The best of digital OOH: WCRS, DOOH.com, MediaCom UK, Kinetic Worldwide and more pitch in
By 2020, digital out of home (OOH) is expected to be worth $18.5 billion, steadily rising from $10 billion in 2015. Compare that to traditional OOH, which has frozen at $24.5 billion for the past few years and it's clear that digital is making a real impact within the industry.
Ahead of The Creative Out Of Home Awards, The Drum caught up with some of the judges and supporters of the awards, to see what they believe has been innovating digital OOH in the past 12 months.
Dino Burbidge, director of technology and innovation, WCRS
I loved the Emoji Movie campaign for Sony Pictures by Feref. It was one of those seamless ideas where planets aligned. Ocean Outdoor’s face recognition technology read people's facial emotions and relevant emoji were plonked on top of shopper’s heads as they walked by. Is there anything simpler, more engaging and more on-brand than that?
Andrew Phipps Newman, chief executive officer and founder, DOOH
Live streaming is the best innovation we’ve seen this year, or what we should really call live DOOH broadcast, underlying that we truly are a live medium. Grand Visual produced a UK campaign for Waitrose, with a live look around an organic farm.
While at DOOH.com we produced a global live DOOH broadcast, which rewarded donators to #MarchForGiants with their own elephant and an image of each city on the global march. With 38 million impressions, 99.9% of those who engaged never saw a DOOH screen while directly raising over £100,000. DOOH broadcast is now available at scale and some media owners see themselves as broadcasters as well owners.
Claire Sadler, marketing director, Direct Line for Business
Spotify has been my favourite outdoor campaigns in recent months with its prime placements for everyone’s daily commute and it’s use of customer data to write some great headlines. It was funny, engaging and tonally bang on for all the random stuff we look at and do online!
I’m sure it delivered some great results for them in both new customer sign ups and increased play time by existing customers - I know it increased mine.
Arran Javed, head of OOH trading, MediaCom UK
This year it must be the campaign which used not only smart tech, but delivered contextually relevant ads to the consumer. The Universal Pictures Sing activity in Q1 2017 used data to inform both positioning and creative - highlighted the full potential of digital out of home and the positive impact being smarter with our trading, and use of the screens, can have on as part of a wider campaign.
Understanding what the consumer is most likely to be engaged with by understand who they are, and ensuring that data was fully realised when the campaign was executed sets it apart from the norm!
Britta Klosterberg, group head digital and innovation, Kinetic Worldwide
OOH advertising is transforming into a multi-platform, data-driven and target group focused media approach that has an important role in every media strategy.
Creating an active customer journey that lets people receive relevant content in real time and on top of that interact with the campaign and the brand.
In 2017, synched and dynamic real-time data was used in combination with vehicles in a case by United Airlines accessing a field of highly fast changing conditions. In this case 45,000+ data points were analyzed to optimize the campaign throughout NYC. The same with MyTaxi App, where cab availabilities were shown location-based and in real-time on DOOH.
Rik Moore, head of strategy, Havas Media
The most innovative digital out of home campaign for me is the Spotify work. Using their own data, Spotify turned that information into warm, topical and amusing stories in their creative. They then used digital and static OOH media to place the campaign in listener-relevant locations. The end result is a charming campaign that listeners could really relate to.
It was one of those campaigns that made you smile when you saw it, and that you heard people chatting about. It’s the one OOH campaign I’ve seen in the last 12 months that made me the most envious.
Glenn Brawn, joint managing director, Redbus Media Group
‘Innovative in 2017? I loved ITV’s idea of broadcasting the Grand National across selected premium large format digital out of home sites and so adding incremental reach to their TV audience. Also, Virgin Trains’ campaign, which combined traffic and location data to accurately tell drivers stuck in traffic how much longer their journey will take them by car, compared with how long it would take by train; high contextual relevance - nothing like the here and now! But for me, for sheer scale and impact, #MarchforGiants save the elephants campaign wins, delivering the world’s first real-time, fully integrated dynamic digital out of home campaign, just fantastic.’
OOH continues to be one of the most effective forms of advertising, which aims to deliver impressive results for brands and agencies. Tickets for the ceremony, Thursday 23 November, Emirates Stadium, London, can be purchased online.
The awards are sponsored by KBH On-Train Media, Tint, The Drum’s RAR and The Drum Network.