Beyond the billboard: 5 of the best OOH special builds (and what makes them so special)

1. Dentsu Creative for Fanta

Dentsu Creative, along with Isobar and Coca-Cola Sweden, took the award for Best Innovation in OOH for the ’B-OOH! Happy Halloween!’ campaign for Fanta. Here we ask creative director Henrik Erikssonall what it was like to work on...

So, what’s so special about working on special builds?

It’s always nice to explore new areas with fewer limitations. It gives you more creative freedom … You can create something more eye-catching and out of the ordinary, which gives an element of surprise – and that’s really needed in a world that is hard to impress.

What’s the wildest build you’ve ever done?

We created the first-ever statues of the Swedish women’s national football team. Before that, there had only been statues of male athletes in Sweden. It was a purpose-driven initiative by Coca-Cola called ‘Football Forever’ that highlighted inequality in football.

What unique challenges does this kind of unique work come with?

The biggest challenge for the Fanta OOH campaign was to synchronize the projection with the billboard screen without lag and to make the projection mapping precise. It was a struggle, but we solved it in the end.

The most difficult challenge for the Coca-Cola build was the actual placement of them in public and keeping them safe from sabotage. Today, they are safely in a sports museum in Sweden.

In general, overcoming challenges and breaking boundaries is crucial for creative agencies. That’s why we go to work!

2. The7Stars for H&M

The7Stars, along with Kinetic and H&M, took the award in the Sustainability category for a campaign showcasing the fast-fashion brand’s commitment to be climate positive by 2040. Here we ask client lead Lynsey Brook what it was like to work on...

What’s so special about special builds?

H&M has made huge strides when it comes to innovation through media and its ambitions extend far beyond simply ‘being seen’ by its audience. Instead, it wants to engage with current and potential consumers through impactful executions that drive engagement and put it front of mind versus competitors.

Wildest build you’ve ever done?

Over the last year alone we have worked with H&M on a number of unique builds, ranging from hand-painted murals, station dominations and special builds to bespoke technology formats. The current ‘Holiday’ build includes a giant outdoor advent calendar in the heart of Shoreditch. The installation takes the form of a giant 218 sq meter mural by visual artist Maddalena Carrai and is designed to look like a sparkly gift box, wrapped in a striking red bow. Throughout December, each of the sealed windows is opened to reveal an array of gifting options.

Any unique challenges?

Unique OOH activations don’t come without their challenges. It takes true collaboration from the client, media agency, creative agency and media owner, often within a short space of time. The strength of the ideas, combined with the team’s commitment to truly innovate in this space, has enabled us to achieve everything we’ve achieved this last year.

3. Wunderman Thompson UK for HSBC

Wunderman Thomson won in the Experiential/Ambient/Installation category with its work for HSBC highlighting the danger of financial coercion. Here we ask creative director Mike Watson what it was like to work on...

What’s so special about special builds?

Thinking beyond the confines of a standard billboard allows you to pull the viewer into the experience and if your audience becomes participants in your brand moment, it becomes infinitely more memorable and shareable.

Not that standard billboards can’t do the same. We had great success with our ‘We are not an Island’ billboards for HSBC UK, which people took photos of and shared on their socials. I love the fact that what is deemed an old-fashioned medium can still drive online conversation. Ultimately, like all ads, it comes down to your idea and how well it is executed.

Wildest build you’ve ever done?

We’ve had a few ambitious builds over the years. There was a Mr Kipling billboard made entirely out of cake – or 13,360 cakes to be exact. It was delicious...

To celebrate the work of the HSBC Water Program, we created ‘A living river’ sound installation that brought the Yangtze River to the Skybridge at Gatwick Airport…

And our latest saw the First Direct team hang a ladder from a height, asking people to try and grab the bottom rung to win a deposit. A visual metaphor that brought to life the struggle that most people have in trying to get on the housing ladder.

Any unique challenges?

