This Concerns You... 2018 | Edition one

THE FUTURE OF OOH: 2018 | EDITION ONE 1

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’d like to welcome you to the new edition of This Concerns You, which this time tackles the theme of creativity.

The pace of change in the marketing and advertising worlds continues to accelerate, creating an increasingly complex landscape for us all to navigate. Yet, in the middle of all the technological advancements and emerging digital approaches, one thing remains inescapably clear – that human ingenuity and creativity is still needed to create connections, stimulate emotions and generate a reaction.

Creativity doesn’t necessarily come cheap; sometimes it’s easier to take the path of least resistance, to do what’s always been done and tick boxes rather than break rules. But there’s a large – and growing – body of evidence to support the power of creativity in delivering on key marketing objectives. With that in mind, I was enlightened by the conversation between Kinetic’s Rosh Singh and Wavemaker’s Ann Wixley that features in this issue – two passionate, creative individuals discussing their art and their belief in the ongoing importance and power of creative thought.

Ultimately, our belief is that creativity and technology go hand in hand, and our goal is to adopt a ‘best of both worlds’ approach – adopt the digital practices that improve or enhance the OOH offering, and reject those that have already been identified as costly or lacking the necessary level of transparency.

As Albert Einstein said, “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together, they are powerful beyond imagination”.

Many thanks for your continued support for OOH, and I hope you enjoy the magazine.

Stuart Taylor CEO UK, Kinetic Worldwide @sstuarttaylor #ThisConcernsYou

Our challenge as OOH specialists is to help agencies and brands exploit technology to enhance creativity, not to detract from it or substitute it altogether. We have access to increasing amounts of data that can help us identify our audiences, map their location, understand their behaviours and track their responses – but we don’t have anything to replace the power of a simple, brilliantly executed creative idea. Rather, we can use technology to enhance that idea, to make it responsive, adaptive, to change it in real time or to build something completely unique. Some examples of these approaches are also explored in this issue.

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Contents Zeitgeist 04

Stuff we love

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Creativity matters

How do you DOOH? 30

The current state of play in DOOH and a look at what’s coming next

The business case for investing in creativity

Creative control 10

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Shutter speed A look at how images have infiltrated every part of our world

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A quick look into experimental world of AI creativity

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Demand attention

Survival Instinct Our brains behave differently when we are out and about

Leveraging Location The powerhouse of contextual communications

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The future of OOH is here, and it is CREATIVE Top OOH creatives on the changing face of talent and creating in OOH

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Data drives creativity It’s everywhere, and just waiting for you to play around with it

Creative Calling

Mach men

Old medium, bright future – the client perspective Nick Ashley from Tesco on the role DOOH plays in their OOH

A view of creativity from the next generation of creatives 15

Where DOOH we go from here?

Craft works 42

Classical Magic A return to the power of building a brand

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Paint the town Inspiration for transforming the urban space

The interview 50

Creativity concerns us Kinetic’s Rosh Singh sits down with Wavemaker’s Ann Wixley to talk about the power of creativity

New tech, weird tech, tech to help you create, tech to help you connect regardless of location or language - we’ve rounded up our favourite recent innovations to inspire.

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STUFF WE LOVE What a time to be alive! Tech that stimulates all your senses and facilitates connections. Plants that glow. Robots that feel. Useful AR. Here’s a selection of our favourite clever, quirky and thought-provoking inventions and innovations from around the world.

Billboards for clean air: We’ve seen the use of these grow the last 18 months. Classic posters that actively remove carbon dioxide from the surrounding air.

More please! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWt8HHG-3yI

The smart crossing: Umbrellium designed an interactive crossing that responds dynamically in real time to make pedestrians, cyclists and drivers more aware of each other

Sky scanning: A giant QR code made up of 130,000 Chinese juniper trees is promoting the northern village of Xilinshui to passengers flying above

www.umbrellium.co.uk

www.facebook.com/PeoplesDaily/posts/1666790730039404

The unfamiliar becomes accessible with AR: Blippar’s AR City app gives people a different way to navigate and explore 300 cities worldwide using augmented reality

Have shoes, will travel. For free!: A 90th birthday saw Berlin’s transport body, BVG, team up with Adidas to launch limited edition trainers, with a free annual travel pass built in

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgRdutPZNug

www.bvg.de/de/Aktuell/

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VR that taps all the senses: Voyager™ combines perfectly mapped motion, haptic feedback, spatial audio and scent with mind-bending visuals - it’s a truly amazing way to experience VR! And available exclusively in the UK through KineticX www.kineticx.co.uk

