#BigPic16: Creativity And Data In the World Of OOH

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

“Online is swallowing other media but it can’t swallow Out-of-Home,” Gerry Graf, founder and chief creative officer of Barton F. Graf 9000, told the audience at the TAB/OAAA Conference and Expo last week in Boca Raton, Florida.

“That’s because it can’t replicate the real life experience of OOH, and combined with social and mobile, OOH becomes even more valuable.

“But you do need great ideas, and OOH creative has greater power than other media. Great ideas break through.”

And on the subject of creative, Ted Florea, chief strategy officer, PNYC, took the audience on a step-by-step story of the OAAA’s own ‘Feel the Real’ ad campaign run in the past year on OOH media that targeted media planners eventually right down to a one-to-one ad to individual planners. If planners ever needed proof that OOH works, this was it – and we think that a campaign planned for this year (Feel the Real II?) couldn’t be much more effective than this was.

The past year’s campaign, which saw $3.3 million in ad space donated by OAAA members, had eight different levels and 288 individual creative messages. The campaign, which started out with messages simply saying ‘This ad is real’ was, at the beginning, market specific, moved to landmark specific, then location specific, medium specific, target audience specific, agency and individual planner specific. It drew the attention of other media, resulting in an additional $2.2 million worth of media coverage, as well. The campaign, which ran Sept. 29 to Nov. 10, drove the planners (and presumably a lot of other people) to FeeltheReal.org which has 30,000 unique visitors. 40% of the people targeted responded – 60% during Ad Week. 70% typed it into their mobile. People spent an average of two-and-a-half minutes in the site.

Was it successful? In Q1, Q2, and Q3 last year, OOH advertising had seen consecutive 4% growth in each quarter over the previous year. In Q4, growth was over 6%. And now? The industry is $23.3 million up over its usual growth. And there’s been a huge growth via social media, as well.

“We went with a short term ad campaign to make a long term gain!” said Florea.

Then, Dennis Camlek, senior vice-president, Turner Media Group, discussed how Turner uses data and OOH to build and sustain brands.

“As brands evolve, the on-air inventory becomes less valuable,” said Camlek. “We are looking at ways to refine the audiences so we can target them.”

Turner uses what it calls the Turner Data Cloud to sort what it needs and see what action it should take. “And it needs to be done in real time,” said Camlek.

“We are open to experiment. Help us determine the ROI of outdoor. What would make us speak more in OOH:

  • Data-driven solutions;
  • Real Time experiences;
  • Creative flexibility;
  • Limited clutter;
  • First-to-market opportunities;
  • Or?

“Show us how outdoor can help.”


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