Grand Visual Awards Wins The Wires Digital OOH Awards
To cap off a huge year, we were incredibly proud to find ourselves the recipients of three awards, from three different awards programs, across two continents, on one evening.

To be recognised for all the hard work and effort that goes into delivering a successful campaign is incredibly rewarding. And without further ado, the winners are… 

Our evening began at ExchangeWire’s “The Wires” ceremony in London. Picking up the gong for “Best DOOH Campaign” was Hiscox with Cyber Live. Since its initial run in February 2018, this clever campaign has picked up an incredible eight awards, with The Wires bringing the total up to nine.

What makes Cyber Live a winner is it’s unique and intelligent creative. By using real-life hackers to power the campaign, Hiscox brought to life a threat that often goes unseen but can have a major impact on small businesses. In just one week the honeypot servers were attacked over 195,000 times, highlighting the very real threat and bringing to the forefront the need for cyber insurance. 

In a nearby corner of London, The Drum “Creative OOH Awards” were also taking place. Nominated for the “International Campaign” award, our global collaboration with Spotify for their annual “Wrapped” campaign saw their first real-time DOOH activation, come out on top!

The largest multi-market, dynamic execution ever for digital OOH, the campaign brought the brand’s end of the year wrap up to life. Taking advantage of DOOH’s dynamic capabilities, 2018 Wrapped gave Spotify users the chance to be featured on an iconic billboard in their closest city, alongside some of the world’s biggest stars.

Our evening ends over 5,000 miles away in Los Angeles, at the “CLIO” awards, a prestigious ceremony for the entertainment industry. It was an honour to win bronze in the “Entertainment Digital Outdoor” category for our collaboration with Amazon Prime for Good Omens. The Times Square take-over picked up its second award this month, having just won an ABBI award for Best Local Execution.

Using augmented reality to bring the apocalypse to life, the audience was plunged into Armageddon scenarios, with fish raining down from the sky, UFOs and even a Kraken. Based on the novel of the same name, the campaign was loved and shared online by one of the authors, successfully bringing the pages of the book to life.

What makes these campaigns award-winning, is having a strong understanding of the target audience. For Hiscox, it was highlighting the need for small business owners to protect themselves from cyber-criminals. Spotify rewarded its listeners with their own moment in the spotlight and Good Omens provided an immersive experience for potential viewers of the new series. And all three of these campaigns used the digital OOH medium in different ways, showcasing the full storytelling potential of digital OOH.

Dan Dawson, CCO Grand Visual said: 

“It’s absolutely amazing to be recognised with multiple awards and in multiple countries for our work – that it was all on one night makes it that little bit more exciting. Not only do these awards recognise the team at Grand Visual, who work so hard to fulfil our client’s vision, but to see these campaigns showcased as best in class examples of DOOH is something to be really proud of. As the medium continues to grow and change, it’s great to see brands being rewarded for their creative vision. Creativity is at the heart of everything that we do and storytelling is our ethos. It’s where we win.”

If you want to talk to us about any of your upcoming digital OOH campaigns, then don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Zevi Tilles Account Director Grand Visual. Winning an ABBI award for Good Omens 2019
Our US Account Director, Zevi Tilles, shares the awesome year he has had so far since joining the team at Grand Visual.

Zevi Tilles Account Director Grand Visual. Winning an ABBI award for Good Omens 2019

Every year starts with a clean slate. In business, our clean slate is a (relatively) empty spreadsheet, ready to be filled in with activity and results. For me personally, 2019 turned out to be a very special year for a handful of reasons.

Joining the talented and supportive team at Grand Visual and reconnecting with the fast-paced OOH industry has been especially fulfilling. For OOH, 2019 has been a time of explosive growth and evolution. Reports from the OAAA showed that spending in OOH increased by 7.7% year-on-year in Q2 2019, representing the highest rate of quarterly growth since 2007. I believe this is solely down to the affordable and unskippable nature of the medium and its brilliant canvas for creativity.

Before I knew it, it was May and I was jetting out to Las Vegas to attend the OAAA and Geopath’s National Convention & Expo with our CCO Dan Dawson and COO Ben Putland. The conference was buzzing with excitement and anticipation as the industry came together to celebrate the medium. The renaissance and reinvigoration that comes with bigger investment and a greater of total advertising spend was a hot topic of conversation.

Also in May and easily winning my favourite day of the year, was the campaign we did for Amazon’s Good Omens launch. Who else can say that they brought Armageddon to Times Square, one of the industry’s most iconic locations where a staggering 380,000 people pass through each day? 

As the end of the world unfolded in the square, there was magic and excitement in the air. Mother nature was also on our side and even supplied a brief thunderstorm! From this four hour execution, we managed to own a huge 5% of all social conversations during the show’s launch week.

