Technology Grand Visual Digital OOH
Welcome to our September instalment of Things We Love. A little something we hope will help you to get to know us at GV a little better. Every month we’re sharing things we’ve worked on and loved, new technology we’ve been looking at which could be applied to digital OOH, all things creative or something we’re just really geeking out on.

Buffalo Bill Gates Technology

Buffalo Bill Gates – PETE – MGFX DESIGNER

“Artist Kalle Mattsson, aka Buffalo Bill Gates, creates celebrity portrait mash-ups of famous faces with other celebrity identities/fictional entities to create offbeat hybrid personalities. We commonly see this ‘meme’ type artwork primarily online, however, it is great to see that Kalle Mattsson has an upcoming print exhibition showcasing his many wacky creations.”

Mixed Reality Graphic For The Weather Channel – ADAM – MGFX DESIGNER

“The Weather Channel utilised mixed reality while reporting on the power and danger of Hurricane Florence. The graphics showed flood waters rising well above the meteorologist’s heads, with howling winds and cars floating on the surface of the water. The technology is incredibly effective, and I’m keen to see the evolution of mixed reality and how that can be translated to digital signage and beyond.”

Interactive display in AR – STEVE – CREATIVE

“Apples ARKit has enabled many software developers and hobbyists to push Augmented Reality technology further, producing ideas and concepts that could change the way we interact with products, and advertisements. AR IRL (in real life) is a proof of concept which shows that users can interact with Augmented Reality elements onscreen in order to have an impact on physical objects. This example shows a user interacting with an AR keypad lock which unlocks a physical box. It’s an exciting thought to be able to interact with some kind of puzzle on your phone to unlock a digital vending machine DOOH activation.”

Cryptocurrency digital OOH

Jackson Palmer – FREDDIE – DEVELOPER

“As a tech guy, I find cryptocurrency interesting from the development perspective and recently I’ve been enjoying Jackson Palmer on YouTube. He’s great at explaining the technicalities of cryptocurrencies and stays clear of the trading side of things. For instance, his latest episode outlines what Dapps are (decentralised applications – apps run by many users rather than a company) and why no one is using them. It’s interesting if you want to get a critical look at the current state of cryptocurrency technologies and what the future is likely to hold.”

 

To celebrate a decade of Marvel heroes in cinema, Marvel Studios: Ten Years of Heroes exhibition was launched at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore.

The exhibition which launched in June 2018, promised to take fans ‘up close and personal’ with every aspect of the Marvel Universe. From a dance-off with baby Groot to an Iron-Man replica standing at over 16 feet tall – Marvel definitely kept their promise. The tech-driven exhibition even boasted an interactive activation giving fans the opportunity to open a time portal – just like the hero Doctor Strange!

Augmented Reality Doctor Strange Marvel

In collaboration with Beast Kingdom, we re-versioned our pre-existing application from a previous interactive experience, for the new Doctor Strange exhibit.

Augmented Reality Doctor Strange Marvel

In the exhibition, users were invited to ‘stand here to control reality’ with a glowing green rune displayed on the screen. The gesture-based experience got users to draw a circle in the air with their hand in order to spin the rune and reveal the burning portal. As the portal opened, it revealed a live camera feed from another location at a nearby Mall. A temporary bridge was created connecting the two locations for a few seconds before the portal closed.

Augmented Reality Doctor Strange Marvel

By using augmented reality we were able to bring the powers of Doctor Strange to life, offering the public a chance to try their hand at being the Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme. Digital technology has become a powerful tool for the entertainment industry, not only does produce some of the best creative campaigns, but it can also be used to heighten an audience’s interaction with a brand. Previously, fans of the Disney Marvel movies could only dream of having powers like Doctor Strange’s – but creative use of technology made those dreams into a reality.

Wireless Charging Arduino Digital OOH
Jon Jones, Creative Technologist

As the resident Creative Technologist at Grand Visual, I am always looking for creative and innovative ways to increase interaction and dwell time for our campaigns. Surely one of the best ways to achieve this is to give people a perk to attract their attention?

Now that Apple has jumped on the wireless charging bandwagon, the rate of adoption for wireless technology is going to surge ahead and it seems like a great time for me to explore this technology a little deeper.

The mission, that I chose to accept, was to link digital OOH and wireless charging technologies together and I found a pretty great implementation, if I may say so myself. Teaming together an Arduino, current sensor, QI wireless charging pad, Node.js, and some HTML5 wizardry it’s possible to interactively alter any content that’s being displayed on the screens in our office.

