With High Impact OOH, Brands Are Stopping Consumers in Their Tracks
So much of the advertising that consumers see today is digital – and sometimes easy to ignore – that brands need to be thinking bigger, better, and more creatively to truly make an impact and a lasting impression. It’s something that the creative agency Blacklist knows plenty about as over the last few years, the team has carved out a reputation for delivering truly eye-catching OOH projects for clients like Prime Video, SkyShowtime, and Warner Brothers.
Speaking to Sylvia Mulder-Stones, creative director based in Blacklist’s Amsterdam office, it’s clear that a few vital factors have to converge for an OOH placement to be successful. “There are obvious media related ones, like the location, size of the placement and the frequency it runs in. Technology is also a factor – a lot of OOH screens have great capabilities that can create interactivity and extra engagement with the audience,” she explains.
First, though, the creative, with Sylvia stating: “Of course, creative execution is crucial – making it pop against the surroundings.”
Storytelling has to adapt to make the right impact in an OOH format, with the agency and client working together to clearly establish exactly what is to be communicated. “Determining the key message is important. OOH is a quick medium and there is really only one message people tend to take in from it. You have to align on what that should be – is it brand, product or promotion? Creating intrigue is also important as you want to trigger people into giving a second glance. That can be done in many different ways - teasing copy, stand-out design, compelling visuals,” says Sylvia.
But how do you balance the need for a high-impact placement with maintaining brand consistency and messaging? Sylvia sees high impact placements as a great addition to “a strong media plan – the more touch points in media you have, the more messages you can layer. The high-impact OOH can be the creative tool in the shed to trigger interest, make it memorable and shareable across social.” Some brands make OOH a fundamental part of their identity so the two go hand in hand, campaign after campaign. “Oatly is great in this field; it’s made clever OOH a part of their brand identity by exploring the space with a consistent creative message,” she adds.
Blacklist’s experience in statement-making OOH is vast, taking over iconic spaces like Piccadilly Circus for Pokémon. Only last week, Blacklist created another high impact design for Disney’s ‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ release, creating the series spaceship into an immersive anamorphic ad. Sylvia recalls that the team really loved working on it, “we were able to dig into it creatively to make sure we made full use of the screen’s capabilities, ánd get people to look up. And besides that, it’s just really cool to build a 3D Star Wars ship.”
“We also love a bit of experiential OOH,” Sylvia adds, “and we like to take over spaces outside of the normal screens and Abris. We have flipped cars upside down across the whole of Scandaniva for Amazon's ‘The Grand Tour’', put ‘lifesize’ dinosaurs and Minions in shopping centres across Europe for SkyShowtime and created a giant TV tower in the busiest train station in the Netherlands. Placing these creative OOH experiences in unique spaces with high footfall increases the engagement and the shareability.”
Creating impactful OOH is of course not without challenges, and specs are the ones that have caused most headaches for the Blacklist team, who oversee the wrapping of “boats and trams, totems, and long high-way screens, among many others.” Sylvia explains: “Each of those requires a dedicated approach. But our team doesn’t just look at the specs, we also try to get a sense of what the placement looks like in situ, both at night and in the day. Really understanding the surroundings and how people would interact with the environment helps define a strategic approach on how to capture the audience and make your creative work contextually.”
The team has learned a lot from past experiences and are, now, largely unfazed by the tasks at hand. “We have been lucky to be able to create a lot of high impact placements for our clients, so at this point we have probably worked with all major placements in Europe multiple times. That experience has given us a lot of learnings. Now if we get asked to produce a station takeover in Stockholm within a week, the team already knows what will work in the space and what kind of creative considerations we need to think about in order to maximise the impact. High impact OOH is often costly, so we want to ensure we utilise its possibilities to the fullest,” Sylvia says.
Measuring the impact of placements is a way for the Blacklist team to really understand what works (and what sometimes doesn’t), aiding them in shaping future creative and strategic decisions. Sylvia says there are “different tools, like media tracking surveys and polls, that give a good indication on the memorability and enjoyability of an ad, which can help determine whether a creative has been impactful.” The team always asks clients “to share their tracking with us as much as possible, so we can learn what works and what doesn’t. Additionally, for the experiential OOH (such as the dinosaurs), we also track the impressions on social media. Our stunt for ‘The Grand Tour’ received over 4,7 million impressions, so we were able to successfully capture an audience not only in the real world but also on social media.”
Sylvia points to the creativity and variety that OOH affords to brands; sometimes it’s the simple idea that makes people stop in their tracks. Sylvia is personally enjoying the minimalist OOH trends, like the latest Tesco ad: “It removed any brand messages and just showed groceries. Or the stripped back design of The Ordinary, which focussed on clever copywriting and skincare ingredients against a completely white design. And I generally love everything that Ikea does in the OOH space. Turning a scaffolding into an Ikea shopping bag is just iconic.”