Gaming for science: By playing Sea Hero Quest you are providing scientists with insight into how our brains help us navigate our way around and helping understand dementia in the process. www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/our-research/what-we-do/sea-hero-quest/

The importance of disconnecting: The Grolsch Awake Experiment visualised the amazing way our brains respond when we remove all distractions and focus only on something creative www.vimeo.com/232028707

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Next Gen haptics: What if you could realistically experience what something feels like through a screen? Ultrasonic vibrations and electrostatic fields combine to take haptic tech to the next level www.tanvas.co

Tech for human connection: Doodling on foggy windows is elevated to an inclusive conversation for all hearing abilities through interactive bus windows

Speak to anyone, anywhere: Not perfect yet, but Google’s Pixel buds aim to connect more of us by translating languages in real time

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKEIBuFWNI8

www.store.google.com/product/google_pixel_buds

Plants that glow: Using firefly enzymes infused into watercress, MIT Lab shows the potential for non-electricity powered ambient lighting in urban spaces and dwellings

Touch for robotics: Giving robotic parts the ability to sense and feel, this e-skin prototype is looking to revolutionise touch for the machine age

8www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp-vqd8zJM4

www.advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/2/eaaq0508

AR through sound: Bose’s latest innovation aims to improve our understanding of the world around us, but with sound.

We’d love to see these synced with OOH www.theverge.com/2018/3/12/17106688/bose-ar-audio-augmented-reality-glasses-demo-sxsw-2018

Open source 3D: Google’s Poly is a free, open-source library of 3D objects that can be used by anyone to create and experiment with VR and AR experiences www.poly.google.com/

Create music through gestures: Looking to bring movement back to creating music, Wave is a ring that lets you control sound, shape effects and send commands by moving your hands www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl4s_IsOguQ

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ZEITGEIST

Highly creative campaigns win awards. They also make a big difference to your bottom line. This Concerns You editorial director, Christy Johnston, on why we believe creative work is more important than ever.

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nvesting in creativity will make your ads more effective.

Six times more effective in fact, according to the IPA’s 2016 study, Selling Creativity Short: creativity and effectiveness under threat. Multiple studies have now shown the undeniable business case for it - when investment is equal, creatively-awarded campaigns (currently one of the best measures of how creative something is) are more successful across multiple business metrics including sales growth, market share, customer acquisition and loyalty.

But we are still not seeing enough investment in this space, and it’s the reason we’ve focused on creativity for this edition.

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And after a few years of online and precision targeting taking all the headlines and a significant portion of spend, it has become apparent that a short-term focus only works in the short-term. And thankfully, we are seeing a shift back towards the proven power of brand building, identity and strong creative ideas to generate emotion, reaction and impact.

OOH has always been strongly capable and positioned in this space, with DOOH now pushing this even further.

Original, creative work is often seen as risky. But it’s vital we find the courage to deliver it. @ceeejae

As our culture becomes increasingly visual, we look into what’s driving our love affair with images and why OOH can thrive in this new visual reality. We also dip into the experimental world of AI creativity and speak to creative students to uncover their hopes, dreams and anxieties as they embark on their new careers.

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SHUTTER SPEED CREATIVE CONTROL

“Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.” So said a newspaper editor in 1911. Perhaps truer now than ever before, as our love for communicating in the visual realm grows ever stronger and the ability to capture and share ever easier. In the new visual reality, are you ensuring your OOH is capturing the attention, hearts and camera lenses of your consumers? We take a look at some of the factors driving the visual trend.

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umans are visual creatures.

We develop our visual sense before we develop language abilities. Our brains can process visual stimulus 60,000 times faster than text and identify the subject of an image with as little as 13 milliseconds exposure. The ease and speed at which we process and understand visual information make images a powerful marketing tool. This is not new. What is new is the sheer volume of images we are exposed to every day.

Digital communication is now dominated by visual language - from memes to emojis to gifs, we replace words with images to portray our mood, reaction and opinion. For those that have grown up immersed within these new languages, it’s now a natural extension of their communication suite.

Today 72,144,000 images will be loaded to Instagram, that’s 835 per second. Instagram and other visual platforms are dominated by user generated content focused on highlighting the mainly positive aspects of our lives – holidays, retail excursions, meals and socialising. As we scroll through social media sites our brains are triggered by fleeting hits of information that it rewards with dopamine. In fact, we collectively take 1.2 trillion images a year on our smartphones.

