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.

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 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.”

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.

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 Data-Driven Digital OOH
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.”

google digital ooh old street
Google extended its “Make Google Do It” campaign, with a clever UK-wide digital OOH push.

The campaign demonstrates how Google Assistant can help with a variety of everyday tasks. The activity runs across transit, retail and city-centre locations until 8th July, Old Street roundabout has an extended run which lasts until 3rd August.

google digital ooh old street

The ‘Make Google Do It’ digital OOH creative uses two creative threads. The first features the Google Home Mini and highlights the versatility of Google Assistant, its main product, by demonstrating how it can help to “Play it. Skip it. Time it. Dial it. Forecast it. Remember it. Schedule it. Prep it. Do it.”

The second creative thread demonstrates Google Assistant’s ability to help with everyday tasks in a Q&A style activation at Old Street Roundabout. Here copy is linked to time, day, location, and major cultural events such as the World Cup, Wimbledon, and Pride London. Additionally, it pulls in local and contextual information such as “Feeling hungry Old Street? or “Can’t find the mythical Shoreditch cash points?” to highlight Google Assistant’s ability to provide location-based relevance.

Created by R/GA London and Google UK, Grand Visual was responsible for the production & delivery whilst media planning & buying was taken care of by Talon and OMD. The digital OOH campaign is part of a broader integrated global campaign that is running across cinema, TV, out-of-home, press, display and social media.

Meg Ledger, Client Manager, Talon said:

“OOH was the perfect channel to communicate how Google Assistant can be your playful sidekick throughout the day. Working collaboratively with Grand Visual, Google, OMDUK and R/GA we were able to maximize the effect of OOH by deploying clever contextual creative assets to tap into a relevant frame of mind for busy on the go audiences”

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

“This campaign took over 100 pieces of copy to deliver. By using smart scheduling, Google has created a fresh, timely and engaging campaign that reaches a mass audience and demonstrates just how far the medium has come.”

Waitrose launched a digital OOH Christmas campaign to promote a variety of deals on firm festive favourites, such as chocolate, champagne, and party food. The campaign showcases the latest deal with a store-specific call to action to tempt Christmas shoppers instore. The activity runs nationwide across rail, transit and retail locations from 30th November – 15th December.

Created by Adam & Eve DDB, and produced by Grand Visual, the campaign features the latest deals alongside appetising product shots, such as festive truffles, caramels, and pralines along with the announcement that it’s ½ price on chocolate boxes today only. Festive food is promoted with the line “At Christmas, there’s nothing quite like Waitrose,” and a geo-targeted play-out directs shoppers to their closest store.

OOH media was planned and booked by Manning Gottlieb OMD and Talon, and spans 1,408 digital 6-sheets across the UK. Creative delivery and geo-targeted playout is managed through OpenLoop, which updates promotions and dynamically inserts store locations. The creative can then be updated at a national and local level when stocks run low at proximity stores.

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

“A tasty and tactical campaign from Waitrose which demonstrates just how important digital OOH has become as a channel for running promotions, last-minute deals and flash sales, that incorporate location-specific information to steer people to their nearest store. That’s powerful.”

An interactive digital OOH campaign for clinique's new chubby, plump & shine liquid lipstick

In May this year, Estée Lauder implemented an interactive digital OOH experience as part of their campaign celebrating the launch of Clinique’s new Chubby Plump and Shine liquid lip gloss.

The campaign, featured in Birmingham and Manchester, used an Augmented Reality experience to give passers by the opportunity to star in their own personalised Clinique Chubby Plump and Shine advertisement. Produced by Grand Visual, the experience was created by layering a pink filter over the busy street. Using in-built camera technology, it would pick up when people stepped into the frame and draw a love heart around them with the featured lip gloss.

The successful digital OOH campaign captured and maintained the attention of people for longer than any other campaign running at that time, recording significantly higher engagement.

The campaign planned and booked by Talon, with production by Grand Visual, using The Loop’s camera technology from Signature Outdoor.