OOH’s role is evolving. As digital OOH technology, infrastructure and connectivity continue to improve, so too does the medium’s position as a plugged-in, intrinsic part of the marketing mix.
2017 has seen forward-thinking brands begin to take a more holistic view of the medium and capitalise on its ability to be a useful, relevant and tactical conduit.
Dan Dawson, Chief Creative Technology Officer at Grand Visual
“Always On”
One trend making inroads this year has been the move towards ‘always on’ brand campaigns, with a digital OOH presence driven by long-term intelligent planning, booked across the year.
As one of the few remaining mass media, digital OOH’s scale and flexibility offers large parent companies the opportunity to pool their spend across their brands. DOOH ads can react in real time to various conditions, making both the brand and message tactically relevant for the active audience at a given time and location.
Google are always one of the first to apply their digital thinking and implement it in the OOH arena. In many ways digital OOH is the perfect medium for them. They have multiple brands from YouTube to Pixel phone, but all are built around connecting people through digital tools.
Digital OOH is a natural playground for Google’s brand portfolio, delivering digital experiences that meet the real world. Google’s long-term holding at London’s ‘Silicon roundabout’ (Old Street EC1) has seen numerous creative threads that react to conditions to help tell community stories.
McDonald’s, a perennial OOH spender, switched a lot of their OOH spend to digital formats in 2017, and are now capitalising on the expanded feature set with dynamic and tactical messaging. Whether that’s reminding consumers ‘how long until breakfast finishes’ in the mornings or, ‘where they can pick up the latest limited-edition sandwich’ at midday.
Traditionally, long-term holding campaigns on static billboards quickly became wallpaper, but with digital OOH, we’re seeing smart ways to control messages and creative along with clever use of data to help decide on what should play and most importantly… WHERE. That WHERE is a cornerstone of the OOH medium and digital is helping the medium grow year-over-year.
Data Innovation
We are already serving creative that adapts to real-time feeds, such as weather, traffic flow, and social media trends, using QDOT’s OpenLoop platform. But, 2017 has certainly seen a growing sophistication in the use of data and automation, through an increased adoption of more varied data sets.
Now that the infrastructure is in place, it makes sense to get the media working hard with useful and relevant content that can change and evolve during the course of a campaign.
Gone are the days when OOH campaigns were a simple two-week exercise in brand awareness. Now, campaigns can adapt and respond to conditions and real world events, or feature last minute deals that push different products to different audiences at different times in the day.
This year, we have seen a soft drinks giant harnessing some very insightful consumer and brand data that links where and when people think about their various brands. Shifting some of their OOH spend to digital OOH and partnering with QDOT’s OpenLoop platform, they were able to craft their story to their audience in the right way, at the right time, and in the right place.
Some campaigns were pushing their flavoured water variants to thirsty commuters during long hot summer days when delays on the trains or tube lines occurred, others were activating proximity screens in the lead up to one of the many nationally renowned sporting events sponsored by a brand from their portfolio.
By sharing their long-term holding across various umbrella brands, each with a slightly different focus and audience target, clever use of data is enabling the soft drinks company to use the medium in a tactical, relevant and useful way. For me, these examples are a true embodiment of digital creativity and flexible media working together.
Driving Contextual Relevance
Clever use of relevant data is not only helping advertisers to target niche audiences, it is also enabling them to craft contextually relevant messages that tap into the consumer mindset. By harnessing the context effect brands can achieve cut through and turbocharge the relevance and effectiveness of their advertising messages.
Sainsbury’s has used a number of data sets this year to run clever campaigns that are aligned with audience environment and mindset. For example, to encourage commuters to make the most of the good weather and the extra hours of daylight over the summer, Sainsbury’s launched a week-night barbecue campaign featuring a countdown to sunset alongside pictures of their tasty BBQ range.
For its clothes brand Tu, latest styles from their Spring collection were showcased in a weather reactive campaign that matched outfits to real-time conditions.
The ability to trigger localised and contextually relevant creative becomes ever more important when you consider the size and ubiquity of the digital OOH landscape and the shift creatively, towards scalable, global campaigns. Contextualisation is helping advertisers to tread the line between consistency and appealing to diverse markets.
Looking Ahead
Technology is opening up new avenues for creativity in digital Out of Home. Whilst there will always be the glitz and glamour of a single hero digital OOH location moment, away from the limelight, the real news is that many advertisers have been quietly going about their digital OOH business in a far more tactical and scalable way.
Smarter is the new standard for OOH in the digital age. Through long-term intelligent planning, data innovation and contextual relevance, digital OOH has never been so fresh, so relevant and so integral to the overall marketing strategy, and those brands that are doing it well are reaping the rewards. It’s been an interesting year and I’m excited to see where these developments will take us in 2018.
About the author:
Dan Dawson heads up Creative Technology at Grand Visual and has designed, developed and directed projects that have entertained millions since Grand Visual began life over 12 years ago. Career highlights include being part of the inter-agency team which successfully delivered the first fully programmatic digital OOH trial, plus directing award-winning interactive and augmented reality work that has taken him around the world for brands such as Google, Disney, Pepsi and McDonald’s.
Dan is on the Cannes Lions advisory panel for digital OOH, the judging line up for the Creative Circle Awards and has featured on “Click,” the BBC’s flagship technology programme. He is also a regular contributor to ExchangeWire and was named as one of the ‘Hot 100’ most influential digital figures this year, by the British Interactive Marketing Association.