ECB_DynamicDOOH

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has launched a summer-long Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) drive to promote the action and excitement from England’s 2016 summer internationals against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The dynamic DOOH campaign incorporates live scores from each match, campaign imagery celebrating wicket, run and other major milestones as they happen and, on select sites, the latest from the @EnglandCricket Twitter account.

The campaign represents an innovative approach to delivering the ECB’s marketing strategy, which aims to raise awareness of England Cricket, connect with existing fans and attract new followers to the sport. The campaign launched today in Leeds for the Headingley test and will run on DOOH sites within or close to each host city during each match.

The campaign was designed by the ECB’s retained creative agency, Matta, and produced by Grand Visual, with Opta Sports providing the live scores and match data. Dynamic delivery is managed via OpenLoop, the Digital Out of Home campaign management dashboard, which combines the three data sources: live match data, the @EnglandCricket Twitter feed and the reactive campaign imagery.

The dynamic DOOH campaign will also be live for the England women’s Natwest IT20 match against Pakistan, which forms part of a double header IT20 alongside the men’s match against Sri Lanka at Ageas Bowl on Tuesday 5 July. The digital outdoor site for this match will be at Westquay Shopping Centre in Southampton.

In total, the dynamic DOOH campaign will run across 9 cities including Leeds, London, Manchester and Birmingham, span 4 media owners and takes in over 20 different outdoor sites. In addition, the ECB will be running their It’s Not Just Cricket campaign on a further 10 outdoor sites at key times when international matches are not in progress.

The campaign was planned and booked by Talon and AMS, and utilises large, iconic, proximity DOOH inventory to take the buzz and excitement of each match beyond the cricket ground’s perimeter and extend the action within the host city.

Rob Calder, Head of Marketing at ECB commented:

“Our ambition is to raise awareness of the world class cricket being played this summer, and keep sports fans connected to the action. Exploiting innovative digital outdoor media in this way will link to our online activity and deliver a cohesive campaign across channels.”

Dan Dawson, at Grand Visual commented:

“This campaign from the ECB represents an intelligent use of the medium that will delight fans across the UK. The campaign is fresh, geo-targeted and plugged into ECB’s all important online and social channels.”

In an Out-of-Home media first, Waitrose has live streamed content to digital screens in 9 cities across the UK.

The supermarket’s spring promotion, which is part of a wider multimedia campaign, endeavoured to reinforce why its consumers enjoy shopping with the brand.

Featuring live streamed footage from the brand’s dairy and free range hen farms, the campaign highlighted the supermarkets focus on the quality of its products, as well as showcasing how well their animals are treated.

The live stream first appeared on JCDecaux’s Waterloo Motion and Ocean’s Eat Street sites, with the campaign expanding to encompass DEPs and Transvision screens across the country.

The spring campaign also featured two Friday night primetime TV slots, a takeover of YouTube’s masthead and a wider print campaign. Adam & Eve/DDB created the campaign which was planned and bought by Manning Gottlieb OMD and Talon. Grand Visual managed the digital production, delivering the live feed and pre-recorded footage updates from the farm to outdoor networks.

Amazon Catastrophe season 2

Amazon launched a dynamic Digital Out of Home (DOOH) campaign to celebrate the eagerly anticipated arrival of Catastrophe Season 2 to Amazon Prime Video. The campaign captures the humor of the British sitcom and invites participation through the show’s Twitter handle @catastrophe-tv. The dynamic campaign ran for 2 weeks on Urban Panels, Digital Newsstands and Digital Transit Shelters across New York City.

Produced by Grand Visual, the creative features a series of humorous “fill-in-the-blank” statements based on the brutally honest relationship between lead characters Rob and Sharon. The public are invited to “Pick the next theme” by tweeting either: #Family, #Sex, #Relationship or #Romance to @Catastrophe. This live poll mechanism determines the most popular theme and the content for that theme gets played across each digital network. The creative therefore adapts and changes according to audience interests during the course of the campaign. Each participant also receives an automated response from Twitter with the current poll results and a humorous statement on the topic they chose.

The DOOH campaign is planned and booked by Rapport, and delivered via OpenLoop, the campaign management platform for facilitating dynamic, real-time DOOH campaigns across multiple networks and markets.

Ben Putland, COO, Grand Visual, commented:

“Outdoor media plays a vital role in how we drive awareness and anticipation for online brands. It’s great to see forward thinking digital brands really starting to use the Digital Out of Home medium differently. Live, reactive and interactive DOOH campaigns are now possible and practical on a large and multi-network scale.”