 

So here’s how it works… when a compatible mobile phone is placed on the charging pad, the Arduino measures an increase in the power being used. When this happens, it communicates to a Node.js server on our player, which then instructs the HTML5 application to change the creative displayed on-screen.

We’ve now instantly created extended dwell time where the guest is waiting for their device to charge – a great captive audience to display long-form content to.

This is definitely something I’m looking forward to building upon more. This method isn’t tied just to wireless charging – it can be any USB charging device, such as headphones, thus opening up the target audience even further. It’s exciting to think of more creative applications with adding more charging pads; how can the content be changed depending on the number of devices charging?

Cool idea, right? Let me know what you think via Twitter! @GrandVisual

 

LEGO star wars augmented reality
To follow on from the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story, LEGO has launched a digital OOH campaign, inviting shoppers to “Master the Force.” The experiential campaign uses on-screen LEGO bricks to build galaxy fighters, and promote the latest characters and brick sets tied to the Star Wars anthology.

Gesture sensor technology enables passers-by to engage with the on-screen LEGO sets, with users prompted to choose a side, and start building the spaceships of the new galaxy. The goal is to win the ultimate accolade of becoming a true Jedi Master, so the faster they build, the higher the score. After the game, there’s the opportunity for participants to ‘take a photo with the crew’, encouraging social sharing and amplifying the reach of the campaign.

Mark Phillips, Developer, Grand Visual, comments:

“It was fun developing the game using new camera technology which is still in development. The camera has the ability to recognize humans and can track joint movements in a 3D space, in essence, it’s an updated version of the Microsoft Kinect. The camera has incredible sensor technology, and is able to capture the movements of the player without confusing them with people in the background who are not involved in the game.”

The campaign was a collaborative effort, conceived by Initiative, with production, animation and interactive build by Grand Visual. Media planning and buying by Initiative and Rapport. The week-long Application runs on large-format Limited Space screens at busy shopping malls Bluewater and Newcastle Metro Centre from the 28th May.

Ric Albert, Creative Director, Grand Visual, said:

“Immersive experiences created with strategic use of creative technology allow the customer to get hands-on and explore LEGO’s latest products in a fun and memorable ways. At the end of gameplay the photo op then broadens the audience by encouraging people to share their picture online with family and friends.”

Marvel Doctor Strange OOH experience

This article first appeared on Contagious on 22nd May 2018.

Ric Albert, creative director at Grand Visual, explains how film studios are raising the bar with exceptionally creative uses of digital outdoor.

Ten years ago, digital out-of-home was in its infancy; a blank canvas yet to be painted with the exciting content we see today. Film marketing was still very much focusing on the traditional channels of TV, print and OOH; video-on-demand and pre-roll ads had only just started to appear. In fact, online was where film marketing first started experimenting creatively. However, as the functionality and scale of Digital OOH has expanded, so too, has the way in which entertainment brands use it.

Fast forward 10 years, and things have changed dramatically. Today, digital inventory has given OOH film campaigns a new lease of life, adding some movie magic to outdoor executions. Now marketeers can run trailers and video content on the street, introduce characters, plot teasers, or run live-action sequences, direct from the film to whet the public’s appetite. Digital OOH has become the ideal advertising channel for the entertainment industry.

Shifting the needle

There’s been experimentation. It started in 2006 with Rocky Balboa running up the first digital escalator panels on London Underground, changing the way we thought about multi-panel creative. It continued with Legend of the Guardians, which saw a campaign pioneering subtle motion on roadside screens, a motion format that’s now an international standard.

In 2011, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 streamed its world premiere live to DOOH screens. Then there was the Jurassic World execution at Waterloo, which combined, traditional OOH, station wraps, Digital OOH and experiential. And a variety of AR and VR activations were used across the world for the release of supernatural horror IT.

There is real momentum to this creative evolution, and advertisers are changing the way they create and use OOH media. From static branding channel to high impact PR vehicle, DOOH now live streams worldwide premieres, provides immersive augmented reality events and delivers iconic treatments tailored for iconic buildings, environments and screen locations. Now OOH can be engaging, immersive, participatory, integrated and scalable.