My next highlight for the year came in August when we worked on an awesome project for jetBlue. What a whirlwind of a project, we went from initial briefing to getting the campaign live in just 9 weeks – not bad for a project of this size with huge creative ambition. It was an extremely rewarding project to get across the line. Working with Rapport and Mullenlowe, we produced “Escape the Cape,” a dynamic digital OOH campaign, targeting vacationers stuck in Cape Cod traffic.

The campaign used real-time API’s and JetBlue’s flight schedule to compare Cape Cod driving times to flight times for alternative destinations. The campaign even ran on the side of a mobile billboard on a truck – an industry first!

Zevi Tilles Grand Visual Ben Putland MediaPost Digital OOH Awards

The final highlight of my year has been attending and winning at the OBIEs, ABBIs and MediaPost Awards. It has been great to be recognised by these awards programs for our awesome work on Spider-VerseGoogle Explore and Good Omens. There’s nothing better than being rewarded for the hard work that goes into each digital OOH campaign.

I can honestly say that I always have a smile on my face as I go to work every day and help to entertain consumers during their day-to-day lives, whether it be during the commute or on a shopping trip. I’m proud to work for a company like Grand Visual, who is constantly raising the bar for creativity and globally supporting the growth of digital OOH.

I can confidently predict that 2020 will be a year of impressive creativity and technology.

If you’re looking to craft some stories for digital OOH or you’d just like to find out more about the medium, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

 

Entertainment insights for Digital OOH. Spider Verse Times Square campaign
Charlotte Jones, Marketing Apprentice, shares how the biggest entertainment brands are using digital OOH to bring characters and storylines to life.

Did you know that US consumers spend almost as much time watching videos as they do working?¹  Or that over 60% of Millennials and Gen Z consumers stream videos daily?²  Whether you’re a film buff or a series binge-watcher, or maybe you got an account simply to see what all the fuss about Stranger Things is, streaming is a part of our everyday lives.

So it should come as no surprise that the world’s biggest entertainment clients are revelling in it – with epic digital OOH campaigns. We’ve worked closely with brands such as Amazon, Spotify, Disney and Netflix to craft memorable digital OOH experiences that bring characters and storylines from popular shows to life.

Let us show you a few examples…

Amazon Prime Good Omens

Amazon Prime brought Armageddon to Times Square with this awesome Augmented Reality experience for Good Omens.

Netflix The Haunting of Hill House

Netflix scared fans with this horrifying, Augmented Reality experience for the Haunting of Hill House at Comic-Con NY 2019.

Disney My Disney Side

Disney shared the magic at this unsuspecting mall, with an immersive Augmented Reality experience!

With the dawn of digital, it should come as no surprise that 46% of internet users say that they prefer to access music through online services than buy it offline.³  Considering there are over 7 billion internet users in the world… that is a lot of people!

As well as “video on demand” brands, we have also worked closely with some of the biggest music entertainment brands, including Spotify and Google, to create awesome dynamic digital OOH campaigns. Both of these examples played important roles within the brand’s broader campaign strategy.

Spotify 2018 Wrapped


Spotify gave their premium users the chance to see their ‘wrapped’ playlist appear on iconic billboards in New York, London, Berlin & Melbourne.

Google Play Music

Google Play Music showcased the app’s ability to suggest the perfect soundtrack for the consumer’s mindset at that moment.

Want to discuss your upcoming digital OOH plans? Get in touch!

To promote its latest TV series “Good Omens,” Amazon Prime Video launched a thrilling digital OOH campaign.

Good Omens Times Square Mixed Reality Digital OOH

The series, based upon Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s novel of the same name, follows the unlikely pairing of an angel (Michael Sheen) and a demon (David Tennant) as they join forces to save the world from the apocalypse. As one of the most hotly anticipated shows of 2019, Amazon wanted to bring the surreal scenarios faced by the protagonists to life with a takeover of Times Square.

As the digital OOH roadblock took over Times Square, the crowd was plunged into terrifying Armageddon scenarios through live animations and a countdown to the end of the world. The mixed reality digital billboard towered above the pedestrian plaza bringing Good Omens to life, with Kraken tentacles, UFOs and giant fish raining down on the crowd below. Just as the audience recognized themselves on the big screen the doomsday scenarios unfurled around them. The mixed reality experience created a fun and memorable experience giving participants the ability to share the moment on social media.

Good Omens Times Square Mixed Reality Digital OOH

Supporting the apocalyptic takeover, were additional large-format digital OOH billboards around Times Square, featuring the countdown to doomsday and the start of the highly-anticipated series.

The campaign was conceived by Amazon Studios and produced by Grand Visual.

Ric Albert, Creative Director at Grand Visual, said: “The Apocalyptic AR activation stops people in their tracks in an engaging race to save the world. It provides content that connects the audience to the series storyline and immerses them in a 5-screen Times Square roadblock. The live countdowns build on the excitement and anticipation of Good Omens debut on Amazon Prime Video.”