Grand Visual was pleased to work with Havas Media and Talon on the Creative Out of Home element of the campaign which received Campaign’s Ad of the Day.

With the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games just under two weeks away, John West – the UK’s leading tinned fish brand and trusted household name- has launched a new campaign to celebrate the strength of ParalympicsGB athletes, and their role as proud protein partners of ParalympicsGB.

Building on John West’s brand positioning ‘EAT STRONG, GO STRONG’, the campaign showcases the power of natural protein, and how it fuels you to be strong, in whatever you do.

To relay this message, the campaign humorously dramatises the effects of John West’s natural protein on ParalympicsGB athletes via a bespoke special build with a life-sized javelin peeking out, with supporting copy ‘’warning, protein-fuelled javelin throwers are getting serious air miles’’. The special build sits alongside a number of DOOH, which feature other sports, including cycling and shotput – further playing on the effects of John West’s natural protein.

The media plan, developed by Havas Media UK, strategically positions the special build across three screens in major UK cities to ensure nationwide visibility. Key commuter spots have been selected to maximise exposure, including The Pump Station by Westfield London, Pin Mill Brow in Manchester and New Moseley Road in Birmingham.

The campaign also includes a series of humorous TikTok videos, which sees three ParalympicsGB athletes; Kadeena Cox, Para Cycling and John West protein Ambassador, Nathan MacQueen, Para Archery and Hollie Arnold , Para Athletics, not realising their own strength – lifting up cars and retrieving their equipment from people’s gardens. Filmed in an undercover style way, the videos utilise the popular doorbell footage TikTok trend and showcase a range of Paralympic sports.

In February 2023, John West Foods was announced as an Official protein partner of ParalympicsGB. The four-year partnership with ParalympicsGB, covers the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympics and the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympics, as well as activities outside of the Games period. This long-term partnership will bring to life the brand’s ‘Eat Strong, Go Strong’ message and further amplify John West’s protein credentials.

Vicki Maguire, chief creative officer Havas London said: “This campaign is fuelled by natural protein…bringing a touch of humour, while getting behind our ParalympicsGB athletes, to bring home the glory….’’

Vikki Babb, John West International, Marketing Director added: “We are extremely proud to be partnered with ParalympicsGB and are excited to be supporting the team on their road to Paris. The campaign perfectly brings together the John West tongue in cheek tone of voice and benefits of our natural protein.”

Andrew Darby, Managing Partner, Havas Media Network said: “We’re honoured to work alongside our sister agency, Havas London to support John West’s journey in celebrating and empowering ParalympicsGB athletes through the power of natural protein. This campaign truly exemplifies the synergy between creativity and strategic media planning—by positioning this captivating special build in central locations across the UK, supported by this engaging multi-media campaign, we will together ensure maximum visibility and inspire nationwide support for these incredible athletes.”

The campaign is live from the 12th of August, kicked off by the special build, followed by the DOOH on the 19th of August. The TikTok films will be live across the summer and throughout the Paralympics.

– CREDITS –
Project name: John West Paralympics – Eat Stong, Go Strong
Client: Vikki Babb (International Marketing Director) & Laura Cooper (Marketing Manager)
Creative agency: Havas London
Chief Creative Officer: Vicki Maguire
Creative Director: Dave Mygind
Copywriter: Joe Roberts
Art director: Doug Redfern
Managing Partner: Dave Owen
Account Director: Andrew Symonds
Senior Account Manager: Rica Dezoller
Head of Production: Louise Bonnar
Agency Producer: Ella Myerscough-McClymont
Senior Integrated Producer (print): Kat Loizou
Creative Production Director: Dean Trendler
Strategy Director: Jack Lewis-Barclay
Chief Design Officer: Lorenzo Fruzza
Design Director: Josh Toogood
Designer: Morgan Shipley
Designer: Walt Gregory
Media agency: Havas Media UK
Outdoor partner : JCDecaux Creative Solutions
Outdoor partner : Talon
Outdoor partner: Ocean
Production company: Prose on Pixels
Director: Doug Redfern & Joe Roberts
Executive Producer: Ben Kaufman
Producer: Rosie Smith
Production Assistant: Ella Higgins
DoP: John Fisher
Editor: Navid Khayati-Daryan
Post-production: ELMNTL
Post-production producer: Jenna Le Noury & Rose Crisp
Post-production (OOH): Prose on Pixels
VFX: Antonio Jimenez + Mustafa Pertev
Colourist: Henry Howard
Soundtrack composer: N/A
Narrator / VO: Joe Roberts
Audio post-production: Joe Marsden

Right Talent Cannes Lions

This June, Talon and Grand Visual are supporting the #RightTalent initiative at Cannes.  #RightTalent is sending 11 young people to attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as part of its mission to call for more diversity, equity and inclusion at the annual gathering. 