Scaling interaction

Connecting with film fans on a deeper level is now achievable. Digital OOH offers interaction via a multitude of creative technology solutions. A campaign for Dr Strange opened up live portals between sunny Los Angeles and rainy London, and allowed people to warp the world in front of them. An AR campaign for Batman v Superman allowed participants across several markets to become their favourite superhero. And these aren’t just one-off special builds, we’re seeing interactive campaigns becoming more scalable: it’s now possible to produce engaging, responsive experiences seamlessly across borders and markets.

The digitisation of OOH has also enabled outdoor creative to become firmly embedded in the broader digital strategy, playing a central role in an omnichannel execution. The power of social media and its influence over box office results means that OOH can be a great conduit for driving audiences online, and vice versa. Digital outdoor activations can be crafted to generate shareable content for garnering audiences online.

For the recent launch of season 7 of Game of Thrones, dramatic fan reactions posted on social channels were shared moments later on digital screens across the UK, tapping into the buzz and excitement of the show whilst delivering a powerful UGC endorsement. Interestingly, Digital OOH has also begun to influence other channels, with its content nowadays seen at movie premieres and press junkets, as well as within online banner creative and social feeds.

Digital OOH’s presence and ubiquity in cities around the world is also part of its allure to the film and entertainment industries. Film campaigns demand an international rollout, and as DOOH spend overtakes traditional OOH revenue in markets around the world, this has forced us to change our approach. Nowadays scalability is vital to production processes, so now we use master creative toolkits and flexible creative that can adapt to all the different shapes, sizes, durations, environments and audiences of the screens we’re faced with.

To give you an idea of that scale, in 2017 we delivered over 12,500 files to 52 markets, from Guatemala to Kazakhstan. Localisation and delivery become paramount, as does sophisticated ad-serving technology from QDOT. Now multiple markets can take advantage of a toolkit of creative rather than the traditional siloed approach.

So, what next? It’s undeniable that Digital OOH has become a major marketing channel for film studios and entertainment brands. Moreover, the film industry has become a major driving force for the continued development and evolution of global Digital OOH campaigns.

Now that the production processes have been nailed and the intelligent ad-serving infrastructure is in place, we expect to see truly global campaigns that deliver local relevance become the new standard. Combined with tactical, interactive and cross-channel strategies, the marriage between film marketing and digital OOH looks set to blossom.

Summer is a great time of year to target people with digital OOH advertising, with nearly half of the population becoming more active during spring/summer when the weather gets warmer*.

The good weather has a positive effect on people’s mood and will make people more likely to get involved with interactive campaigns. Take this fun, engaging campaign for Hasbro Monopoly for example.


Summer is also a great time to integrate the warmer weather with a dynamic digital OOH campaign and provide relevant & contextual messages. This campaign for refreshing, cool beverages from McDonald’s, only went live when the temperature rose to a “balmy” 17 degrees.

Of course, it doesn’t need to be dynamic to catch people’s attention. This summer campaign from Tropicana brought sunshine to the stations of London with eye-catching, linear creative.
It’s easy to see why advertisers are using digital OOH in the summer, with more people out and about, it’s the perfect time to be seen.

Sources:
*Talon Generator
OMA Summer
Media Village, Reaching the On-the-Go Consumer in Summer

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.

*Article first appeared on Exchange Wire 21st November, 2016

In the last ten days I’ve travelled extensively by plane, train, automobile and bike. I’ve been to four states, on both coasts, and encountered thousands of adverts. These ads were not viewed on my laptop thanks to an ad blocker, nor on my phone where I run very few free apps, and I didn’t see them on TV thanks to the fast forward button on my DVR.

What I’ve seen are thousands of Out of Home (OOH) ads both print and digital. This may not surprise you given that the US is the world’s largest OOH advertising market, by revenue. Impressive digital OOH (DOOH) growth continues to buoy the sector and is set to capture 53% of total US OOH ad spend by 2018, according to eMarketer.

But, as I travelled about, I got a nagging sense that the creative evolution of the medium has not kept apace with the technological advancements, and that brands are not making the most of the mediums fully expanded digital feature set now on offer.

NYC – the Digital Theatre
Back in New York City, my home for the last three years, the pace of change across the DOOH landscape is breathtaking. Driven by significant investment in the realm of nine figures, NYC is by far the most valuable OOH market in the US. Its population density and extensive public transport network, make it an atypical American city, and the scale of investment going into the city’s DOOH architecture is a testament to this.

