As a society, we’ve grown up with Out of Home advertising. Whether it was the humble 6–sheet with no digital capabilities or the now–digital landscape that we’ve become accustomed to, OOH has always been a part of our lives. Across various generations, we’ve seen brands such as Coca Cola build their empires through heavily investing in OOH. From paper and paste to the pixels and screens, OOH truly is a proven fame maker. 

Whilst some may argue that the traditional OOH medium isn’t as effective at building fame as online channels; at Talon, our Creative Director, Ric Albert and Head of Creative Solutions, Jay Young, think differently. With an incredible portfolio of some of the best in OOH campaigns under their belts, such as BBC’s Dracula, Pepsi MAX and a range of work with Warner Bros, there’s no better people to ask… 

Why is OOH so highly regarded in terms of fame making? 

Ric: “OOH has the ability to connect with the public in ways that other channels simply cannot. Firstly, you have a broad audience to tap into. OOH can take advantage of its environment and therefore its audience’s mindsets, to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.  

Beyond that, the sheer scale of the billboard or screen creates a canvas unlike any other. In a world where most content appears on small screens in front of our faces, being able to put your message out at this size really helps OOH to be a unique proposition for fame making.” 

An amazing example of this was when Warner Bros took over the world’s tallest building, The Burj Khalifa, to promote its latest movie Wonder Woman 1984. The campaign showcased the movie on the largest digital OOH canvas in the world, at 828 metres high! The video received over 3 million views in 24 hours on Gal Gadot’s Instagram account. 

 

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Jay: “OOH is the perfect stage for brands to perform on. It’s big, it’s un-skippable and it exists in the real world. You can close a newspaper, turn off your phone or fast forward TV, but OOH stands tall regardless and with that comes an overwhelming sense of power and impact.  

You can see a cultural moment blow up on Twitter at 9 am. You‘ll get a reactive ad on DOOH across the country by the time you log off for the day. I still love the Specsavers campaign we ran in reaction to the Moonlight Oscars blunder. We could never have achieved the same impact with static OOH going live days later. 

Combine this with the fact that we can reach 98% of UK adults every week. It’s a fame machine.”

So, we know why OOH is a “fame machine,” but what does it take to create an impactful campaign that lives beyond the billboard? 

Taking this campaign, featuring K-Pop singer Wooyoung for his birthday on a screen in Times Square as an example; living anywhere else in the world, you wouldn’t have seen it. However, because a fan connected with and shared the campaign on social media, it has now been viewed over 110k times – amplifying the campaign and building fame.

Jay: “As humans, we are ruled by emotions, we don’t just buy products and services, we buy feelings. The most impactful ads make us really feel something! Do something unexpected to get noticed. Use context to optimise your message and use emotion to make the audience feel something. Emotion makes it memorable.” 

Ric: “Can the billboard start a conversation? Can it get people talking or thinking so that the message lives on after the billboard? Creating a campaign that can emotionally engage with the public is key and isn’t always down to the location of the billboard.  

There are some locations such as Times Square that are just iconic and there are some locations that you have to think outside of the box and make it iconic; so that even if the advert is 10m tall or 500 other people are also looking at it, does it speak directly to you. This can be done with messaging, imagery or even just the sentiment behind it.”

What campaign stands out to you as a fame maker for OOH? 

Jay: There are so many campaigns I love for different reasons. The sheer simplicity of the BBC Dracula shadow billboard, the innovation behind Pepsi’s Unbelievable Bus Shelter and the always-on and always awesome ads from McDonald’s. As advertisers, they have all reaped huge rewards from constantly challenging themselves and not settling for cookie-cutter planning. 

For reference, Dracula and Pepsi MAX’s Unbelievable Bus Shelter have received over 15 million views combined and remain two of our most popular OOH campaigns of all time…

Ric: One that comes to mind is Nike’s Dream Crazy campaign with Colin Kaepernick. It won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix and for good reason. Using such a large canvas, and public space to broadcast a bold, daring and important message… It used OOH’s unique abilities to provoke conversation, publicity and make the public think, and feel. It wasn’t putting the product front and centre, but something more important for us all. 