#RightTalent is led by Digilearning, an official partner of Cannes Lions’ Equity, Representation and Accessibility programme. 

Digilearning is a charity that helps young people find fulfilling careers in the digital and creative industries. They are working with four other organisations on the #RightTalent scheme. They are: The Amos Bursary, Mobo Trust/Mobolise, the Rio Ferdinand Foundation and The Marketing Academy Foundation. 

#RightTalent is calling on the industry to “walk to talk” when it comes to diversity by providing mentors, pathways to job roles such as work experience and offering jobs to young talent from under-represented backgrounds. 

Talon and Grand Visual have pledged our support alongside companies including Accenture and VaynerMedia. 

The 11 candidates chosen to attend Cannes Lions will take part in a leadership acceleration programme. At the festival itself, the young talent will meet senior leaders through attending panels, mentoring sessions and roundtables featuring organisations that are supporting #RightTalent. 

Other training includes an online bootcamp before the festival that provides tips and advice on confidence, networking and what to expect at Cannes Lions.

Read The Media Leader to find out more. 

Our very own CCO, Dan Dawson and his Behind the Billboard co-host Hugh Todd discuss the best OOH work over the last year and which ones they believe could be Cannes Contenders including British Airways, McDonald’s, Warner Bros; Wonka and many more!

See the full article on Shots.net here!

Talon Creative Solutions Grand Visual
From today, Talon’s award-winning Creative Solutions team will join industry-pioneers Grand Visual to offer a full suite of Out of Home (OOH) and Digital Out of Home (DOOH) creative services to advertisers, media agencies and creative agencies through the Grand Visual brand.

Grand Visual’s offering expands – from a unique production agency providing creative services for DOOH – to include creative and experiential executions for static OOH and DOOH, whilst continuing to dominate environments and turn OOH campaigns into truly immersive experiences generating a unique social amplification opportunity.

Under the new structure, Grand Visual’s team of creative, technology, production, project management, storytelling and digital marketing experts will be led by Jay Young and Dan Dawson as Chief Client Officer and Chief Creative Officer respectively. Ric Albert stays in role as Creative Director, with the entire Talon Creative Solutions team moving to Grand Visual.

Talon Creative Solutions Grand Visual

Grand Visual’s services will integrate Creative Solutions offering and their existing services into three categories delivering added value to existing and future clients offering the best in creative and digital OOH concepts through one funnel:

Solutions 

Digital 

Experiential 

The Talon Creative Solutions team will move to be contactable via Grand Visual, with email structure firstname.lastname@grandvisual.com. Please update all contact details and look forward to receiving an extended response to briefs soon.

Grand Visual was acquired by Talon Outdoor in 2019 and is part of the Talon family.

Sending Love UGC OOH
Grand Visual, Plexus & the World Out of Home Organization’s user-generated digital Out of Home campaign ‘Sending Love’ won the Best International Campaign award at this week’s Drum OOH awards. It was also highly commended in the Best Collaborative Campaign During Covid-19 category.

The campaign was supported by 68 different media owners in 178 cities in 38 countries and by the World Out of Home Organization, the official client. The Drum awards were supported by Alight Media.

Sending Love Digital OOH Awards

The largest user-generated execution ever for digital OOH, the campaign encouraged participants to send love to those in places they couldn’t travel to, by getting creative with the heart-hand symbol and uploading their pictures and locations to the Sending Love website.

Participants were invited to donate to the global COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and then received a photo of their picture playing on-screen in their chosen city to share with friends and family across social channels.

Dan Dawson, Chief Creative Officer, Grand Visual says: “It’s great recognition for the hard work and effort that went into #SendingLove and all the partners globally, including WOO, that helped make the campaign the success it was. It was particularly sweet to win for a campaign that’s all about sharing messages of love and unity across the world during such difficult times.”

Adrian Skelton, Managing Partner, Talon says: “Winning such a prestigious award, is a victory for the whole OOH industry. #Sendinglove was a great example of the OOH community coming together to deliver an innovative and engaging campaign…globally. It was inspiring to see The Plexus Network, Grand Visual and our global media owner partners’ expertise and ability, bring this idea to life so quickly at such scale. As we now focus on a post COVID-19 world in 2021, I strongly believe our best work is yet to come!”

 

WOO President Tom Goddard says: “This campaign was originated and created by Grand Visual, Talon and Plexus and we’re proud to have supported it. As with WOO’s very recent #OurSecondChance” initiative – which will be an entry in next year’s competition, the campaign shows how well the OOH industry can pull together, to produce a message of hope for the world and also demonstrate our ability to perform with agility, at a global level.”

