By Tom Murrihy, Planning and Buying Director, Posterscope
“We’ve just grown apart.”
“We’re just not right for each other.”
“I love you, I’m just not in love with you.”
Every relationship has bumps in the road but if you’re on the receiving end of these zingers, it’s probably time to get your coat. Beautiful creative has lived in OOH for decades, even centuries, and no other medium offers the simple but iconic platform for creatives to deliver groundbreaking work. However, creative agencies seem to have concerns about whether OOH is still the right partner for them.
Having surveyed a cohort of creatives recently, the enduring image of the billboard seems to dominate the perception of OOH by creatives – highly impactful, incredibly enduring but sometimes perceived as less dynamic compared with digital performance channels. Despite the continuing evolution and transformation of OOH as a medium over the last decade, there appears to be a gap in understanding its full potential.
Its not you, its me
Part of the problem is the high esteem in which the iconic billboard is held by creatives – from Labour isn’t Working to Oops (via Hello Boys), the billboard has been home to some of the most iconic media placements of the past 50 years.
The modernisation of the medium, driven by substantial investment from media owners, has opened the door for a myriad of new creative opportunities, powered by shorter lead times, localisation at scale and digital reactivity. From the dynamic messaging of the NHS driving people to donate blood during their commute to Hiscox breaking out of a stale category and redefining how a national campaign can deliver reach through highly innovative placements, OOH is in it’s golden age, reaching more people than ever before and pushing the creative envelope all the time.
But it is incumbent on us, the specialists and media owners, to work harder to communicate the ever-evolving opportunities and capabilities of the channel.
Reach out, I’ll be there
OOH is a broad church. As the most complex of all the media channels, it can be confusing for a non-specialist, ranging from beermats at your local to the icons like Piccadilly Lights. Luckily, help is at hand, with specialists like Posterscope able to guide you along the path (and sometimes lead you to an incredibly impactful media solution you’d never considered or even heard of – yes, I’m looking at you Specsavers-van-impaled-on-a-bollard).
There are a range of moments where OOH can target an audience across their typical day, in a number of ways – whether stood waiting on a tube platform, popping out for a sandwich at lunch, or pushing through the burn during an evening gym session. Whilst all of these moments live in OOH, they are different moments, contexts and mindsets. You can tell someone (and what they’ll listen to) as a brand will be very different when heading home on the train versus weeping on a Wattbike.
I wish I was special, so very special
Brands may not be able to communicate every nuance of their offerings to consumers in the golden window of attention on a roadside poster but no other medium works better as a tool to prime audiences throughout their day, ensuring brands will be front of mind when they are in a moment of consideration.
Despite almost all digital screens being capable of running dynamic content, only around 20% of digital campaigns incorporate a dynamic element. We could use a location reference for your restaurant chain, pub directions for your beer brand or highlight remaining stock levels during a sale – in short, give your brand immediacy, and heightened relevancy in the moments that matter.
By creating copy specifically for OOH, we can maximise the impact and effectiveness of our messaging. With OOH, we have that power at our fingertips – by aligning creatives and specialists earlier in the process, we can supercharge the creative quality of our copy and message takeout.
So what can we do better?
All relationships need work, and we could do worse than turn to Dear Deidre for a bit of advice.
Communication – adding another Teams meeting into a jam-packed diary may seem unhelpful but close communication between creative and media breaks down silos and helps keep campaigns aligned.
Empathy – everyone has their own pressures but people tend to be more understanding when they understand the reason behind decisions. Meeting a hard deadline is easier to do when you realise it isn’t arbitrary but will keep a billposter from being stuck up a ladder posting a site in the middle of the night in a cold snap.
Quality time – making specific time for each other is key. Who came up with a great idea waiting for a client status to begin? Getting together to brainstorm ideas and collaborate together can break down the barriers to brilliant OOH creative.
Gratitude – appreciate the great work you can do together. Consumers don’t view billboards as thumbnails on a screen so you shouldn’t either – when possible, get out and about with your creative teams to see the amazing work out in the wild.
By collaborating earlier in the process, we can show off some of the best-in-class work we’ve delivered in previous years to help inspire new ideas. The last few years have seen an explosion of creativity in OOH. With the quality of work already so high, imagine what we could deliver by aligning earlier and working more collaboratively as creative and specialist? 2025 is the year that we stoke the fires to keep the home fires burning, clamber out of our silos and get down to the business of delivering the most impactful, most creative and most effective comms for our clients.