The opportunity to turn the whole of Manhattan into a digital theatre, where a brand can tell it’s story, will soon be the biggest and best opportunity in the world. Consider what’s already there; The New York City Subway is at the forefront of the US’ transition to DOOH formats. Screens are ubiquitous across the networks platforms and stations, providing essential customer information and offering high value display advertising.

The Westfield World Trade Center recently opened with a single screen that’s over 280 feet long in addition to the rest of their downtown “DOOH District”. Intersection’s LinkNYC has new kiosks popping up everyday and with free Wi-Fi usage now surpassing 576,000 people, and still growing. Outfront have their Hudson Yard network, JCDecaux are adding more digital transit shelters to their network and other large format displays are constantly appearing.

The digital inventory is there, as well as addressability through platforms such as OpenLoop. When you combine this with the additional plug-in features such as WIFI, multi-screen synchronization, full motion, geofencing, mobile and social integration, live feeds, closed networks, and multiple attribution methods, it is clear the advertiser has a huge choice before them.

Embrace the Technology
Going beyond DOOH’s impressive broadcast capability, the infrastructure is now there to facilitate smarter more intelligent communication. It’s a much richer canvas on which to tell brands stories. Dynamic, interactive, and data-driven campaigns, reflecting real-world events in real-life environments are now possible. For advertisers looking to make a splash in NYC, it means you can connect with consumers via multiple formats, touchpoints and technologies during the course of their day.

As data becomes increasingly important there is a real opportunity to harness the ‘Context Effect’, where dynamic and locally relevant conditions can inform and drive content and supercharge campaign effectiveness. With its public, high-impact presence, DOOH is perfect for Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) and the medium deserves a fresh and engaging creative approach that resonates with context and audience mindset.

Programmatically informed creative is already making in-roads in the US. Earlier this year Amazon launched a people-powered DOOH campaign for Catastrophe, inviting the public to tweet in their favourite themes from the series, like #Sex or #Romance. A live poll mechanism then delivered trailers tailored to audience preference, continually adapting and changing over the course of the campaign according to audience interests.

Google Play Music took this a step further when it delivered the first programmatically informed DOOH campaign to span four States and multiple media vendors. The initiative saw premium roadside and city centre screens behaving in a similar way to the music app – offering perfect soundtracks based on the consumer’s mind-set in that moment.

The campaign used multiple triggers including real-time traffic data, weather, location and time of day and OpenLoop delivered the contextually relevant playlists. Suggestions included Classic Rock Wake Up Call during the hectic morning rush-hour in Chicago, The Overcast Feeling on a cloudy day, or Hot Miami Nights: Latin House on a clear Friday night in the sunshine state.

Whilst it’s not surprising that heavy weight digital brands like Google and Amazon are leading the way with smarter dynamically optimised DOOH campaigns, the same benefits can be leveraged by any brand. The scale of investments being made in DOOH infrastructure in NYC mean that this is not a medium for only the brave; the risks are low and the rewards are high. Now is the time to embrace the technology and the burgeoning opportunities that make DOOH such an exciting space to work in.

The Brave New Advertiser
DOOH has the potential to play an integral role in NYC’s modern, WIFI enabled “smart city” infrastructure. But, navigating this increasingly complex landscape, and making it all work together with brilliant creative is an artform in itself. Whilst landmark campaigns from Google Play and Amazon will help to spur the market on to thinking more about DOOH as a smart, real time, data driven medium, at present, DCO campaigns remain the exception rather than the rule.

It’s time to tear up the traditional outdoor creative handbook and embrace the brave new world of DOOH – it’s a new way of thinking. Creative agencies are best placed to drive the growth and adoption of this brave new world of DOOH, alongside production specialists and media owners who can provide the insight and know-how to handle the nuances of the medium.

One of the first important steps is prioritising your data strategy over your creative one. From a creative perspective, we can access an enormous amount of data to contextualise copy. There’s location data, 3rd party data and brand owned data including pricing, stock levels, retail stores. Through these layers of data, we can exploit the ‘Context Effect’ – providing dynamic, data-driven and locally relevant information.

To realise DOOH’s true creative potential the industry needs to adopt a new cohesive approach to working – based on a frequent interface between agencies, production house and media owners. More broadly, the market needs to attract those from a digital background, whose expertise will help to boost new creative ways of working. The most successful projects feature true collaboration with all stakeholders working together.

