AMV BBDO & Grand Visual earned a Gold OBIE Award at the Outdoor Advertising Association of America’s (OAAA) 2015 OBIE Awards. We were recognised for our augmented reality Pepsi Max bus shelter in London.

The OBIE Awards are one of the oldest and most prestigious advertising programs, honouring creative excellence in out of home (OOH) advertising campaigns.

Inspired by the idea that Pepsi Max urges its consumers to push themselves “to the max” and accomplish “unbelievable” feats, AMV BBDO & Grand Visual pushed the boundaries of technical innovation. Augmented reality features were installed in a London bus shelter, and passersby became a part of a truly “unbelievable” experience as the scenery around them was disturbed by flying saucers, wild animals, and other out-of-this-world encounters.

“This bus shelter execution illustrates that OOH has become one of the most engaging, interactive, and innovative media in the world,” said Stephen Freitas, OAAA chief marketing officer. “Through the brilliance of augmented reality, Pepsi Max masterfully disrupted a standard shelter and captured the attention of consumers who passed it.”

The complete list of OBIE winners and finalists can be found at www.obieawards.org.

This week saw the announcement of the winners of this year’s Creative Circle Awards and we were thrilled to be one of the biggest winners with a massive seven awards going to two of the campaigns we’ve helped to create in the past year.

There were three gold awards for the Pepsi Max Unbelievable Bus Shelter we created with AMV BBDO including Best Use of Medium, Best Special Build and Best Integrated campaign. There was also a Best Digital Poster gold award for McDonalds See One. Want One created by us alongside Leo Burnett – a tremendous total of 4 golds in all!

And the winning didn’t stop there. We were also awarded two further silvers for the Pepsi Max Unbelievable work and one more silver for the McDonalds work.

We were even recognised with 5 nominations for the two big campaign winners above and including one for our work with BBH on the Audi Dashboard.

The awards scheme is run and judged by creatives and it traditionally showcases a wide range of excellent creative work across a number of different mediums. To be given this recognition by the creative community is very exciting and shows how creativity really is thriving in digital out of home.

Wednesday night saw us pick up another haul of prizes, this time at the Creative Out of Home Awards. Five of the campaigns we worked on over the past year won awards, with a further seven garnering Commendations.

We were honoured to receive the prestigious Chairman’s Award for our work alongside Adam & Eve DDB on “Google Front Row”. Our other award winners were “Pepsi Max Unbelievable Bus Shelter” in the Viral category, and “Google Front Row” for Innovation. Grand Visual work also picked up seven Commendations, including our Sydney, Australia “Into the Storm” AR activation in the International category, and “Google Outside” in the Digital Campaign category.

“Dove Ladies Day”, and McDonald’s “See one. Want one.” — activity we also had a hand in — received awards in the Multi-platform Campaign and Experimental/Ambient categories respectively.

What with our recent wins at the Mediapost Digital Out of Home Awards, November has been a proud month for GV.

In July, Grand Visual opened its doors in New York City. It’s been an eventful and satisfying few months as we set about integrating OpenLoop, our dynamic campaign management tool, into the US networks, and building on the creative production work we had already been doing for American clients.

Given that we’re the new kids on the block in NYC, you can imagine how pleasantly surprised we were to receive a bunch of Mediapost Digital Out of Home Award nominations. Our surprise turned to joy on the night when last Tuesday night we walked off with six awards, including Best in Show!

The awards won were: Best in Show for “Google Front Row”, Platform (Augmented Reality) for “Pepsi Max Unbelievable Bus Shelter”, Best Venue/Location Based Execution for “Google Front Row”, Best Park/Sports Arena/Stadium Concert Venue for “Google Front Row”, Best Execution Promoting a Brand within Industry Vertical (Beverage) for “Pepsi Max Unbelievable Bus Shelter”, Best Technology/Consumer Electronics for “Google Outside”.

It was a thrill for our work to be recognised to such a degree by the US industry, and a true highpoint to our first year in the Big Apple. We couldn’t have done it without great clients and agency partners. We hope our success at the Mediapost DOOH Awards will be an indicator of great things for the future of Grand Visual New York.

The dust has settled on Cannes Lions 2014. The hangovers have been dealt with and real life has resumed. So how did it go for the digital out of home category and for GV?

For Grand Visual it has been an amazing year at Cannes. Looking at entries to the full range of categories there were an incredible 58 submissions that specifically credited GV. This is more than double the submissions for 2013 and reflects both the increasing ambition for digital activity in the physical world of outdoor, plus the reputation for innovation that Grand Visual has earned over the years.

Those submissions were across multiple categories including Outdoor, Media, Cyber, Branded Content, Design, Innovation, Film, Promo & Activation, Mobile and Titanium. Again this points to the emergence of digital out of home and digital experiential as mainstream and integrated activity.

Out of those submissions 9 were shortlisted and 4 bronze Lions were awarded. The final tally recognized Pepsi Max Unbelievable and Google Front Row in the Outdoor Lions; Google Front Row in Promo & Activation Lions and Google Outside again in Cyber Lions.

So it’s been the best year so far for GV at Cannes Lions and a huge congratulations to all the team for this outstanding achievement. And of course a big shout to the brilliant agencies we have worked with over the last 12 months.

So what else was of interest specifically in the digital section of the Outdoor Lions? There were a few of familiar faces in the winning entries.

The brilliant bit of theatre for Samsung’s stare-down picked up a bronze.

Another S4-promoting campaign was the Smart Phone Line in New Zealand. The campaign recognises that the fans who queue up to be the first to own the latest product are the ones to be the nicest to. It’s a social campaign with a big, cool real world digital face.

“Magic of Flying” for British Airways was of course the run away (runway?) winner for any campaign utilizing digital tech and OOH. Hats off to the team at Storm for pulling that one off. Campaigns like this get everyone excited and really push the digital OOH channel in terms of consideration with creative teams.

My favourite entry (beyond the ones we delivered) was “The Social Swipe” for international relief organisation Misereor. In terms of execution it tackles the challenge of card transaction at the outdoor installation and opens up a host of thoughts on actually monetising interactions.

Finally, to get a creative’s perspective on where digital OOH is going have a look at these interviews with leading creative “grand fromages” in Cannes this year.