reveal a message on screen, the longer people blow, the more of the ad is revealed. The idea was activated in partnership with Clear Channel, Grand Visual and MediaCom UK. It aims to highlight the link between smoking and diminished lung capacity, encouraging smokers to seek the help they need to quit for good.

A lot of advertising in this area focuses on health harms, the often gory consequences of being a smoker, with images of tar in lungs and mutating cancer cells. However this campaign took a different approach. We didn’t simply need to provoke consideration about quitting, it needed to motivate smokers in looking for a solution. So rather than scaring smokers into action, it simply invites them to play a game – to see just how much they can say in one breath. In the process they have taken in ‘The Breath Test’s’ messaging and have understood it in a way they had never done before, without feeling ashamed about their habit. A completely unique approach in anti-smoking communication.

The campaign’s media was planned by MediaCom UK, and is running for three weeks.

Today, Age UK is launching a geo-targeted DOOH campaign to raise awareness about the plight of loneliness amongst older people over the festive period and, indeed, at other times of the year too. The activity will see the charity take its “No one should have no one at Christmas” message nationwide in a geo-targeted and contextually relevant campaign spanning roadside digital billboards until the 4th December, 2016.

The DOOH campaign draws on the charity’s ground-breaking ‘loneliness heat maps’ which show the risk of loneliness among older people in every neighbourhood in England. Grand Visual produced the campaign from repurposed poster artwork and each execution referenced locally relevant figures with subtle motion techniques added for those sites that permit it, like Signature’s CityVision, Holloway Head billboard in Birmingham, which announced ‘There are 41,000 lonely older people in the West Midlands’ alongside the strapline “No one should have no one” and call to action to visit www.ageuk.org.uk.

The nationwide DOOH campaign was planned and booked by Talon and runs across Primesight, Signature and Clear Channel roadside D48 networks. The DOOH activity supports a larger outdoor push and is part of a fully integrated campaign spanning direct response and social media. The campaign aims to drive donations, encourage people to volunteer and take action locally, and raise public awareness of the issue more broadly.

Beverley Sullivan at Age UK, commented:

“It is important to highlight this issue at Christmas, a time of year when many older people may feel especially lonely and ‘left out’ of the festivities. DOOH gives us the opportunity to reach a national audience with locally relevant messaging which we hope will really resonate with people and encourage them to help Age UK to combat loneliness at Christmas and throughout the year.”

Dan Dawson, Chief Creative Technology Officer at Grand Visual, commented:

“Digital Out of Home is the ideal medium for reaching a broadcast audience with locally relevant messages. Contextual relevance provides a deeper level of emotional engagement and provides a great impetus to get involved and go online to find out more.”

This summer Listerine reminded consumers to ‘Bring Out the Bold’ with their Real-Time DOOH campaign. The campaign, produced by Grand Visual, aimed to amplify Listerine’s ‘Bring out the Bold’ activity, which promotes the idea that people who use its products are bolder and more adventurous than anyone else – just like the sports stars and musicians featured in its DOOH ads over the summer.

The nationwide DOOH campaign featured contextual commentary based on the boldest moments from the biggest sporting and cultural events of the summer.

As bold moments took place, Listerine was able to target nationwide audiences with real-time, contextually relevant messaging. Delivered through OpenLoop, the ads reacted to news and developments from events and competitions such as Euro 2016, Wimbledon, Glastonbury and the Olympics.

Dan Dawson, Chief Creative Technology Officer commented:

“Technology is opening up new avenues for creativity in digital out-of-home, enabling brands to react in the moment with messages that are contextual and relevant. Listerine is using this to great effect by tapping into the excitement and buzz during this summer’s most high-profile sporting, music and cultural events”

The campaign was planned and booked by Rapport is running across Clear Channel, Exterion Media & JCDecaux until the end of September.

Twitter #CannesCan DOOH

Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, where all the big names from the advertising world congregate to debate, drink and mingle, is the setting for a new public service from Grand Visual and Clear Channel. #CannesScan, a Twitter enabled DOOH campaign, summarises the mood, chit-chat and hangovers on the Croisette. All in the world’s first truly global language – emojis.

