Love or hate it:
WOO lays bare the good and the bad of OOH creativity
In a world where creativity is arguably being dumbed down, the last broadcast medium is calling on the global creative community to take advantage of Out of Home’s unique attributes as the ultimate creative canvas.
Just months after Tim Bleakley announced his mission to Make Outdoor Creative Again #MOCA, the World Out of Home Organization (WOO) is throwing down the gauntlet once more - with a love it, or hate it challenge.
Doubling down on Tim’s rallying call to bring creativity back, WOO has called upon two award-winning creative trailblazers – Katy Hopkins and Dino Burbidge – to lay bare both the rewards and frustrations of working with OOH.
Good or bad? It’s a polarising matter, and WOO wants the global creative community to respond.
Read the article, do you agree with their points below? What have they missed? Then hop over to our LinkedIn post to have your say.
Katy Hopkins
Katy has been awarded at all the major advertising awards shows, such as Cannes Lions, D&AD and One Show.
It is the simplest way of communicating an idea: Distilling a concept down into a poster removes all unnecessary information leaving one clear message. Weak ideas are exposed and strong ideas get sharper.
It has an impact!!! OOH doesn't just vanish in the scroll of a thumb, it becomes part of the landscape. One minute you're walking down the platform and the next minute you are smiling gooey eyed at the massive face of a baby.
Interaction with surroundings: The choice of where the work is placed can magnify the meaning. From sites that change the creative to match the weather to confusing passengers stepping off a flight in Sydney.
It can be a calling card: Your work is out there for all to see-your mum, your mates and every Creative Director in town. This adds pressure to make sure it is good, but if it is good everyone will know about you and it.
Great OOH becomes a story in its own right: If people see something they like they share it, be that in the pub or on social, even becoming newsworthy.
It is publicly available: You do not have to follow a particular feed, it is not served to a particular demographic, it is common ground. In an age of targeted echo chambers, it reaches audiences that block out other forms of advertising.
They feel proper: They add gravitas to a campaign. More real, tangible and has more credibility than something that could have been faked by AI. There is no trickery or overclaiming; OOH has authority.
Some sites are destinations: Special builds, 3D screens and tech enabled sites turn billboards into stages where passersby can be entertained or surprised.
Scale versatility: You can book 100,000's globally or just buy one outside your client's office. Great for that big client who wants to let the world know what they have to say, and equally wonderful for that young creative team looking to get their best idea out there.
OOH can be really playful: Creativity is all about play! It allows brands to be different, to mess around in the physical world and give people permission to join in.
"That's my oooooh to OOH. Enough of all the gushing - time to hear the other side of the story?"
Have Your Say on LinkedIn
Dino Burbidge
Dino is an independent consultant helping OOH clients create and deliver innovative campaigns.
Share your wisdom: A creative's first port of call is understanding the specs on the plan. You either have a spreadsheet or you go to media owners' website and you get… specs. Obviously. What we really want is wisdom and constructive guidance to make the most from the format and location too. Media owners know what works... share it!
The D6 standard isn't: One of the most popular formats, the D6, is a shape shifter. When paper moved to pixels, the “close enough” rule was often applied. It's certainly not a blanket 9:16 ratio and that causes headaches. We need a D6 = 9:16 standard and maybe a D6* that means “This one a bit wonky. Allow extra time”.
Rotation Roulette: Creatives are story tellers. It's hard to tell a story if chapter 1 of Harry Potter flips to chapter 2 from 50 Shades of Grey. You never know what other ads are in the rotation before or after yours. This can create potential brand issues but also removes a creative opportunity.
Post-campaign results: Creatives are the mushrooms of the media world… kept in the dark and mostly fed on sh*t. We often start each campaign unaware of how the last campaign performed. ALL creatives want to produce the most effective work… share the last campaign's data, we want it!
The reveal jeopardy: OOH is a high-jeopardy game. In most other design mediums you can demo your work-in-progress, tweak, test, rinse, repeat. Not so with OOH. Most of the time you design on your desktop, wait, then, WHAM!... it's on a 48-sheet, in full sun, and the red looks like orange.
Image Credit: piximus.net
OOH-specific skills: There's still a lot of art directors in agencies who aren't so OOH-savvy. Print or TV design rules often don't transfer well. The biggest hint is thin or small text. Beautiful on TV; hopeless through a bus window at 20mph on a rainy night.
Hand-me-down creative: There's a big difference between running what the client (or their agency) supplied, and designing something better with the same asset toolkit. This often defines whether the creative itself is just a bland resize job or a genuine opportunity.
Effective creative is unrewarded: There's not enough creative kudos and recognition for those that make truly effective OOH campaigns. If it gets results, it gets an Effie Award and the strategy team pick it up. The role of the creative in delivering meaningful results is often invisible.
Programmatic black hole: Designing for programmatic can be like posting designs into a black hole. Unless it's a trigger-based activation, you have no real idea when or where it will appear. You design the message for everyone and therefore no-one.
Fake FOOH confusion: CGI-based “false OOH” has brought attention to OOH, but also set unrealistic expectations. Realistically, we should be creating the FOOH for our own campaigns and not leaving it up to random social media content creators.
"I'm playing bad cop as a foil to Katy's (genuinely) good cop persona. Somewhere between the two articles, lies the truth."
Join the Debate on LinkedIn