Having an idea is the easy part; bringing it to life is the hardest. Excitement tends to wane when something is hard to make, or if it pushes people out of their comfort zone. It takes effort and perseverance from everybody involved – agency, client and any third parties. If the team isn’t aligned and all working towards the same North Star, it often leads to your idea becoming permanently stuck in PowerPoint limbo. Or worse, a compromised version is made… Finally, budget is always a factor. Knowing what you have to work with upfront saves a lot of time and headaches.

4. Bruketa&Žinić&Grey for Croatia Osiguranj

Bruketa&Žinić&Grey won in the Interactive category with its AI Anxiety Meter for Croatia Osiguranj: a DOOH campaign that measures the anxiety of people on the street. Here we ask creative director Davor Bruketa what it was like to work on...

What’s so special about special builds?

OOH is a good way to reach the so-called ‘unreachables’ – people who can’t be reached via other traditional channels, only on social media. Secondly, OOH is now equipped with computers, cameras and speakers, which enables brands to interact with their target audience in creative ways. Thirdly, we learned that a good creative solution goes far beyond the reach of the OOH itself and pushes the organic reach via social and PR.

Wildest build you’ve ever done?

We created several campaigns where a billboard, sometimes placed in only one location, went viral through social and PR.

During the first Covid lockdown, we created a billboard for Podravka Canned Beans saying: ’Podravka Beans: The most effective way to keep your (social) distance.’ This one billboard reached a quarter of the Croatian population with almost no budget, resulting in 22% sales increase compared with the same month the year before.

For Adris Group, we created a billboard that quickly became the talk of the country. Croatia has been having brain drain issues ever since becoming part of the EU. So we placed billboards at international airports in Dublin, Frankfurt and Munich, where Croatian economic immigrants land the most, saying ’Cheer up your mum and come back home,’ and promoted the Adris Group employment scheme. The campaign resulted in a large debate in the media and on social. More than 60,000 people from all over the world visited the client’s microsite resulting in over 400 job applications.

Any unique challenges?

With the AI Anxiety Meter, our first challenge was to make it work properly. In the beginning, the camera was recording even the pigeons on the street! Although all ad interactions were GDPR compliant, we were afraid people will not want to be recorded and measured, but in the end they were lining up to do it. 8% of the urban Croatian population stopped in front of the screen.

5. Pixel and Texel for Marriott International

Pixel and Texel took the award in the Best Multi-Screen Display category for its ever-evolving mood board in the Marriott International lobby. We ask project manager Noa Gavin what it was like to work on...

What’s so special about working on special builds?

We were reviewing work in progress on large format monitors, but only when we projected on the actual wall were we able to see every detail, which sometimes required additional passes to fix tiny artifacts you could not catch at our studio. Our team had to work at a meticulous level we’d never seen before!

Wildest build you’ve ever done?

This was absolutely the wildest (so far)! The level of detail was unprecedented, but it created fantastic opportunities for enhancing the overall effect and creating interactions on both a large and small scale.

The next would absolutely be Champion’s Rally, which we built in conjunction with Momentum UK and Flight School for Amex. A rapid, month-long build that integrated AR, volumetric footage of Andy Murray and a never-before-attempted hot swap between 8thWall AR and PlayCanvas live on the user’s screen. The engagement was fantastic, creating a seamlessly fun AR game for Wimbledon fans.

Any unique challenges?

The complexities of working on a wall this large (20 feet x 72 feet), where visitors are standing within a few feet of it, are the amount of crystal-clear pixels you see at 12K resolution. Traditional visual effects are usually rendered at 4K, so the magnified canvas area for our animated living panoramics show detail that stays on screen for up to 10 minutes each. You can get away with a lot of tricks and cheats working on 5-second VFX shots, but our looping sequences showcase every technique we are creating, from hidden animals to parallax layers in the trees, clouds, buildings and added CGI elements.

From the wow factor of 3D billboards to ads that grab people at the right time and in literally the right place, innovation in out-of-home is soaring. Find out more in our latest Deep Dive.