18th-25th June, Cannes, France: #CannesScan, is a live Twitter poll of the emojis being used in reference to all things #CannesLions during the world’s most important advertising event. The trending emoji will be published regularly through each day on Le Grand Screen, a giant 16-metre-long digital billboard above The Grand Hotel.

Attending Cannes Lions is such a tough gig. Festival attendees may be too busy, too tired, too hungover or too “refreshed” to get to grips with all the latest gossip. #CannesScan will keep them “in the know” throughout the day and night with just a glance up at the digital billboard. From the Gutter Bar to the Palais and even from the yachts in the bay #CannesScan is a vital utility for the hard-working and hard-partying festival folk.

The creative brings the emoji centre stage, in a simple execution that flicks through a range of symbols and expressions, before landing on the most popular emoji of the moment. The featured emoji is a bold visual summary of how Cannes is feeling. The simple public service, demonstrates the strength of digital OOH to amplify social conversations on a grand scale using the largest, most prominent screen in Cannes.

#CannesScan is coordinated through OpenLoop, the Digital OOH campaign management dashboard, which analyses #cannes themed twitter streams and publishes the outcome on the unique Le Grand Screen, towering 12 stories high, and clearly visible across the bay, day and night. A network of D6 screens on the ground also feature the real-time emoji poll.

Ric Albert, Digital Director at Grand Visual, said:

“When you are feeling jaded, and potentially a little inebriated, an emoji will do. Visual analytics are easier to read than the written word, and the minimalist simplicity of this execution is its strength. So you can forget scouring social channels, press releases and news articles – simply look up at #CannesScan, to get the true, uncut, public view on the street. Find out if it’s happy hour cocktails, or if there are too many Lion losers bringing down the mood in the bars, with one simple emoji”.

Chris Pelekanou, Commercial Director at Clear Channel UK, commented:

“#CannesScan is here to help the Cannes crowd garner the mood on the street. It’s on-trend and particularly relevant to the advertising community given the success of Domino’s emoji campaign here last year, which took home the Cannes Titanium Grand Prix. It demonstrates the huge potential of combining OOH with social media platforms for connecting with people on their own terms, in a way that is relevant, accessible and potentially humorous.”

Post Lions #CannesScan Summary:

Mornings in Cannes were positive, with all emoji’s showing people looking forward to the day ahead, from sunshine, smiley faces & peace signs, mornings were a surprisingly positive place in Cannes, and emoji’s were a far cry from the sore heads and hangovers expected.

Throughout the week the mood at midday was the most varied. Quite likely due the fact that every day was different, from networking, sunbathing, or listening to an inspiring talk. The varied emoji use shows the variety of the week.

Whilst there was variety during the day, when evening came, one thing was clear, people only had one thing on their minds – Cannes Lions awards. The top emoji’s of the evening was Trophy, stars, hands clapping. Whilst some may say Cannes is just about the Rose and beach parties,  #CannesScan shows people are happy to celebrate great work.

Virgin Media’s latest dynamic campaign keeps commuters across the UK up to date on the most popular TV shows from the night before and in the process promoting its streaming services.

The dynamic campaign uses OpenLoop to combine real-life viewing data from last nights most popular programs along with Virgin’s iconic animal characters. The iconic Virgin creative reminds commuters that they can ‘get on the stream train’ with messages like ‘Last Night, 235,000 Night Owls streamed Goggle Box’

The dynamic campaign was planned booked by Talon Outdoor and will appear across JCDecaux, Clear Channel and Exterion Media networks running for four weeks from the 18th of May, 2015.

We attended lots of great sessions on day 3 of Advertising Week Europe, from the IPA session on Big Tech vs Big Ideas to MEC’s session on Creativity and Collaboration. Instead of summarising our take outs from every event we attended, we have decided to share our two highlights from the day.

Clear Channel’s We Love Outdoor session was one of the highlights from today. After two days full of people throwing around well-intentioned buzz-words such as ‘collaboration’ and ‘innovation’ it was a refreshing change to step into a room and hear something a little different. In this session we heard directly from clients on how OOH is helping them achieve their business goals and change peoples lives for the better.

