Table of contents for The Out of Home Brief in Marketing

Marketing would like to recognise and thank the members of its Editorial Advisory Board for their invaluable guidance, including but not limited to Dr Michael Valos (chair), Caroline Ruddick, Erik Zimmerman, Mike Harley, Shannon Peachey, Trisca Scott-Branagan, Skev Ioannou, Cameron Woods and Peter Little.…

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is on the precipice of great change. This comes as a result of hundreds of millions of dollars invested in technology by the OOH industry, and now almost 50 percent of revenue comes from digital signs. These signs offer the benefits of being flexible, timely and targeted. More than a one-trick pony, the big, bold, broadcast messages on OOH can now be selected for an exact location, time, and day – the ultimate in targeted advertising. It is estimated that, by 2050, 94 percent of the population will live in urban environments, which will trigger exponential growth in OOH audience numbers. The potential of digital technology and an increasing audience stimulate new thinking and discourse around creativity and measurement. Capturing audience data to provide accurate and transparent…

“It was difficult to promote retail events and price sensitive messaging, as by the time you printed the skins and installed them, the sale would be over and the information out of date.” After top roles at a number of industry heavyweight brands, John O’Neill was promoted from chief sales officer to Australian CEO at QMS earlier this year. After 23 years in the industry, he comments on the new developments and opportunities presented by the digitisation of out-of-home (OOH) media, and its effect on creativity, execution and results. Marketing: How has digitisation changed the way marketers are approaching out-of-home advertising? John O’Neill: Traditionally, marketers were looking at out-of-home as a static medium; it was more a continuity medium to support television and radio because of its impact…

“Australia is a lucky country and hasn’t gone through a GFC like I experienced in the US.” When you look at Michaela Chan’s career, you can sense the gutsy determination and drive. Unlike many marketers who find a niche and stick to it, she has been constantly challenging and changing herself both personally and professionally. She makes the most of every opportunity presented to her, understanding the personal as well as professional impacts and using these to define what’s important to her –whether it’s business goals or workplace culture. Chan is known for ‘hitting the ground running’ but, as she explains, before you can hit the ground, sometimes it can take a while to find it or even make the ground yourself. With her 10-year background in oil and gas,…

We all know that Australia is hailed as a sport-loving nation – we’re known for a few other things as well, but certainly there is an international perception of our sporting prowess both as players and as spectators. It’s no surprise, therefore, that sporting content so unfailingly attracts a large and attentive audience. It is the ‘stuff’ that the majority of Australians love to see. In fact, over 16 million Australians tune in each year to watch the AFL and NRL alone. Sport is infallible content when it comes to marketers buying a receptive audience to market their brand. While content proliferates and the choices multiply exponentially, sport stands out for its solid audience foundation. Against the relative vagaries of some other content choices that promise to offer incremental reach…

Welcome to the Marketing Out-of-home Brief. It’s the first in a range of special issues we’ll be working on in 2018 and beyond, in addition to our usual print and online body of news, opinion, feature and case study content. This deep dive into the out-of-home media world has made it clear that the sector at large sits poised for rapid change and expansion in the coming months and years. The OOH experts we hear from in this issue live and breathe these changes every day. Some are new players bringing fresh ideas to the game; others have been in the industry for 20 years or more, augmenting their careers’ worth of practical knowledge with cutting edge tech capabilities. Marketers that understand the changes and the new opportunities they present…

CREATIVITY COUNTS WHAT WORKS IN THE BEST-PERFORMING OOH CREATIVE? SIMPLICITY ● Busy creative that has more than five components tends to underperform. ● Since pieces of OOH creative enjoy only a short time-frame of engagement, creative must be simple and easy to understand. LAYOUT ● Landscape creatives are read from left to right and portrait from top to bottom. ● Strategically position creative elements to divert attention to more important components. ● Laying out creative elements in sequential order, with no barriers to attention like block messages, better facilitates flow and promotes memory. LOGOS ● Logos are often the weakest link. ● They tend to be small and not fully integrated in the message. ● Outshined by other components, they risk people not linking the creative to the brand. ●…

Customers making their way through shopping centres are in a discovery mindset, and the brands that will engage with them on the right levels are those that use the available tools to deliver contextually relevant material. Bronwyn Cooper, head of content and programming at Scentre Group – owner and operator of Westfield in Australia and New Zealand, and Jonathan Case, head of sales at BrandSpace – the division of Scentre that works with brands to create meaningful connections with customers in Westfield locations – tell Marketing how smart brands are reimagining retail, and the tools and learnings available to them. Marketing: How are smart brands reimagining retail? Bronwyn Cooper: Our customers look to be inspired. They look to be entertained and they look to spend quality time with…

