The Drum Awards for Out of Home at 10: vote for the best OOH work of the last decade
The Drum Awards for Out of Home in partnership with Alight Media, will celebrate its 10-year anniversary when the 2021 ceremony takes place on Wednesday (24 November). And to mark the milestone, this year's show will include a very special additional award – as chosen by you.
The Drum Awards for OOH is introducing a special category to mark its 10th anniversary
The 10th anniversary Grand Prix of Grand Prix will be awarded to one of the nine world-class pieces of work that have been crowned best in show at each of the previous instalments of the awards. All of the past Grand Prix winners are in the running, but it will be up to you and your fellow readers of The Drum to decide which one takes home this prestigious accolade.
From the Contagion-themed spot that won the first Grand Prix in 2012 to the contagion-inspired celebration of key workers which won last year's top prize, you can watch all of the work that is in contention below. Once you've picked your favorite, cast your vote here.
You have until 10am (GMT) on Wednesday to vote and the winner will be revealed at The Drum Awards for OOH ceremony streamed live on thedrum.com at 4pm (GMT) that day, so make sure to tune in then.
2012: Warner Bros - 'Contagion'
Company: CURB
Categories won: Special Build, Innovation, Experiential/Ambient
To promote the Warner Bros movie Contagion at the Toronto Film festival, two giant Petri dishes full of bacteria were installed in a storefront in Toronto. Over the following days, the bacteria multiplied, producing a one-of-a-kind billboard that depicts the spread of the virus, just like the film. The campaign racked up over 100,000 Twitter and Facebook mentions and 405,000 YouTube views; garnered nore than £2m worth of national and international PR (offline and online); and attracted mentions and coverage in over 100 countries.
2013: 'Paddy Power Sky Tweeting'
Company: CURB
Categories won: Innovation
With everyone’s eyes on the 2012 US Ryder Cup – arguably one of the largest sporting events in the world – Paddy Power couldn’t resist the opportunity to play up to its mischievous reputation once more, providing a brief of just four provocative words: "Disrupt the Ryder Cup”.
To bring its concept to life, Paddy Power hired five stunt planes to fly at 10,000ft above the course and ‘sky wrote’ 60 tweets of support, all in real-time over two days. Using groundbreaking computerized controls, the planes created each vapour tweet in just 90 seconds. The 1250ft characters were visible across a 20-mile radius, breaking the Guinness World Record for biggest tweet and biggest skywriting, as well as being visible to 500 million TV viewers worldwide.
Vote for 'Paddy Power Sky Tweeting' to win
2014: British Airways - '#Lookup'
Companies: Ogilvy One, Clear Channel UK, Posterscope, Carat
Categories won: Digital Advert
To raise awareness of the breadth of destinations offered by British Airways, the teams involved built the world's first billboards that reacted to BA planes flying overhead. Using a special ADSB antenna, they read every aircraft's transponder data within 200km, allowing the ads to display real flight data: the flight number and where the plane was flying from. Dynamic retail messaging was matched to each route too. People were driven to the 'Look Up' website where they could find out more about the poster and explore the destinations and even weather reports, and then book a flight. The result was the most talked-about piece of airline advertising in 2013.
2015: Women's Aid - 'Look at Me'
Companies: WCRS and Ocean Outdoor UK
Categories won: Interactive, Use of Digital Technologies
Women’s Aid, a small domestic violence charity, wanted to target the people around women, those turning a blind eye to the problem of domestic violence. So the teams involved used the latest facial-recognition technology to register the number of people looking at the poster. As passers-by looked, their faces were recorded on a video feed and added to a progress bar below the image, showing their contribution. The campaign started off as a sketch on a scrap of paper with no money or media to make it happen. But, from these humble origins, it won free media in a hotly-contested competition and unlocked free production, including the pro-bono support of Rankin. The resulting campaign captured the public’s imagination. The average time people spent looking at the posters was 349% higher than the previous average measured across the same sites.
2016: The Sun - 'Tournamental'
Company: Pulse Creative
Categories won: Traditional: 48 or 96 Sheet Poster, Campaign: Out of home Campaign, Innovation
Football is at the heart of The Sun brand. Big tournaments make the front pages as well as the back ones – and reach way beyond the average fan. So the challenge was to drive significant uplift in paper sales, increase website traffic and finish top of the table when it came to being the news brand with the best Euro 2016 coverage. The Tournamental campaign lived primarily through the largest dynamic digital OOH campaign ever in the UK. Over 400 unique headlines were pushed live to the audience across 770 screens. The star player was the bespoke CMS system, which allowed the team to create and publish content in real-time – and to any number of screens.
Vote for 'Tournamental' to win
2017: Spotify - 'Spotify User Playlists
Companies: Goodstuff Communications, Talon Outdoor and Exterion Media
Categories won: Campaign: Multi-Platform Campaign
Spotify’s first multi-platform campaign put OOH at its core, increasing annual users and embedding the brand ‘into the natural rhythm of people’s lives’. A truly enormous campaign spanning multiple OOH environments and formats with contextual creative featuring user playlists and contextualised to the environment and location.
Vote for 'Spotify User Playlists' to win
2018: 02 - 'Oops'
Companies: Havas Group Media, VCCP, Adcity & Posterscope
Categories won: Out of Home Campaign, Multi-platform/media campaign,
At the time the last three years had seen the UK rack up an astonishing £1bn repair bill for cracked mobile phone screens. O2 listened and took a stand: making free screen repairs a core market proposition for the first time, anywhere, a big deal in telco land.
2019: CALM - 'Call for Help'
Companies: Ocean Outdoor, Adam & Eve DDB
Categories won: Most effective use of live updates, Not for profit
The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) – which is leading a movement against suicide, the single biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK – launched a hard-hitting advertising campaign in partnership with adam&eveDDB and Ocean. Using dynamic content uploads and live data, the ‘Call For Help’ campaign demonstrated the number of daily calls answered by CALM and aimed to remove the stigma of reaching out, while encouraging people to visit the charity’s website and learn how they can ensure no call goes unanswered.
Vote for 'Call for Help' to win
2020: '#MyHeroes: Campaign to Celebrate Key Workers During the Pandemic'
Companies: DOOH.COM, Kinetic Worldwide, Kinetic Ireland, Adtower, Alight Media, Boomerang Media, blowUP media, Clear Channel UK, Clear Channel Ireland, Hi! Street Digital Media, JCDecaux, Micromedia, MJ Flood Digital, Ocean Outdoor UK, OPEN Media , Orb Screen, Wide Eye
Categories won: Response to Covid-19 - Best Use of OOH Media for Good
An unprecedented industry collaboration, #MyHeroes' core purpose was highlighting the selfless people in our lives - those everyday heroes who, until the pandemic hit, were taken for granted. Together and overnight participants changed the OOH industry from an advertising channel into a targeted broadcast channel for good, so they could share messages of love and gratitude to the 14.5 million UK key workers who were out of their homes keeping us safe. #MyHeroes had a tangible effect on people's lives; it authentically connected loved ones that couldn’t be together during an immensely difficult time.