Remembering 10 years of the OOH Awards: Looking back at the Grand Prix winners

There are nine in total as we will be crowning our tenth Grand Prix winner this year. It might give you some idea of what it takes to win the Grand Prix award.

2020: #MyHeroes: Campaign to Celebrate Key Workers During the Pandemic for 72 million people of the UK & Republic of Ireland

This user-generated campaign was a group effort from DOOH.COM, Kinetic, Alight Media and other partners. It aimed to highlight the work of key workers across the UK and Ireland transforming OOH into a targeted broadcast channel for good by sharing tweeted messages of love and gratitude to all those keeping us safe during the pandemic.

2019: Call For Help for CALM

Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) launched this OOH ad conceived by adam&eveDDB and Ocean Outdoor as a way to improve visibility of its helpline and services to remove the stigma of reaching out. The hard-hitting visual campaign normalized its services by demonstrating how often the helpline receives calls by mirroring incoming calls in real time to show just how many people open up and receive support on a daily basis.

2018: Oops for O2

This multi-million customer-centric OOH campaign presented a variety of oops moments to promote the brand's promise of replacing broken mobile phone screens free of charge. Created by Havas Group Media, VCCP, Adcity and Posterscope, the OOH campaign was supported by print and digital activations to emphasize that this was the first mobile network offering services of this kind and promoting the brand's renewed focus on customer service.

2017: Spotify User Playlists for Spotify

Spotify wrapped up 2017 with its largest marketing campaign of the year compiling its data to tell stories about its users and set some humorous new year's resolutions. Using witty taglines to show the reach that Spotify had that year, the OOH signs appeared in different UK cities. Goodstuff Communications, Talon Outdoor and Exterion Media were behind the execution.

2016: Tournamental for The Sun

News UK's in-house agency Pulse Creative led the creative on this campaign – which marked The Sun's debut campaign as a way to reach Euro football fans from home. The multichannel campaign complemented the paper's in-print and online coverage of the games and provided a joined-up solution for the media brand.

2015: Look At Me for Women's Aid

This interactive digital out-of-home campaign was the work of WCRS and Ocean Outdoor UK, which launched to coincide with International Women's Day. The engagement-activated campaign suggested that we can all make a change and take a stand against domestic violence as the interactive screens changed as more people paid attention to the image. Using facial recognition technology, the image on the screens would adapt to show the woman's bruises slowly heal as more people engaged with the image on the large-scale billboard.

2014: BA #Lookup for British Airways

This interactive digital billboard from British Airways and created by Ogilvy One is affected by aircrafts flying overhead – to give passerbys on the ground a sense of how magical flying can be from a child's perspective. Using surveillance technology, the ads track the aircraft and interrupt the digital display as it flies past the site to reveal an image of a child pointing overhead at the plane, detailing its destination.

2013: Paddy Power Sky Tweeting for Paddy Power

To support the European golf team in the Ryder Cup, CURB came up with this innovative OOH incorporating Twitter messages sky high. A total of 40 sky tweets were written out in the clouds using a computer programme built into the planes so that messages of encouragement could be seen by the players and their fans.

2012: Contagion for Warner Bros

Warner Bros and its agency Lowe Roche created a viral advert for the film Contagion with CURB. The OOH lived in an abandoned shop window, slowly fermenting as bacteria and a petri dish grew over the course of the five days to reveal the film's movie title and tease its subject. The Drum will be doing a deep dive into this ground-breaking campaign in the coming days, with thoughts from the team on what made this idea stand out.

This year's main award show partner, Alight Media, is the UK's leading challenger in out-of-home media.

Of this partnership, Alight Media chief executive Matthew Dearden said: “Great advertising out-of-home has a huge impact for brands, and takes great skill to achieve. The wonderful people who do this deserve to be recognized, and in doing that we inspire and motivate all of us to drive our industry on.

"These awards are an essential part of keeping our medium at the cutting edge and Alight Media are immensely proud to partner with The Drum to do that, and celebrate the great work and people in out-of-home media.’

The deadline for the awards is September 15 2021. Make sure you submit your award winning work for a chance to be recognised on a global scale.

The Drum's OOH Awards, celebrating 10 years of innovation, will take place on November 24 2021 at The Drum's newly-launched tech hub, The Labs.