We instinctively understand that visuals have power and can convey complex and emotive stories in a single frame. What was once an expensive hobby is now accessible to everyone. Professional editing software built into apps ensures we feel confident in the quality of our output and finding an audience or receiving feedback is easier than ever. It’s no wonder that, at least in our own minds, we have become influencers, photo-journalists, commentators, creators and, ideally for advertisers, brand ambassadors.

Our use of a smartphone changes when we are out of home. Wayfinding and search aide us on our journey through the real world. We now capture notes visually, we record experiences in Stories and tap and scan the world around us to get an information hit.

Scanning behaviour is increasingly becoming the norm as more tech turns native. Google Lens is rolling out across mobile devices, putting images and AR at the heart of discovery. The previously maligned QR code is now living up to its promise, providing fast access to information and entertainment, without the need for a dedicated app. Snap codes, Spotify codes, Shazam codes, Facebook codes all exist to get us to where we want to go faster. Pinterest, Amazon, ASOS and many other brands are investing heavily in this space. As our love for, and ability to create images grows, so too does AI’s ability to read, understand and serve us back images – creating a new, and vast, input for machine learning.

OOH is perfectly placed to thrive in a visual world.

Experiential campaigns that give consumers rare or exclusive experiences provide the user with enviable social media content. Beautiful murals or elaborate special builds that enhance urban environments become moments of interest that will be recorded and shared as backdrops to our ‘interesting’ lives.

Striking imagery on large OOH sites or cleverly targeted placement can inspire conversation and debate amongst friendship groups, triggered by images.

For brands the opportunity goes beyond just generating earned media. As we increasingly scrapbook our experience of the real world, OOH advertising will become cultural stimulus in a visual world.

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CREATIVE CALLING CREATIVE CONTROL

The Creative Circle are long-term advocates for a more diverse creative workforce, and 2018 sees the launch of its foundation, a free school. CEO, Jeremy Green, shares the foundation’s plans and manifesto here.

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ince 1945, the Creative Circle has celebrated the best in British creativity. But this year marks a special year in the history of the awards body.

Through years of planning and consulting with various industry luminaries, 2018 will see the official launch of the Creative Circle Foundation, an educational charity which aims to address the imbalance of diversity in UK creative departments.

The Foundation is a free full-time school to help people who couldn’t normally afford - and wouldn’t usually come in to contact with - one of the existing advertising courses available in the UK. With the increasing cost of living in London, barriers to employment in creative roles are commonplace. The foundation intends to break the mould of traditional routes into the industry by offering education, mentoring and employment to young people across the UK. The school will cater for 15 students and begins term in September 2018. The course consists of a one term boot camp, followed by two terms touring creative agencies working on briefs, before a guaranteed six-month industry placement.

All profits from this year’s Creative Circle awards as well as 10% of all awards entry fees, and 100% of membership fees will go towards supporting the next generation of creatives through the foundation. Individuals and companies in the UK creative industries can also fund students. Each student’s fees are broken down into terms. A sponsor can choose to support a student for one, two, or the entire three terms.

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“AS AN INDUSTRY, WE NEED TO UNITE AND CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FUTURE TALENTS OF THE ADVERTISING WORLD. IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE TRUE DIVERSITY AMONGST THE INDIVIDUALS WHO DRIVE THIS BUSINESS, AS WELL AS IN THE IDEAS WE HAVE, WE NEED TO FIND A NEW WAY OF THINKING. WE NEED TO ADDRESS HOW AND WHERE WE FIND FUTURE CREATIVES AND DRIVE CHANGE IN THE PROCESS.” Jeremy Green, Creative Circle Foundation CEO To launch the foundation, Creative Circle President and joint Chief Creative Officer of Grey London, Vicki Maguire, issued a rousing manifesto.

