StopPress exclusive Q&A – oOh! Creativity for Impact

In oOh!media’s 2023 NZ Benchmark Survey, a significant shift was noticed in the priorities of advertising agencies regarding Out of Home (OOH) advertising. For the first time, ‘Impact’ surpassed ‘Reach’ as the most important indicator of a successful campaign.

oOh! knows from years of market education that agencies and clients understand that Reach and Frequency are fundamental to every OOH plan. However, with Impact taking centre stage, both agencies and clients are now seeking innovative strategies to enhance the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Volume, format, location, creative and data have all become a core advertiser focus for driving impact over the last 12 months. For oOh!’s latest roadshow, they flew in Josh Gurgiel (Head of Creative for oOh! Aus), who is a guru on all things creative in the world of OOH to deliver a presentation outlining the ‘Eight Creative Commandments’ required for maximum impact.

Introductions:

Josh Gurgiel – Head of Creative, oOh!media Australia

After working as a Commercial Lawyer for two and a half years, Josh Gurgiel transitioned into the dynamic world of advertising. With a background spanning media agencies like Carat, OMD and Thinkerbell, Josh brings a wealth of experience to his role as Head of POLY.

POLY is the new creative and content innovation hub of oOh!media Australia, with a mission to inspire advertisers and agencies to push the creative boundaries of Out of Home to capture more attention. In his out of work hours Josh is a stand-up comedian in his hometown of Melbourne.

Corinne Wilken – Creative Services Director, oOh!media New Zealand

With over 12 years of experience working at oOh!media NZ, Corinne Wilken leads the oOh! Studio team as the Creative Services Director. oOh! Studio brings countless impactful installations and experiences to life across oOh! assets, ranging from special prints, bus shelter extensions and large format wraps to sampling and activations.

Q&A

What are the five advantages of OOH marketing?

JG:

OOH is:

Unmissable.

Unskippable.

Unblockable.

Unturnoffable.

Un-unsubscribable.

Basically, OOH exists in our natural world, so it bypasses the media fragmentation and ad avoidance challenges of other channels. It simply exists for anyone who chooses to leave their home, yet its consumption is unintrusive. It does not interrupt content or alter the user experience; it IS the content. It IS the experience.  

What is the difference between ‘Drive By’, ‘Walk By’ and ‘Stand By/Sit By’?

CW:

When we think about Out of Home formats, we often categorise formats into three distinct types:

Drive By: Imagine driving past a friend and waving at them. Drive By formats, such as roadside billboards or bus shelter ads, can operate on a fleeting three-second window of audience attention. In this brief span, simplicity reigns supreme. Effective Drive By creatives focus on a singular, impactful message and robust branding to swiftly convey their purpose.

Walk By: Picture strolling down a street, or through a shopping centre, and pausing for a brief chat with a friend. Walk By formats, including our Street and Retail networks, offer an increase in audience dwell time.

This extended exposure window allows for more nuanced messaging. Effective Walk By campaigns leverage compelling calls to action and strategic placement to guide consumers along the path-to-purchase, influencing their journey to stores.

Stand By/Sit By: Now, imagine sitting and having a chat with a friend. Stand By/Sit By formats, exemplified by locations like food courts, boast the longest dwell times. With audiences lingering, there’s ample opportunity to captivate and inform. Creatives in this realm have the luxury of weaving intricate narratives and delivering comprehensive information to engage and resonate with their audience.

In essence, each category offers a unique opportunity for brands to connect with consumers, from capturing attention in passing moments to fostering deeper engagement in relaxed settings.

What are the eight creative commandments for grabbing attention on the move?

JG:

Whilst OOH can easily and efficiently reach audiences at scale, the true value extracted from that reach depends entirely on the impact of the communication. Like any creative output geared at communicating a message, it has to offer true value in exchange for the attention of its audience. So, the basic social contract that exists between brand and consumer is simple: make us feel something and we’ll give you our eyeballs.

But ‘attention’ is an elusive currency. That’s why we developed the ‘eight creative commandments for grabbing attention on the move’, to help agencies and advertisers understand the key components for standing out in the real world:

1. Understand engagement
2. Keep it simple
3. Trigger a feeling
4. Frequency is our friend
5. Context is key
6. Surprise a social audience
7. Vertical video versatility
8. Blur the barriers

These ‘commandments’ explore everything from the brilliant basics of tailoring creative messages to relative dwell times of various environments, core aesthetic design principles, how to leverage frequency to drive multiple inter-connected messages, to demonstrating how to fully exploit the contextual and dynamic potential of an increasingly digitised medium to drive greater efficiencies and interplay between the online and offline worlds.

You can read more on this here: https://oohmedianz.com/creativity-for-impact

How important is it to generate an emotive reaction with your creative?

CW:

The fundamental equation of the OOH value exchange is simple: You want my attention? Well, make me feel something then.

Whether it’s joy, sorrow, excitement, anger, or fear, tapping into human emotions amplifies the impact of your message. Studies reveal that emotive creative holds remarkable sway, boasting a 27 percent increase in effectiveness on billboards.*

A great illustration of this principle manifested in Fire and Emergency NZ’s 2022 campaign, ‘The Museum of Fires Past,’ executed in collaboration with Motion Sickness, MBM, and oOh!. Through a series of bus shelter activations showcasing charred household items, Kiwis were confronted with the stark reality of house fires up close and personal.

Source: Analytic partners

What are the four keys for grabbing attention through context?

CW:

1. Format – Creative that blends into and utilises the unique shape of the site itself.
2. Location – Creative that adjusts based on the physical location of display.
3. Culture – Creative that adjusts based on currently trending topics (i.e. news, memes).
4. Triggered – Creative that adjusts based on specific digital API feeds and triggers e.g. weather, traffic, location, countdown, distance, time/day, scores, fixtures, sentiment, reviews, counters, comments.

How do you use OOH campaigns to generate social media buzz?

JG:

Anyone who has worked in media and/or creative advertising over the past fifteen years has invariably heard the following seven words in direct succession:

“We want this campaign to go viral”.

Whilst I would rather contract an actual virus than hear this request one more time, I hate to admit that the thinking is sound, at least from an efficiency perspective. We know from Binet & Field’s seminal book, The Long and the Short of It, that “fame campaigns” (aka “those that inspire people to share their enthusiasm on and offline”) are four times more effective at generating Excess Share of Voice. Which makes perfect sense, because the only thing cooler than paying for advertising…is not paying for advertising.

We also know that Social video reigns supreme, fuelled by advertisers’ and consumers’ unquenchable thirst for content; brands can’t create enough of it and humans can’t consume enough of it. It’s an interrelated addiction that fuels itself. So any content created by brands that stands out from the infinite scroll of doom and offers something a little different can capture the imagination of the scroller and stop the almighty thumb of escapism.

The love for OOH among people, especially youth, is undeniable. Research from Harris Poll/OAAA in 2022 found that a staggering 82 percent of TikTok users frequently notice OOH ads in their feeds. This online-offline dynamic is evident as we’ve seen impactful OOH campaigns translate into engaging and amplifiable online content. 

The Inspired Unemployed example: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4bmTEhyLGl/?hl=en&img_index=1