Another example of fame building and amplification online, is when a celebrity themselves, shares their billboard with their followers. Molly Mae Hague, a popular UK based influencer, shared her billboard to her fanbase of over 340k Twitter followers and 5.3m Instagram followers.

Although we’re not inside the head of the celebrity, it’s interesting to understand why they specifically share their billboards rather than various online ads they feature in. So, from your experience, why do you think celebrities share their billboards on social media? 

Ric: “We’ve grown up with billboards around us. Long before phone screens, iconic sites like Times Square and Piccadilly Circus captured our imaginations and felt like the biggest screens in the world. So today, with so many screens in our lives, having our face (or work) on DOOH screens – whether small format like D6s or large format city centre ones – still triggers an emotional excitement within us.  

It’s different and it’s not easily doable. You can’t just tweet something and it goes up there. So, fame is still exclusive. It’s just not an arena everyone can participate in!” 

Jay: “When brands, or people for that matter, appear on billboards they enter a relatively exclusive club. You, unlike most, have achieved a status that allows you to fill this very public canvas. It’s the “I’ve officially made it” moment. Instagram and other platforms thrive on our societal need to play status games. An image of yourself on a big iconic DOOH screen gives you bonus points for sure!”

OOH is a medium that delivers scale and unrivalled creative potential, making it the ultimate ‘fame maker.’ The perfect recipe is a combination of audience understanding, contextual relevance, creativity that packs a punch; get these right and OOH can extend beyond the billboard and provide stand out fame making moments. 

OOH on its own is an incredibly strong advertising medium, however, when used in conjunction with other channels it’s been proven to extend the reach and effectiveness of a campaign.

Consumers today spend 70% of their time outside of their homes making out-of-home (OOH) advertising a prime channel for reaching your target audience. With a low CPM and high ROI, what’s not to love about the traditional channel?

OOH & Online Ads

You might think of these two advertising mediums as occupying two completely different worlds – one physical and one in cyberspace. But with 27% of our year spent online, both mediums actually do a pretty similar job of catching us in our everyday lives.

When OOH is combined with online ads, brands can elevate the effectiveness of their overall campaign by 31% and increase the overall reach by 68%. Used together as part of the marketing mix, these two channels thrive.

OOH & Mobile

Did you know there are more mobile phones in the world than there are people? We’re clearly obsessed with our handsets. So what happens when a relatively new channel like mobile is combined with a traditional channel like OOH?

According to recent studies, when OOH is combined with mobile it can increase a mobile campaign’s reach by 316%.

A great example of OOH working well with mobile comes from McDonald’s in the US. They utilised mobile geofencing to retarget audiences through Waze (a GPS navigation software app). Displaying the same billboard creative within the app, as they were in close proximity to an outdoor ad. This approach saw McDonald’s earn 6.4 million mobile impressions and 1.9 million unique consumers in 8 weeks.

OOH & Social Media

With 45% of the total world population using social media, social is one of the most effective channels for targeting audiences. In its simplest form, the combination of OOH with Social Media could just be a hashtag on a billboard, however, there is a multitude of ways that these channels can work to complement each other.

In 2014, Pepsi Max launched “Unbelievable,” a campaign that beautifully combined digital OOH (DOOH) with Social Media. Featuring an Augmented Reality DOOH stunt, the brand earned over 50 million views online, as well as news coverage and countless awards.

When OOH is combined with Social Media, it amplifies and extends the reach of a campaign from a physical to a digital level. Results from Talon’s 4th space research saw a 48% increase in consumer action when digital OOH was added to a social plan.

OOH is a great amplifier, and when added to your marketing mix as part of a comprehensive strategy, increases campaign performance.

Neil

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
It’ll be fourteen amazing years in July this year. I’m CEO and work with a great management team at Grand Visual and QDOT.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
So many to choose from over the years! But I’d have to say Lynx Angel Ambush because it really made everyone wake up to the potential for creative technology in out of home and it won our first Cannes Lion.

If you weren’t in the Management Team, would you rather be in the Production Team or the Creative Team?
I started out as a Producer so I should go there but I think I’d join the Creative Team for a new experience.

Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or fly through the air?
Fly through the air – that would be so much fun.