IF YOU DON’T FIT IN, YOU’RE IN YOU’RE THE LOUD ONE YOU’RE THE CLASS CLOWN YOU’RE THE QUIET ONE AT THE BACK YOU’RE THE ONE THAT LIVES MUSIC BREATHES FILM SOAKS UP CULTURE LETS YOUR WORDS DO THE TALKING YOU ARE TALENT IN THE RAW AND ADVERTISING NEEDS YOU AS AN INDUSTRY, WE THRIVE ON NEW IDEAS YOU HAVE THEM WE NEED THEM WE’RE LOSING PEOPLE LIKE YOU NOT IN A SLOW DRIP IN A FUCKING TORRENT WE’RE LOSING YOU TO LONDON RENTS GENDER BIAS… AND HIRING IN OUR OWN IMAGE AND THAT IMAGE IS PALE, MALE AND STALE WE’VE LET YOU DOWN BUT WE’RE HERE TO PUT THAT RIGHT THE CREATIVE CIRCLE FOUNDATION IS HERE TO NOT ONLY PUT YOU THROUGH AD SCHOOL ALLOWING YOU TO LEARN YOUR CRAFT WITH THE BEST WE’LL ALSO SUPPORT YOU WHEN YOU LEAVE HELPING WITH RENT HELPING YOU FIND A JOB YOU DON’T NEED GRADES YOU DON’T NEED A PARENT IN THE INDUSTRY AND AN APPLICATION FORM WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE? IN 2018, THE CREATIVE CIRCLE BELIEVES THAT ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE FOUNDATION AND HOW YOU CAN APPLY HEAD TO CREATIVECIRCLEFOUNDATION.CO.UK

The Creative Circle is currently supporting two design students as they complete the Watford Advertising Course at West Herts College. Here we find out who and what inspires them, how they approach creativity and what their hopes, dreams and anxieties are as they embark on their new creative careers.

Q: What are your dreams for your creative career?

To work for one of the London agencies such as Mother or AMV/BBDO, and to work my way up to Creative Director. I really love the work both these agencies do, they always produce ideas that are fresh and different. It would be great to produce something similar.

To be an ECD. There’s not enough creative female leaders and I’d like to change that!

Hopefully with a few Lions and Pencils to boot!

But awards don’t mean anything if the work you make doesn’t affect people. I want to create work that becomes part of culture, changes behaviour and gets the attention of the public, not just the advertising world.

Q: Is there anything that concerns you, or makes you anxious, about the future of the creative industry?

With women accounting for only a small percentage of the work force and the BAME community an even smaller percentage, I worry about the massive underrepresentation and why this happens. I can also see how the industry would benefit from the contribution of more diverse experiences and views. It’s good to stand out but it’s also good to feel you fit in, feel included and know that someone understands you.

There’s little humour in advertising anymore. You don’t see anything shocking or really different and a lot of ads seem watered down and generic. Because of technology and the option to skip adverts it’s hard to get through to people.

It’s finding different ways to make people take notice and give them something to talk about.

But that’s why I’ve chosen this industry.

I enjoy a challenge!

Q: Can you describe a little of your creative process?

My process changes as much as the world around me changes. One thing that stays the same throughout, is that I try to seek the truth about the brand or human behaviour.

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When I get a brief I first write down all the connections I can think of with the brand/ product. As long as there’s logic, the further apart the connections are, the more interesting the link is. Like AMV’s underwear model spokesman for Tena Men. The best ideas always come from the truth. Drawing on your own experience and watching people gets you to much more interesting ideas. Talking with your partner and nagging at the brief is the best way to unearth something.

Q: What inspires you? Where do you seek inspiration?

I pull inspiration from absolutely everything, from children’s TV and foreign films, to magazines about pond life. As a creative, no stone is left unturned, there’s very little that doesn’t interest me.

I love car boot sales. They are a great place to soak up human behaviour and meet interesting people. I get inspiration from the mix of stuff I unearth. Every object has a story to tell and the strange things I find spark my imagination.

Q: Who are your creative heroes?

My Watford mentor Tony Cullingham, he’s very inspiring, and my brain has exploded since I met him. The way I have grown as a creative is down to him. I feel very prepared for the industry because of his teaching. My other heroes are fellow creatives who act as mentors. For me, advertising is all about tenacity, my mentors have supported me and pushed me to improve.

I think it’s very important every established creative becomes a mentor to someone.

Keith Haring. I love graphic novels, cartoon illustration, his Pop Art style and colours influence a lot of my art. I am a huge fan of comedy from The League of Gentlemen, Little Britain to Only Fools & Horses. My advertising hero is John Webster. I love creating characters and he had the art form nailed. Honey Monsters to Smash Martians, just genius!

CREATIVE CONTROL

The fear that machines will soon take our jobs is not completely unfounded, nor is it inevitable.

While most agree the best work will come from collaboration between human and machine, we take a look at some of the recent developments in the creative craft space.