1 Australia is a great place. You will be moving to a new culture, accept it will be different and leave the comparison to Australia, in Australia. 2 The first 90 days count the most. A great compass for me in a new role (in Australia or abroad) is Michael D Watkins’ The First 90 Days . 3 Listening versus participating. Spend the first 90 days listening and observing challenges, opportunities, cultural nuances etc. 4 Network, network, network. This is true for both your professional and personal experiences. Like-minded and hearted people will help you assimilate. 5 Working overseas is living overseas. Embrace the experience and make sure you take the time to explore the city, local areas and, if you are lucky, adjacent countries.…

“ Marketers will no longer be targeting audiences via the area where they are located, but instead will be targeting audiences on their behaviour.” Out-of-home, like other media, is transforming in response to digitisation, data and the changing expectations of advertisers. Digital screens supported by ad servers that update content in response to real-time triggers are already here. Innovative campaigns, too, are also already using rudimentary face recognition, QR (quick response) codes and image scanning, beacons and citizen wayfinding. There’s plenty of evidence of forward thinking happening in out-of-home. But what about the future? Ten years from now which trends may have the biggest impact on how marketers use out-of-home? It’s likely to go beyond digital screens, flexible trading and better verification and reporting. The trends that will play out…

Vendors seeking to offer third-party verification to transparency-hungry agencies and clients, has given rise to a number of platform solutions in the field. In recent months, Seedooh has announced partnerships with oOH!media, APN Outdoor and most recently JCDecaux. Marketing speaks with Seedooh CEO and founder Tom Richter and partnerships director Joe Copley about the difficult business of making things simple. Marketing: Please give us some background on Seedooh. Tom Richter: I was in market, probably about five years ago, with a single media owner solution. It was basically the ability for a media owner to report delivery of an installation on a pretty widely dispersed network of assets. I met Joe who was running the Australia business for Posterscope, and we got talking about the broader application of…

In anticipation of World Oceans Day on Friday 8 June, Corona and non-profit Parley for Oceans erected a ‘wave of waste’ sculpture in the middle of Melbourne’s Federation Square, made entirely from plastic trash. Accompanying the installation is one Chris Hemsworth on a surfboard, with his shirt on (poor brand move). Hemsworth asks, “From where you’d rather be?” In the week leading up to Oceans Day – Oceans Week – the installation was updated with fresh collections of plastic trash, courtesy of Melbourne’s own streets. As Corona puts it, the company was “polluting its own advertising with plastic”. Marketing manager at Corona Australia Andy Vance said, “In the lead up to World Oceans Day, Corona wants to remind the world that we all need to protect our beaches to continue…

CHARLOTTE VALENTE New technologies and the constant increase in the quality and quantity of consumer data have created significant new opportunities for advertisers and agencies to make smarter use of both traditional and digital forms of outdoor advertising. As every marketer knows, relevance, impact and creativity are key components to any effective and engaging advertising campaign. The advances in the outdoor industry in recent years have made it easier to achieve all three elements. At the same time, there is a great opportunity to capitalise on the context in which brand messages are viewed, be that the location, the time of day, the day of week or the weather. These simple triggers can generate a significant increase in effectiveness. Let’s take weather as a simple trigger. After the economy, weather…

Out-of-home (OOH) media operates in people’s days where decisions need to be made and where they’re motivated to make them. Good vendors have understood the audience for years. In 2018, we can develop a deeper understanding than ever of where they are, what they are thinking and what they are doing. They need to make decisions and be informed with clear and confident messaging. In this environment, they are hungry for truth. In a recent study, we explored how changing values are affecting what the Australian population wants from brands. An emerging theme was uncertainty. Australians want to believe in truth and their most valued traits were honesty and knowledge. We are losing trust in the media, the institutions, even the Australian cricket team! OOH and cinema advertising are some…

1 Out of home is out of home. Consumers are leading busier lives. OOH provides advertisers with the opportunities to engage with people in more contextually relevant ways. 2 Getting it right. As marketers, we understand the right people, right place, right time, right message. Then add in the flexibility of digital OOH and dayparting. 3 Context is king. Brands are focused on delivering optimal customer experience and this can be achieved through the seamless integration of native content with display advertising. 4 Insights are the data. This is real insight into audience movement, as well as what they purchase. This enables a marketer to be more effective in the planning and delivery of their OOH campaign. 5 Real = brand safety. Using OOH means marketing wisely. Being a public…

Sérgio Brodsky is an internationally experienced brand marketing professional and scholar of The Marketing Academy. Having worked for the world’s leading strategic communications agencies, he is a proven thought-leader, regularly being published and featured on high-profile conferences and festivals worldwide. He is passionate about cities and culture and the role of brands and technology in society. Sérgio is multilingual, holds a BA in IP law and an MBA in global brand strategy and innovation. Follow him on Twitter: @brandKzar In behavioural economics ‘functional fixedness’ is a cognitive bias that limits a person from considering something beyond the way it’s been traditionally used, causing a ‘mental block’ against thinking differently when solving problems. For example, the people on the Titanic overlooked the possibility that doors, tabletops, tyre inserts and even maybe…