Would you rather have an unlimited international first class ticket, or never have to pay for food at restaurants?
Definitely the first class ticket – visiting new countries and cultures is an absolute treat. (Although if I can fly through the air I might not need the plane ticket …)

Dan

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
I joined at inception as one of the founding fathers of the company.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
Wow. It’s like asking who your favourite child is! Our projects are all so different so I have favourites in each category, for each client and in each market. As I look back over the last 14 years of Grand Visual the milestone projects are those which really helped shape the DOOH industry and then made the phone ring. I think back to Rocky Balboa, Nike Write the Future, Yell.com, Google Speech, The Harry Potter Premiere and Lynx as pivotal moments in both the company’s and the industry’s history. I think I’d have to pick Lynx Angel Ambush as the one… That campaign was a game changer. The teams we worked with on that project have become lifelong friends for the pain we all went through together. I feel like that project helped Grand Visual propel to the next level and also helped us give birth to probably our most successful Augmented Reality projects Pepsi Max: Unbelievable Bus Shelter and My Disney Side.

If you weren’t in the Management Team, would you rather be in the Operations Team or the Tech Team?
Wow. Again it’s like asking who your favourite child is! But yeah… Tech. Operations require far too much political correctness and HR – everyone who knows me knows I swear way too much when I’m excited/showing off.

Would you rather be able to control fire or water?
Easy…Water. I’d give everyone in the world access to clean water, and put out the fires of the idiot who answers this question incorrectly.

Would you rather be the first person to explore a planet or be the inventor of a drug that cures a deadly disease?
I’d invent the drug and give it away for free… get a Nobel prize, become a Trillionaire through my new found celebrity and philanthropy status… and then go explore a new planet with my new found wealth.

Sarah

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
A bit over a year and a half and I’m a Senior Marketing Executive.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
The Augmented Reality experience that we did Pepsi Max Unbelievable bus shelter, I remember reading about it when I lived in Australia and thinking it was so cool!

If you weren’t in the Marketing Team, would you rather be in the Creative Team or the Client Services Team?
Creative Team.

Would you rather have more time or more money?

More time to make more money.

Would you rather only be able to jump everywhere or only be able to walk on your hands?
Probably jump everywhere.

Steve

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
Just over three years – I’m a software developer.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
Has to be the interactive game we did for Pets at Home ‘My Pet Pals’.

If you weren’t in the Tech team, would you rather be in the Production team or Operations?
Ops. I’d get to work with Gwen all day!

Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or fly through the air?
Flying definitely!

Would you rather become twice as strong when both of your fingers are stuck in your ears, or crawl twice as fast as you can run?
Stronger with my fingers in my ears. It would make leg day easier.

Matt

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
I have been at GV for just under 3 years. I am the Management Accountant, which means I report the monthly/yearly performance of the business. I also look after the day to day functions of Finance.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
My favourite campaign would be the work that we did for the film, The Accountant. It’s nice to see a film show our profession in a good light. Even if there were not enough explosions to do us justice.

If you weren’t in the Finance Team, Would you rather be in Client Services or Operations?
Client Services defo! I love eating/drinking in new places and entertaining clients. That’s all there is to it right?

Would you rather be an amazing dancer or an amazing singer?
Singer, it’s where the ££££ is at!

Would you rather become twice as strong when both of your fingers are stuck in your ears, or crawl twice as fast as you can run?
Crawl twice as fast as I can run. I’m quite fast at running, so my crawl would be insane! Plus I’m sure my kids would love to jump on my back while I whizz around.

Nadiya

How long have you been at GV for and what’s your role?
Almost 6 years! I’m the Production Director.

What’s your favourite GV campaign?
Our Augmented Reality campaign that we did for Pepsi Max Unbelievable bus shelter. It was truly a media first that opened so many doors for GV!

If you weren’t in the Production Team, Would you rather be in Operations or Client Services?
Client Services.

Would you rather be the first person to explore a planet or be the inventor of a drug that cures a deadly disease?
Invent the drug that cures a deadly disease.

Would you rather be completely invisible for one day or be able to fly for one day?
Be able to fly.

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.

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.