“In truth, I’d love to build some verse for you To churn such verse a billion times a day So type a new concept for me to chew I keep all waiting long, I hope you stay” Written by algorithm

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ased on the above verse, poets don’t have anything to fear from AI in the near future, but predictions and forecasts in the automation and AI space are generally wrong. There are widely varying forecasts for how many jobs will be lost to machines 15m, 37m. No one really understands the full impact yet, but automation has been happening across parts of the business world for decades - finance, HR, sales, so why not the creative side?

There are already sophisticated machine-learningbased design programs that can interpret a myriad of styles and descriptions to create content. And there is plenty of evidence, even at this early stage, to show that machines are adept at creating some work that is interchangeable with human creations.

So how good are machines at craft skills? Not bad at painting, terrible at poetry it seems. Here’s is a snapshot of some of the work going on in this space: AI art The team at Rutgers’ Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are experimenting with art generation that does not include a human artist in the creative process. Machines can replicate existing art styles to a reasonable degree. But what about creating an entirely new style? And will humans be able to tell? Turns out we quite like machine generated art - 75% of the computergenerated pieces were thought to be made by humans.

It’s already happening to a degree. Just look at the template world. Website templates, social templates, newsletter templates, there are millions of them available, for free, and already doing a chunk of tasks once completed by human designers. www.sites.google.com/site/digihumanlab/research

But machines surely can’t replicate what humans do creatively? When you look at how much digital design work looks the same across vastly different environments, it does make you wonder. It’s incumbent on us all to keep creating, to keep pushing the boundaries and keep the value of creative work high. What machines can’t do is the idiosyncratic, the emotional, the more surreal application of ideas and design. Creativity basically. But that is just for now.

AI writing A lot of what you read online is already created by bots.

Reuters are rolling out Lynx Insight, an AI-powered tool that can analyse data, pitch stories, and even write parts of a story. The plan being for journalists and Lynx Insight to work symbiotically in what they are calling the “cybernetic newsroom” of the future. https://www.reuters.com/article/rpb-cyber/the-cybernetic-newsroomhorses-and-cars-idUSKCN1GO0Z0

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AI brand Launching a business? A product? Forget the pressure of developing a unique brand identity, just get a bot to do it for you! Or so is the aim of the hundreds of AI powered logo generation tools available for free online. We don’t think brand designers have too much to worry about for the time being if the below outputs are any indication.

AI music An album entirely composed and produced by AI was released last year. What makes it different to previously released AI generated music, is that the chord structures and instrumentation were entirely created by AI. Singer, Taryn, only provided inputs on style and overall rhythm.

The advantage of this kind of collaboration is the speed at which the AI system could compose and produce the melodies. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUs6CznN8pw

AI photo Google engineers have created an AI system that is capable of trawling Google Street View, identifying and selecting snapshots and views of beauty and then editing them to create an artistic photograph – a process that hadn’t previously been thought to be within AI’s capabilities.

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(C)

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www.futurism.com/googles-newest-ai-is-turning-street-view-images-intowww.brandmark.io www.app.logopony.com

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landscape-art

If no one notices an ad, does it really exist? We take a look at how and why our brains work differently when out of the home, why you need to be thinking OOH + mobile and also quiz top OOH creatives on how new tech and the growth of digital OOH is impacting talent and creative approaches.

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DEMAND ATTENTION

THE SCIENCE OF CREATING IMPACT OUTDOORS From movement, to relevance, to using faces and food, Kinetic’s Head of Insight, Jennie Roper, shares learnings from multiple experiments into how to grab attention out on the streets.

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“THE BRAIN IS A SURVIVAL ORGAN. IT IS DESIGNED TO SOLVE PROBLEMS RELATED TO SURVIVING IN AN UNSTABLE OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENT AND TO DO SO IN NEARLY CONSTANT MOTION (TO KEEP YOU ALIVE LONG ENOUGH TO PASS YOUR GENES ON).

WE WERE NOT THE STRONGEST ON THE PLANET BUT WE DEVELOPED THE STRONGEST BRAINS, THE KEY TO OUR SURVIVAL” John Medina Developmental molecular biologist Director of the Brain Centre for Applied Learnin g Research at Seattle Pacific University.

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e are bombarded with hundreds of advertising messages each day and so, getting your message to stand out from the crowd is of utmost importance. Through an understanding of psychology and the rules of engagement (and survival) there are four facets that help to drive attention: Movement, Salience, Food and Faces. Through an appreciation of this, clients can utilise this in their OOH advertising to make their campaigns work harder.