BBC Sounds AR OOH
London, 5th October 2020 – The BBC is launching a new augmented reality out-of-home experience to celebrate its BBC Sounds offering.

The push was developed by BBC Creative in partnership with media agency Havas Media Manchester, out-of-home specialists Talon Outdoor, digital out-of-home production company Grand Visual and media owner JC Decaux.

In order to build an understanding and love of BBC Sounds and help make it the go-to audio app amongst 16 to 34-year-olds, the BBC has created a bespoke augmented reality bus shelter installation to celebrate the BBC Sounds brand offering of Music, Radio and Podcasts.

BBC Sounds OOH

Static six-sheets on the exterior of the shelter, which is located in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens, invite people to come inside and try out the augmented reality experience. The digital screens inside the shelter are triggered by the presence of people, ‘morphing’ audiences using different filters to illustrate how Music, Radio and Podcasts have the power to make you feel moved. The changing visuals are accompanied by audio content from the three offerings.

The augmented reality technology used enables people to interact with the installation in a Covid-safe way, with no touch required. It has also been tested to ensure the recognition element still works when passers-by are wearing face masks.

Andrea Taylor, Media Portfolio Lead, BBC Sounds, said: “If sound is the most powerful sense, our ambition with this activation is to release that power on our audience. In every asset, every emotion and every interaction we create, we want to move people by the power of BBC Sounds.”

Lucy Barnes, Strategy Partner, Havas Media Manchester, said: “We know the people we’re trying to reach want authentic experiences, so with this campaign we needed to ‘show not tell’ why BBC Sounds is relevant to them. We are presenting the power of BBC Sounds to them in their moments of need, on their commute or their way home, with an immersive, reactive and personalised experience that should help make Sounds their audio app of choice.”

Nadiya Abubakar, Production Director, Grand Visual, added: “Using interactive digital OOH is a great way to really engage with the audience and a create memorable experience. This campaign with BBC really demonstrates how clever use of technology combined with eye-catching creative really brought the BBC Sounds experience to life.”

#SendingLove DOOH
Brothers John and Stephen Skelton who were born and raised in Dunston, Gateshead have used digital billboards in Newcastle and Perth to send each other the biggest message of Love during the COVID-19 Lockdown.

John moved to Australia from Newcastle nearly 20 years ago and lives in Perth with Wife Judith and daughter Sarah.  They couldn’t believe it when they saw a billboard in downtown Perth with Stephen sending Love from their hometown and decided to reciprocate with a billboard of their own in Newcastle!

Stephen said “We talk every other day on the phone but I wanted to do something really special to say I’m constantly thinking of them and how they are coping as a family in these difficult times – and it doesn’t get more special than a huge billboard!”

John said “It was such a great surprise to see Stephen on a billboard in Perth, he explained how he achieved it and we decided to send our own love back with a billboard of our own in Newcastle. It really is amazing and has put a huge smile on our faces!”

This is all part of a wider advertising campaign by London agencies Talon Outdoor and Grand Visual.

The campaign encourages participants to send love to those in places they cannot travel to, by getting creative with the heart-hand symbol and uploading their pictures and locations to www.sending love.to. Participants are then invited to donate to the global COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund before receiving a photo of their picture playing on-screen in their chosen city to share with friends and family across social channels.

Sending Love DOOH user generated
User-generated messages of love and unity are being displayed on digital Out of Home screens worldwide with social media amplification ensuring the messages are also seen by millions – at home.

Today, Talon Outdoor launched “#SendingLove” a new global initiative to promote messages of love that unite communities all over the world during the fight against the effects of COVID-19. The socially enabled DOOH campaign is facilitated by The World Out of Home Organization (WOO) and many of its member organisations and runs on advertising space donated by over 70 media owners across 153 cities making it the biggest User-Generated-Content campaign ever to run on digital Out of Home.

Created by Grand Visual, the campaign encourages participants to send love to those in places they cannot travel to, by getting creative with the heart-hand symbol and uploading their pictures and locations to www.sendinglove.to. Participants are then invited to donate to the global COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund before receiving a photo of their picture playing on-screen in their chosen city to share with friends and family across social channels.

#SendingLove is facilitated by Plexus, Talon’s global OOH network, who along with their partners have built a campaign with true international reach and a total OOH media value of US $15 Million. The creative automation system developed by Grand Visual geotargets messages to the chosen city, connecting communities to messages of love from afar in a show of global strength and solidarity.

