The Great Outdoors: Award-Winning OOH Creativity with Grand Visual

With almost two decades of being at the forefront of out-of-home (OOH) creativity and production services, Grand Visual is renowned for crafting compelling stories for clients such as Disney, BBC, Channel 4, Google, Amazon, Netflix, McDonald’s and many more.

Founded in 2005, Grand Visual joins the dots between brands, agencies and media owners to activate creative OOH campaigns in the real world. With plenty of awards under its belt - including Cannes Lions, D&ADs, Creative Circles and The Drum Awards - it's clear that the agency’s results don’t lie. 

Chief creative officer Dan Dawson says, “Grand Visual was founded in 2005 with a focus on driving creativity, innovation and production in the OOH space. We have offices in London and New York, but we are firm believers in creativity without borders. We deliver to over 70 markets around the world and talk about projects in many, many more.”

Through creative solutions for OOH, digital out of home (DOOH) and experiences, the team is able to maximise the effective use of OOH for advertisers and agencies around the globe, breaking brands out of billboards, dominating spaces and turning OOH placements into truly immersive experiences.

Most recently, Grand Visual’s ‘This Stage is Yours’ Budweiser campaign, in collaboration with FCB New York, picked up a Bronze Media Lion at Cannes 2023.

Honoured in the Social Behaviour & Cultural Insight category, the work gave rising women and non-binary artists the opportunity that the BRITs denied them, using OOH ad space. The idea was to turn a Budweiser billboard into a concert stage where artists could perform in front of music’s biggest names. As a result, social views for the brand rose 1,300%, while social conversation and social impressions in the UK grew 102% and 125%, respectively. It even led to one of the artists - Mychelle - landing a record deal with Kobalt Music.

Gaining incredible traction, in 2019, Grand Visual expanded its offering further when it was acquired by global out of home agency, Talon, which was looking to enhance creativity and production services to complement the suite of services, creative solutions and adtech it offers to its clients and agencies. In 2022, Talon Creative Solutions joined Grand Visual to Supercharge OOH Creativity. “Since the merger, our business and industry is benefitting from working with the only OOH agency to offer a full creative service for its clients,” Dan notes.

Under Grand Visual, the joint team has become an all-seeing eye for everything creative in the OOH space, delivering almost impossible ideas with the power of the two agencies combined. This has drawn the likes of Warner Bros, Disney Parks, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, Proximo Spirits, Norwegian Cruise Line and Dufry to work directly with them.

“Our recent campaigns for Tincup Whiskey in the US, ABInBev’s Budweiser brand in the UK and for Shake Shack in the US have been doing well at the award international programs,” Dan shares. “In the UK, our work for British Airways, HSBC and BBC will be showcased in the upcoming awards seasons.”

Alongside its partnership with Talon, Grand Visual’s relationships span media, creative and PR as well as performance and digital-first agencies.

“Over the last 13 years we’ve been building and maintaining various tools and systems that enable our creativity in the OOH space. In order for these to be successful and power our creative teams we take part in constant system integration with all of the major media owners in the OOH space,” explains Dan. “That makes working on projects during production a seamless exercise and improves our partnerships with the media owners and landlords we work with. In addition we’re very proud of our third party partnership program on both experiences and solutions. We will only partner with the very best in this space, and our trusted partners benefit from our expertise and understanding of the OOH space.”

“Over lockdown, we developed a new reversioning tool called RapidVersioning (RV) which allows us to reversion content at scale with ultra-efficiency,” creative director Ric Albert reveals. “It changes the game with regards to delivering creative programmatically. I’m always looking to find how our processes can be improved, and where automation can help us stand out in the crowd, at the same time as making sure creativity is at the heart of everything we do.”

“We understand our space better than anyone,” Dan states, “What’s possible, what’s coming in future and how to harness the power of the space for audiences. Our clients love our approach to creative storytelling and our ability to produce award-winning work on time and on budget.”

With powerful partnerships and a legacy behind it, Grand Visual is set to break further boundaries in the years to come. “The renaissance in OOH advertising is exciting,” shares chief client officer Jay Young. “With the significant investment in tech capabilities, the understanding of data, and ground-breaking creativity, how could you not be excited by out-of-home?” 

“OOH has evolved from traditional paper and paste posters to join the media top table – and Talon is at the forefront of this change,” he continues. “OOH is the culmination of every advancement in technology, creativity, advertising and media planning. Our mission is to continue showcasing why it is the solution that planners and clients are looking for globally - despite the medium’s late entry into digital and data-driven outcomes. Marketers want omnichannel campaigns and OOH can not only deliver this at scale but with the proof-points to measure it. The renaissance is real but there is still a lot of work to do to convince brands and planners to sit up and pay attention.”

“The future of our business looks very bright,” Dan concludes. “We continue to expand our services and talent around the world and match the growth ambitions of the continued domination of Talon and our direct agency and client appointments. Every day we have  conversations that excite us, with new partners, clients and briefs. But the one thing that truly excites the whole team is working on audacious ideas with fantastic people and bringing them to life for the public to enjoy.”