Get some movement in your poster. We are hard wired to notice movement. Whilst this stems from assessing if this was a threat we still have this survival strategy within us. To keep us safe, our brains have a built-in mechanism that keeps us aware of what is happening around us.

This is known as “passive attention”1. When we spot movement in our peripheral vision, we focus on it to evaluate its potential threat. Our ancestors developed this reflex and this was key to a tribe’s long-term survival.

Work from JCDecaux demonstrates how motion in a poster increased sales by 8% when compared to a static poster. They did a meta-analysis of 68 campaigns that had run across Tesco Smart screens and compared the sales uplift from OOH campaigns that were static vs. those with motion.

Average Sales Uplift - Index vs. no OOH

124 100

No OOH

126

Static

Motion

Data

Location

William James The Principals of Psychology 1890

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Cherry, E. Colin (1953). “Some Experiments on the Recognition of Speech, with One and

with Two Ears”

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109% 100%

No Location

101%

Hyper local

Town

108%

County

We then measured the uplift in average basket sales across the Subway stores in each of the towns. With the creative call-out aimed at a broad target audience, when we measured the sales uplift we found that both town and county messages drove significant levels of increased sales.

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Tsao, Doris Y.; Freiwald, Winrich A.; Knutsen, Tamara A.; Mandeville, Joseph B.; Tootell,

Roger B. H 2003 Faces and objects in Macaque cerebral cortex

Indexed Average Basket Spend

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As you can see from the meta-analysis in the chart above, location has the biggest sales impact a huge 32% increase in sales when compared to no advertising.

The second psychological tip to get your poster noticed

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North of England. In one we had hyper-local message call out. In another we had the name of the town and in the third the county.

William James The Principals of Psychology 1890

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Source: Dunnhumby 2014 - 17. Based 68 case studies

is make it relevant. This is linked to the psychological heuristic of salience that demonstrates we are more likely to look at and remember the details of salient or relevant objects. This is one reason we can pick out our name and relevant information when in large groups of people. It is known as the cocktail party effect2. At Kinetic we have been working with Subway, McCann and MediaCom to understand what locational relevance is the most salient and hence drives the most sales. We ran a campaign across three towns in the

The third thing, or things, we are hardwired to notice are faces and food. The third and final tip is make food or faces the focal point of your poster. The brain has a specific circuit for recognising faces called the fusiform gyrus. Work from Dr Doris Tsao, a neuroscientist at the University of Bremen in Germany, demonstrates that

people process faces differently from other objects3.

Her work shows that that a particular area of the brain gives faces priority - like an airline offering a business or first class passenger priority boarding. There is such a strong urge to see faces that we can also see them in inanimate objects. This is known as pareidolia. It’s a psychological phenomenon that causes the human brain to ascribe facial features to random patterns.

were often those that featured faces or foods that were part of Professor Charles Spence’s 5Cs (crispy, crackly, carbonated, creamy or crunchy). By drawing from psychology Kinetic has run various experiments to demonstrate and further understand how movement, salience, food and faces garner more attention.

Along with faces we are also drawn to foods that have one of the following properties: crispy, crackly, carbonated, creamy or crunchy. This is the work that has been pioneered by Professor Charles Spence who coined the term gastrophysics. We have analysed our clients’ results from Primesight’s Big Impression. We looked at awareness levels for the posters and then correlated this to OOH ad spend. We found that the better recalled posters, after accounting for ad spend,

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LEVERAGING LOCATION DEMAND ATTENTION

Where we are, who we are with and what is around us means something to us, and can now increasingly be leveraged by brands via contextual messaging. Kinetic’s Chief Planning Officer, Nicole Lonsdale, urges us all to consider locational context for every campaign – and explains why, if you’re not already linking your mobile advertising with your OOH, you’re missing a trick.

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ocation has always been a key driver of growth and success. For our ancestors, a strong location was worthy of war and only cities forged in the most beneficial environments would prosper. In those days, location meant a steady supply of sustenance, trade and security.

Perhaps we are programmed this way still. As ego-centric creatures, the most important location is the one we are currently occupying. The next being where we are going and, probably in the back of our mind, our home. We are quite happy to quickly categorise a location as good or bad, expensive or cheap, safe or scary, innately assigning labels to help us order and understand their purpose and relevance to us. As a result, often just an understanding of a location is enough to enable us to fill in other missing details, based on our experiences and preconceptions of that space.