A digital poster displaying the Virgin Trains Live Prices DOOH creative

Virgin Trains East Coast Network brought its ‘Bound For Glory’ campaign to Digital Out-of-Home with a dynamic campaign promoting live ticket prices. Live ticket prices were displayed for trains departing from Kings Cross to York, Leeds and Newcastle with the campaign displayed in key transport areas in over 270 sites across London.

Grand Visual’s OpenLoop platform has been integrated with Virgin Train’s API to pull through live prices which are then pushed out in real time across Digital Out-of-Home. The Digital Out-of-Home element of the campaign is supporting the national ‘Bound for Glory’ campaign that also features TV, press and digital media.

Jeremy Taylor, Strategy Director at Grand Visual said:

“It’s great to see a major brand like Virgin Trains embrace smarter messaging. This campaign is a great example of how Digital Out-of-Home offers a platform for brands to communicate with customers with relevant messaging, at scale.”

The campaign creative is displaying across JCDecaux, Exterion and Clear Channel networks for 28 days. Manning Gottlieb OMD is the media agency and Talon is the out of home media specialist.

A digital screen featuring the programmatic creative DOOH campaign 'Google Outside'

Programmatic is an industry hot topic right now; from Ad Blocking to proof of performance and ROI. Today’s issue of Campaign investigated an element of programmatic which is particularly close to our hearts at Grand Visual — the approach needed from a creative perspective to facilitate programmatic campaigns.

As Kate Magee from Campaign writes, “The automation involved in the process has seemed at odds with the more serendipitous nature of creativity”. The argument between ‘creative’ vs ‘technology’ sways either way depending on who you speak to. Our approach at Grand Visual has always been to use technology in way which enhances the messaging. It’s interesting to see the high profile nature of this ‘programmatic creative’ discussion when you consider that digital OOH has been delivering on this for a few years already.

With OpenLoop, we have been making creative messaging more contextual and more relevant for years now. Google Outside is a great example of what a programmatic approach can do in DOOH. Managed through OpenLoop the campaign delivered relevant messages in real-time based on location, weather and other environmental factors. Benadryl was another campaign, which featured a programmatic approach, rather than a blanket two-week booking, geo specific messages were only displayed when the right factors were met, ensuring that there was little wastage.

Programmatic creative for DOOH is alive and well and has been delivering for years on various levels. It is not just about data, it is about being smarter with our creative endeavours and delivering messages that are relevant to time, audience demographic, location and mindset. It is programmatic that can’t be blocked or ignored, it is relevant, dynamic and creative and where the future of this industry lies.

This January, Nest, Talon & MGOMD launched a dynamic campaign to promote Nest’s new ‘Learning Thermostat’ which enables you to ‘warm up your home, before you get home.’

The dynamic campaign only displays when the temperature drops below 7℃ in an area – meaning the message is delivered at the right time to maximise value. Using a MET Office feed to monitor the temperature the OpenLoop platform alerts the Nest agency teams to activate the campaign in the relevant locations when threshold temperatures hit. Thus only burning media credit when most effective and avoiding wastage.

One of two creative options plays out depending on local weather conditions. A snowflake creative is the standard but when the weather feed returns a rainy condition the raindrop creative is activated.

The campaign ran over a six week period across Ocean Outdoor’s Canary Wharf & Two Towers sites and on Clear Channel’s LD6s.

A young woman looks at a Ubisoft Shape Up dynamic digital out of home poster whilst waiting for a bus

Games developer Ubisoft has launched a dynamic digital out of home campaign to promote its new Xbox One fitness game “Shape Up”. The campaign, conceived by Ubisoft and Villain & Co, uses a mix of dynamic and linear content, and is running for 2 weeks from the 15th December on London bus and Underground sites.

Shape Up is the new fitness game coming for Xbox One and Kinect, and based on the idea that when you’re having fun, you get a better workout because you work harder. The game features fun and entertaining 90-second exercise challenges that use the motion tracking capabilities of the Kinect, and turn working out into a fun experience.

For the DOOH campaign, dynamic creative is appearing on one hundred bus stops around the Capital, and linear activity is running at twelve Tube stations on Exterion Media DEPs.

The dynamic component of the campaign is powered by OpenLoop, the dynamic digital out of home campaign management platform, and utilises Transport for London bus information data provided by Transport API to deliver content tailored to location and bus arrival times. Each Clear Channel Outdoor Adshel Live screen serves up two versions of creative. One execution uses bus arrival information to set a challenge for travellers. For example at a bus stop for the number 24 bus the execution might ask how many lunges they could accomplish before the next number 24 arrives. The challenge will always make a specific reference to a bus that stops at that stop.