It was particularly lovely to hear from Jo Youle, CEO of Missing People talk about how DOOH has helped grow awareness of the charity from 13% in 2007 to currently over 20% in London. Most importantly it was rewarding to hear how the partnership between ourselves, Clear Channel & the Outdoor Media Centre has helped reunite missing people with their loved ones. Since the campaign began in 2012, we have delivered over 500 regionalised campaigns, and over 50% of the people featured in these campaigns are now reunited with their loved ones.

Also speaking about some great OOH campaigns they have run in conjunction with Clear Channel was Glen Wilson from Posterscope. He spoke about the delightful Art Everywhere project which delivered on its promise to make England a little more attractive – a concept which is now being taken on around the world.

The Princes Trust gave a powerful testimony as to how, through OOH, they are now not only able to reach young people who are in need of their services, but also to reach those crucial donors through great creative and the extensive reach that OOH offers.

A real heartwarming presentation. #WeLoveOutdoor.

Another great session of the day, was from Andrew Millstein, President of Disney Animations who revealed a few secrets about the art of storytelling with Disney. Talking about the so-called ‘dark days’ of Disney from the mid-nineties to early 2000’s, Millstein discussed how, after the Pixar acquisition, they weaved together two distinct strands of success in order to build the Disney we have today.

It was inspirational to hear how they have maintained that creative spark after 93 years, and how they keep pushing themselves to create the stories which inevitably become part of the tapestries of our lives.

Collaboration has certainly been one of the keys to Disney’s success. They maintain this is by instilling ownership of each project within all teams working on Disney films, a process which brings out in everybody a real passion and desire to find the best solution. This process takes time but ultimately it is one of the key elements leading to Disney getting the story right time and time again, and it’s something we can certainly attest to after working on many projects with them.

It’s been such a full on week so far, one more day to go.

Riders prepare for the off on the first day of the Kinetic Tour of Lombardy charity bike ride

The weekend of the 19th–20th September saw forty cyclists, including Grand Visual’s Founder Neil Morris, take part in Kinetic’s annual charity fundraising cycle ride. This year’s challenge was a two-day ride through the mountains of Lombardy which resulted in over £70,000 being raised for the Alzheimer’s Society.

The gluttons for punishment were led by Kinetic’s Chief Executive, Stuart Taylor, and included representatives of Kinetic, Clear Channel, MSIX, JCDecaux, MEC, Primesight, Mindshare, Maxus, the7stars, and Grand Visual.

A collage of photos from the Kinetic Tour of Lombardy charity bike ride raising funds for the Alzheimer's Society

The title “Kinetic Tour of Lombardy” belies the punishing nature of the ride — also known as “The Climber’s Classic” the route took the riders up some seriously steep inclines in damp and foggy conditions (as can be seen from the photos shown here). It was not going to be an easy weekend — in the words of our boss, “it was brutal” — but the team was committed to completing the tough mountain route for a worthy cause.

And their gruelling two days in the saddle were well-rewarded, because by the following week it was revealed that they had raised over £72,365 for the charity. Congratulations to all who participated, and to all those who helped the riders on their way.

The Le Grand Kick screen at the top of the Grand Hotel during the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity

Forget winning Lions the real challenge this year at Cannes was to score a “pen” on Le Grand Kick. Tapping into “World Cup” fever, Grand Visual and Clear Channel collaborated to test the “tekkers” of the world’s advertising community on the Croisette at Cannes Lions Festival in June.

Using our Agent methodology for pioneering mobile interactive DOOH technology, we designed and built Le Grand Kick to allow “players” to use their smartphones to take part in the virtual “penalty kicks” contest.

The user had to supply name, agency and World Cup team preference before stepping up. A simple swipe action on the phone controlled the ball on the screen in real-time. The keeper, of course, had a mind of his own. Scorers (and failures) featured on a dynamically updated scoreboard on digital sites inside the Palais and on outdoor sites around the Cannes festival.

The huge screen was 16.8 meters wide by 4.8 meters high (the equivalent of two double decker buses) and it’s positioning 12 storeys up on the top of the Grand Hotel meant it was visible around the bay through the day and particularly at night.