Frank Bryant, Group Chief Operating Officer, Talon said:

“It’s great to see an initial idea to share love between countries grow into a powerful multi-channel concept. Centrally coordinated by our Plexus team, the collaboration from our global network, and the industry as a whole, has been truly inspirational. The willingness to make this happen by all has delivered a media first for user generated OOH creative whilst raising money for the global COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.”

Dan Dawson, Chief Creative Officer, Grand Visual said:

“We set out with one thing in mind, to provide people with the opportunity to send love to their favourite places around the world. With an internationally understood heart shaped hand signal at the centre of the creative – we could share the love in cities the world over despite the constraints of lockdown, with shareable content further extending the message via social channels.”

Tom Goddard, President of the WOO added:

“It is great to see Out of Home companies coming together to respond to the crisis, and tackle the often profound effects of social distancing with messages of love, community, and reassurance during this worrying time. The World Out of Home Organization is determined to play its part in supporting members and we thank the global OOH community for playing their role during this pandemic. Together we can make a difference.”

Google extended its “Make the Most of Summer” campaign with a responsive, data-driven, nationwide, digital OOH push that demonstrates the little ways in which Google is there to help you enjoy the summer.

The campaign showcases Google’s Search functionality with popular city-wide summer search terms, such as ‘Best ice cream in Glasgow,’ or ‘Parks near me,’ for example.

Full motion sites across London, Manchester, and Birmingham, also list the results for search terms, including star ratings, opening times, and map directions with creative also reacting to time of day and local weather conditions, to provide the most relevant creative in the moment.

At Old Street EC1, Google’s long-term digital holding in London, creative features additional location-specific, weather, time, day, and temperature triggers, and also taps into cultural events such as The Ashes, to contextualise creative during the campaign.

Google Data-Driven Digital OOH

Created by 72andSunny Amsterdam, and produced by Grand Visual, the campaign was planned and booked by OMD and Talon and runs across transit, retail and city-centre locations until the 25th of August, with an extended run at Old Street roundabout.

Dynamic creative is delivered via OpenLoop, the Dynamic Creative Optimisation ad server from ad tech specialist QDOT.

Graham Bednash, Director of Consumer Marketing at Google UK, said: “There’s something unique about the British interest in the weather and the way we react to summer. We love the way this campaign really captures that and shows how Google Search and Maps can help people make the most of it.”

 

“Dynamic campaigns of this scale are archetypical of where the OOH market is headed following years of digitisation and investment. It’s awesome to see Google marketing continuing to lead and believe in the DOOH space with an epic campaign that is tactical, reactive and responsive.” Dan Dawson, Chief Creative Officer.

Talon acquires Grand Visual and QDOT
As part of its continued international growth, Talon has extended its global independent OOH offering, with the addition of market-leading digital OOH creative services specialist Grand Visual, and its digital OOH Ad tech provider QDOT.

The strategic acquisition enables Talon to further enhance its abilities across the US and to manage the increased demand for dynamic utilization of the digital landscape as the OOH industry evolves. Through this extension of services and abilities, Talon will continue to develop new ways to better serve clients and contribute to making the industry ‘Smarter as Standard’.

Grand Visual and QDOT employ 48 people globally, across London, New York and a development hub in Montevideo, Uruguay. Both companies will continue to run with the existing management structure, led by founder and chief executive Neil Morris, and Grand Visual managing director Dan Dawson and QDOT managing director Ben Putland.

Grand Visual will retain its identity, and continue to work autonomously with agencies, media owners and client brand teams, including Warner Brothers, Amazon Studios, Netflix and Spotify.

The purchase follows Talon’s acquisition of US independent OOH media agency Grandesign earlier this year, along with the launch of international network Plexus, connected traveller offering Latitude and proprietary Ad tech platforms Plato and Ada.

Barry Cupples, Group Chief Executive Officer at Talon commented:

“As we continue to invest in our proposition as a global independent OOH media specialist, we are excited to bring Grand Visual and QDOT into the Talon Group. QDOT’s world leading technology platforms and Grand Visual’s expertise in digital storytelling, means we are in an enviable position to offer true end-to-end service for our clients – as well as providing a tailored solution to those who need to plug specific services into their own OOH ecosystems.

As the industry moves towards a more evidence-based economy, we feel confident that the breadth of our experience, services and capabilities will help to elevate client services further enhancing our smarter as standard approach.”

Neil Morris, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Grand Visual and QDOT said:

“I am proud of the entrepreneurial teams we have in place and the global, future-facing services we have developed. Digital OOH offers an incredible canvas that is crying out for intelligent, interoperable solutions to help brands drive meaningful results. Joining the Talon Group will enable Grand Visual and QDOT to integrate with complementary services, such as Plato and Ada to facilitate scale at an even faster pace.”