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Our ability to access information about our location has never been greater. Enabled by our handset, we can now tap, scan and search anything in our immediate environment to improve our experience of it. Searches using ‘near me’ have gone up 130% in the last year, showing a learning or expectation that information should be already filtered by location. Google describes the thousands of daily instances when we reach for our phone as, ‘Micro Mobile Moments’, categorised as ‘I want to know’, ‘I want to go’, ‘I want to do’, ‘I want to buy’. There is really not a decision made without first going digital.

The data trails created in every Micro Mobile Moment allow brands to gain a better understanding of what occurs by location and what queries or needs consumers

in those locations have. Aggregated and anonymised carrier data allows us to target by browsing behaviour and to understand how our customers navigate the real world by hour and day. Overlaying data from Kinetic’s Aureus planning platform with carrier data brings powerful possibilities and efficiencies to OOH planning and scheduling and underlines the medium’s growing strength in offering ‘targeted broadcast’.

area, brands are also able to retarget audiences via mobile at a subsequent time and relevant place, with ads triggered based on the consumer’s prior exposure to the OOH campaign. It it important to note that as GDPR legislation comes in effect, the pool of consumers opting in to this practice may be reduced.

“THE MOST IMPORTANT LOCATION IS THE ONE WE ARE CURRENTLY OCCUPYING” Geofenced mobile targeting is now a commonly used technique, but it best extends the OOH campaign where consumers have high dwell time and are likely to be active on their mobile devices. Spaces such as shopping malls, train stations, pedestrianised shopping districts and airports provide sufficient scale of area and levels of footfall to link consumers’ exposure to an OOH campaign (whether classic or digital) with mobile targeting.

The benefits of this contextual targeting approach are clear, particularly in retail environments, where relevant audience segments can be pushed toward specific outlets. Following initial targeting within the geofenced

Taking this approach a step further, consumers’ mobile devices can be identified where they have been exposed to OOH campaigns to measure the impact and subsequent uplift on traffic in-store for weeks after the initial OOH exposure.

Data gleaned (and cleaned) from mobile ad exchanges or increasingly from SDK (app) data can be used to analyse movement post-exposure to assess the impact on footfall. In a recent case for one retail client, Kinetic

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identified a 37% uplift in the likelihood of a shopper turning up in-store after being exposed to the brand’s creative.

OOH’s strong link to mobile also makes it a powerful medium for driving social media activation. Content that can be scanned can encourage people to pull out their phones and interact with the world around them, providing a measurable uplift in campaign engagement among audiences. Snapcodes, for example, are being used to unlock additional content and special offers among Snapchat users, demonstrating the powerful potential when there is crossover between the digital and physical worlds.

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Hyper-local Wi-Fi networks can now be used to remove the need for an app or even avoid the need for 4G connectivity. That means they can be used to deliver highly engaging, content-rich user experiences, such as video, direct to the consumer’s device at incredibly high speed within a radius of up to 15 metres of the OOH frame.

The potential for location-targeted mobile advertising can be fully unlocked when it’s combined with OOH and our detailed understanding of consumers’ active journeys when out of the home.

THE FUTURE OF OOH IS HERE & IT IS CREATIVE DEMAND ATTENTION

Have clients changed what they want from OOH? Is data impacting how the industry approaches creativity? Has automation opened up more space for bold ideas? What talent are we attracting and how will this change? Top creatives in OOH give their views on the creative side of this exciting and ever-changing medium.

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RICHARD SIMKINS

CREATIVE SOLUTIONS DIRECTOR EXTERION MEDIA What are you hoping to achieve creatively this year?

Develop new techniques and technologies for our diverse formats to unlock new creative potential for our clients and cement ourselves as the ‘go-to’ team in OOH for all our clients’ challenging creative briefs.

How have client creative briefs changed over last couple of years?

I see fewer of the ‘it must become a viral video’ briefs, possibly because very little video goes truly viral anymore.

This desire for fame has been replaced with a realisation that all forms of creativity – big and small – delivers ROI. As the brilliant Dave Trott puts it: “creativity is the last legal unfair advantage”, and clients are looking to us to provide opportunities to stand out from the crowd.

Exterion Live, and our in-house studio team, into our creative solutions team – so we’re bigger and better than ever.

Looking ahead, we’re focused on building our reputation in the market for creativity through delivering award-winning, innovative work.