Looking ahead to 2017
Digital OOH, plays a key role in creating exciting, modern and memorable cityscapes. Nowhere is this more visible than in NYC, where the medium continues to evolve at breakneck speed with a sophisticated, world-leading DOOH infrastructure in place.

Now is the time to make NYC a leading light for creative excellence. To do this we must embrace a new collaborative way of working, and we must challenge every brief response with smart digital enhancements. Only then can we drive creative standards and help spur the medium onto a more dynamic reactive, and relevant future – a future which will see the city’s agencies topping the leaderboards of outdoor advertising award programmes around the world.

As part of Canon’s “Come and See” series, Canon is launching City Surfers, an expansive Pan-European campaign aimed at highlighting the virtues of real image quality at moments where it truly matters. As part of the integrated push, a month long interactive DOOH activation is kicking off in Germany this week, across mall, rail and roadside environments. The UK and France follow suit on 26th September, in a push that will span 1,500 screens and includes two interactive dominations.

Produced by Grand Visual with creative direction from J. Walter Thompson, the DOOH campaign follows three thrill-seeking city surfers as they descend on Munich city centre to ride the standing wave at the Eisbach brook. The stunning Canon-quality camera footage, shot at night on the fast-flowing river, is followed by the call to action to discover more about Canon products.

Specially shot 180° film footage also provides a unique interactive experience built by Grand Visual, using touch-screen and gesture technology. Consumers can explore the film by scrolling, swiping and clicking, in a similar way they would on a smartphone, plus interactive hotspots provide further information on Canon products and camera techniques.

City Surfers is the fifth story in the Come & See series created by JWT London. The DOOH activity was planned and booked by Talon and PHD Media Worldwide and supports a broader Digital and Mobile campaign rolling out across EMEA markets this month, based around the central hub.

Lee Bonniface, Marketing Director, EMEA region at Canon Europe, said

“We’ve been able to portray some fascinating and inspiring stories as part of our Come and See brand campaign and we’re proud to bring our latest story to life in an even more engaging way. For the first time, consumers will be able to see and feel the true benefits of using a Canon camera through their smartphones, while exploring the incredibly exciting world of City Surfing. We want to put consumers in the driver’s seat, enable them to view the scene and story as it is told and learn about Canon’s superior imaging quality in the process.”

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

“DOOH is the perfect medium for displaying the stunning Canon-quality video footage. By combining the scale and impact of out-of-home with technologies that allow for more immersive, hands-on interaction, DOOH can provide a deeper more memorable level of engagement.”

Nolwen Rivet, Associate Director at PHD Media Worldwide commented:

“The flexibility and ubiquity of DOOH inventory in cities around the world make it a valuable and exciting medium to work with. City Surfers combines the more personalised experiences of interactive DOOH and mobile comms, with the public scope of a multi-market digital display campaign on a grand scale.”

Pets at Home have recently launched their interactive game nationwide Digital out of Home campaign on Primesight’s digital interactive 6-sheet network. Their interactive game is live across 38 cinemas across England and Scotland.

Their geo-targeted interactive game was produced and built by Grand Visual and created by John Brown. The fast-paced game invites pet-loving cinema-goers to digitally feed animals with a chance to win cinema vouchers. The top 10 players will enter their name on the leaderboards and are issued voucher codes to spend in store, with location specific directions to their closest Pets at Home store.

The DOOH push was planned and booked by Carat Manchester and Posterscope, and runs in Vue, Odeon and Cineworld cinemas in England and Scotland until the end of September.

Tim Dowling, Head of External Communications at Pets at Home, commented:

“This is a new marketing direction for Pets at Home and it’s a great fit for our brand. Pet lovers are warm, tactile people who enjoy interacting with animals. This campaign is targeted and fun, and gets people interacting with our brand in a natural and hands-on way. The campaign rewards user participation and incentivises participants to visit our nearest store to spend their vouchers.”

Tim Last, Products & Services Director at Grand Visual said:

“Few interactive campaigns have been done on this scale in the UK before. Primesight’s cinema foyer network is a unique canvas with national coverage, long dwell times and touch-screen technology. The game is simple, fun and instantly accessible to pet loving families.”

Dan Sharp, Head of Digital, Primesight said:

“We thrive on working with brands looking to digitise their messaging and take their out-of-home advertising campaigns in a fresh and innovative direction. The capabilities of OOH are showcased through our touch-screen cinema network, which is the perfect platform for Pets at Home’s eye-catching creative.”