The second version uses TFL data to identify the number of an approaching bus, and how many minutes away from the stop it is. OpenLoop then calculates how many calories would be burnt by the average person doing press-ups for that amount of time, before delivering the information as part of a real-time message, for example: “The 35 bus will arrive in around 10 minutes. Doing press ups for that long could burn up to 90 calories.”

Each message is accompanied by animated graphics based on the game artwork, retailer information, and the tagline, “Play hard. Get fit.”

The campaign has been conceived by Villain & Co, with digital production by Grand Visual, and dynamic content delivered by OpenLoop. Media for the campaign has been planned and booked by Maxus and Kinetic Active. Media owners are Clear Channel (bus stops), and ExterionMedia (DEPs). Bus data was provided by Transport API.

A man does press ups at a bus stop in response to the message on a Ubisoft Shape Up dynamic digital out of home poster

A man celebrates after achieving the challenge set in the Ubisoft Shape Up dynamic digital out of home poster

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 Flower Council Digital Meadow shown on the Eat Street screen at Westfield London

The Flower Council of Holland has created an interactive digital out of home activation on Ocean Outdoor’s Eat Street digital site at Westfield London.

The campaign involves ‘Flower Hunks’ encouraging shoppers to use digital flowers to send a message to a friend or loved one. Users write a special message via tablets, select their friend’s favourite flower and the message is then transmitted to the giant digital Eat Street screen in real-time. Using CGI modelled flowers the message appears as if written in those favourite flowers and animates into a beautiful scene of a grassy meadow.

A snapshot of each message is also distributed to 50 digital 6 sheet units and the Centre Spectacular screen inside the Westfield Shopping. This supporting dynamic display element is facilitated through OpenLoop, the campaign management platform for dynamic digital OOH advertising.

Participants will also be given a real flower to take away, along with a call-to-action to drive participation of the ‘Favourite Flower’ game on funnyhowflowersdothat.co.uk.

Watch here:

The campaign, launching on Monday 20th October and running for three days, is intended to promote flowers from the Netherlands as the ultimate gift. It has been planned and bought by UM London and Rapport. All creative production and application development was delivered by Grand Visual. The campaign’s experiential element (space and staff) is provided by Ambient Media.

Dan Dawson, Grand Visual’s Creative Technology Director said:

This activity demonstrates how digital out of home can be employed to amplify a brand message as part of a multi-channel campaign. The combination of experiential and dynamically delivered content enables The Flower Council to provide shoppers with an engaging experience that is then extended throughout Westfield London. It builds awareness of the brand and also drives traffic to the campaign’s online elements.

Craig Barber, Head of Innovation & Emerging Media at Rapport added:

This activation showcases the very best of digital out-of-home – user generated content, immediacy of message and above all an engaging experience. It provides the perfect platform for our audience to demonstrate friendship whilst ensuring flowers are front of mind as a gift option.

A photo of the Branded Cities dynamic DOOH activation in Times Square during New York Adweek

Branded Cities and Grand Visual have teamed up to create a dynamic DOOH campaign targeting creative agencies, media buying agencies and advertisers attending Adweek in New York, 29th September to 3rd October.

The campaign will run 40 times per day throughout Adweek on Branded Cities’ Nasdaq and Thomson Reuter’s digital sites in Times Square. It will feature a call to action for Adweek attendees to submit either an Adweek selfie, or text an update including their name, agency and #BCNAdweek. Submissions will appear instantaneously on the sites demonstrating the power of large format digital for social and interactive campaigns.

The agency with the most participants over the week will be rewarded with campaign space for themselves or their clients to use. They will also be featured as a winner on the boards themselves, giving the winning agency valuable exposure and highlighting the powerful reach of the sites.

Grand Visual, which opened in New York earlier this year, created the “live” feed updates via its OpenLoop management dashboard. This technology allows real time social interaction and showcases the OOH medium as the perfect vehicle for an interactive/social campaign.

Tim Kennedy, President, Eastern Region for Branded Cities Network said: “This campaign will show off the brilliance and interactive/full motion capabilities of the Nasdaq and Thomson Reuter’s digital screens. We’re looking forward to seeing how Adweek responds and to sharing the results.”

Ben Putland, COO of Grand Visual said: “We were delighted to be able to work with Branded Cities to deliver a campaign that will allow a huge number of people to get involved and, potentially win a fantastic prize. It is also a chance for us to show our target audience how our OpenLoop technology can be a hugely useful tool in creating immediate impact for an OOH campaign.”

A photo of the Branded Cities dynamic DOOH activation in Times Square during New York Adweek

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