“If You Can Do It in OOH, You Can Do It Anywhere”

Whether 2025 is the best of times or the worst of times for the ad industry, it’s certainly not the simplest of times. With AI shaking everything up, media and audiences more fragmented than ever – and commercial creativity taking so many forms – there’s something reassuringly straightforward about outdoor advertising. That’s what Mark Smith, UK sales director at Bauer Media Outdoor UK (formerly Clear Channel), is grateful for. He’s someone offering a grounded view on what makes creative work – and particularly outdoor – effective today.

“The core fundamentals of doing great creative work or media planning still remain, regardless of whether you're using AI or other tech to enhance or inform that,” he says. “In my view, the basic fundamentals still remain. When I think about creativity in its purest form – a poster or billboard is exactly what I think about.”

You can see that when you look at the Outdoor Lions awarded last week in Cannes. From Grand Prix winner KitKat ‘Phone Break’ to Gold Lion winners Stella Artois ‘Claustrobars’ or Heinz ‘Trigger the Taste’, it’s clear how purely creatives are able to distill ideas into one of the oldest forms of media. And unlike some other traditional forms, out of home is still a vibrant part of life in 2025.

There is an enduring symbolic power of posters that Mark argues means OOH remains the medium through which great advertising is distilled. “Probably the best ads, if they work well on a poster, they’ll work well in any medium,” he says. “If you can distil it down to a few words or a bit of copy and some distinctive brand assets, and get that right on a poster, then you’ve done something really effective.

“You’ve only got a few seconds – maybe five or ten – to communicate with your audience. If you can grab their attention and get your message across in that time, then I think if you can do it in out of home, you can do it anywhere.”

The trend for paring back a brand to its most recognisable assets is plain when you look at many of the great UK outdoor campaigns. “On one hand, you've got brands using very little copy. You've also got this trend towards really making the distinctive brand assets stand out,” says Mark, reeling off examples like Kellogg’s ‘The OG’ work, Tesco’s ‘It’s Everything’ campaign, the aforementioned Heinz posters, and the iconic work Cadbury has done recently.

“I think that stuff’s brilliant. I’ve heard some people say maybe it’s a bit samey. But for the audience, that doesn’t matter,” he says. Advertising people might get sick of brands focusing on their distinctive brand assets, but normal people won’t, he suggests. “ I think it’s brilliant. For a brand like Kellogg’s, with all of that history, to go back to such a simple kind of message – in my view, that is bold for a big brand. To anchor themselves back to great branding work, rather than just product shots and pack shots – that will have taken a lot to get to that point, even though it looks simple. I respect brands that are doing that. And if it's encouraging others to be a bit more bold, or to think, ‘What have we got that’s distinct in terms of our brand assets? How can we do something along those lines? And do we need to?’ – That’s really important.”

We’re speaking on the LBB & Friends Beach in Cannes Lions the day before Bauer Media Outdoor launches a piece of research with VCCP (the agency behind the Cadbury brilliance) called ‘MemOOHries Are Made of This’. For it, BMO tested some ads that use brilliant distinctive brand assets without showing the logo, looking at how people interact with and recall those ads, versus ones that don’t make good use of distinctive brand assets. The results were impressive. “Sometimes, even without the logo, you'd probably still know the brand, which is incredible,” says Mark. “The research shows that it really does the business. It’s twice as effective in out of home. There’s also research done by VCCP and in other channels – like online – that shows if you do it right, you’ll get the right result.”

BMO has a framework that underpins all “great posters” – the five ‘Ss: simple, striking, succinct, sensible, and surprising.

“We spend a lot of time working with clients and their creative agencies to explore what good looks like,” he says. “And in our medium, where you might only have a couple of seconds of exposure to an ad, you have to communicate quite a lot in those couple of seconds”.

Mark is speaking a couple of months after Bauer’s acquisition of Clear Channel, which he finds exciting. With 150 years in business, they’re a “formidable company,” he says. “What’s great about having them as our new owners is that they don’t think in weeks or quarters – they think in decades.

“That’s very positive for out-of-home as a channel. It’s a medium that requires a lot of upfront investment – building infrastructure and so on – so to have a family-owned company like Bauer, one that’s focused on long-term success rather than short-term gains, I think it’s the perfect partner.”

In Mark’s view, out of home is thriving – not in spite of today’s media complexity, but because of its ability to distil what matters: simplicity, consistency, and long-term creative clarity. Whether through bold use of brand assets or investment in future-ready infrastructure, OOH is setting the standard – not just echoing it. From Cannes juries to street-level recall, powerful posters remain the benchmark for creative excellence and commercial performance. It’s funny that Mark even needs to remind us on the Croisette, but he does: “The work is there to sell products and build brands, not just to win awards. If it wins awards, that’s a bonus.”