Has the increase in data available changed how you approach creativity in OOH? Yes and no. The insights we develop from our propriety data often kickstarts our planning and encourages us to explore creative ways of packaging assets for clients. Our work.shop. play. panel generates surprising insights which fuel creative thinking. Occasionally clients ask us for data to reinforce that a creative solution will work, which sometimes isn’t easy. But at the same time, all it takes is a good creative brief and a spark of inspiration - no data in the world can replace the tingle of excitement you feel when you know you’re onto a winner.

Has the talent in your team changed over the past few years in terms of skills? How will it change in the next couple of years?

I’m new at Exterion, having joined the company last year.

Since I’ve arrived, we’ve brought our experiential team,

CATHERINE MORGAN DIRECTOR OF OCEAN LABS OCEAN OUTDOOR

What are you hoping to achieve creatively this year?

To evangelise about the importance and power of using context and full motion in DOOH. Neuroscience research tells us that full motion creative on DOOH delivers significantly higher memory encoding for brands, so why are some advertisers still running static creative on full motion screens? I want brands to see the full benefits our medium can deliver by using full motion creative How have client creative briefs changed over last couple of years?

Contextual data briefs are now commonplace - live data can help brands talk to consumers in a relevant context, understand and pre-empt their needs and wants, without being intrusive.

Has the talent in your team changed over the past few years in terms of skills? How will it change in the next couple of years?

We offer a full-service package so the team have diverse backgrounds and include creative technologists and 28

developers, project managers and creative strategists. To understand the true benefits of DOOH, knowledge around its segue with the online sector is also fundamental.

Has the increase in data available changed how you approach creativity in OOH? We’ve always been passionate about the creativity that data can offer, but what has changed is the growth in our own data to help optimise campaigns, both in terms of creative testing and ad serving.

What is your favourite piece of creative work from the last year or so?

I am going to cheat with two. I loved the augmented reality campaign we created for O2, where shoppers could transform into an animated Jedi sequence using LookOut tech. DOOH provides a perfect platform for street theatre, which worked perfectly when we synched audio and snow cannons to re-create the Waitrose ‘Snowed In’ campaign at Westfield London and Stratford.

What creative idea do you have sitting in your bottom drawer that you’ve always wanted to do?

Cross city interaction done at scale.

LOUISE STUBBINGS What are you hoping to achieve creatively this year?

At least 50% of all of our DOOH campaigns using at least one element of our key creativity drivers – location, data, motion and time – to deliver true creativity at scale.

as well as relationships with other media owners. It’s an area that I see a lot of potential as I believe we are far stronger collaborating with other brilliant minds from other companies to come up with great creative ideas. We also now have a technology division, with producers focused on delivering complex digital campaigns and developers thinking about how to get the next big thing onto our screens.

How have client creative briefs changed over last couple of years?

Has the increase in data available changed how you approach creativity in OOH?

We are being asked much more to help with the overall creative idea, rather than just the execution and delivery.

This is a big shift and a direct result of both the speed of change that DOOH has undergone and the new possibilities that have opened up as a result.

For us, it’s the accessibility that’s had the biggest impact.

Being able to tap into various APIs means it’s much easier to adapt creative based on changes to a data set. We can think far broader about what content in OOH looks like, but the constant challenge is to ensure that the data remains an enabler to the core idea rather than just using it because we can.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR CLEAR CHANNEL

Has the talent in your team changed over the past few years in terms of skills? How will it change in the next couple of years?

Yes, I took over the Create team at the end of 2016 and immediately set up a partnerships division to focus on creative, content and innovation teams in agencies,

STEVEN DENNISON

HEAD OF CREATIVE SOLUTIONS JCDECAUX UK What are you hoping to achieve creatively this year?

Fifty per cent of digital campaigns running dynamically.

The industry is really behind this and we’ve seen some great case studies. Every year we are told this is the year of ‘dynamic OOH’ however, I really think 2018 will be the year!

Has the talent in your team changed over the past few years in terms of skills? How will it change in the next couple of years?

Our team has changed massively over the past few years.

It now represents a diverse range of skills from creative technologists and digital project managers, through to highly skilled print, experiential and delivery specialists.

Has the increase in data available changed how you approach creativity in OOH? As it becomes simpler for agencies and clients to plan and book campaigns, we are seeing a huge shift in the importance of creativity in OOH. Ideas used to be limited by technology but now this has been flipped as technology is speeding ahead, allowing us to think even bigger. We spend a lot of time demystifying new technology, products,

data sets and working out how we can use them in a creative and valuable way for clients.

What is your favourite piece of creative work from that last year or so?

There are far too many to choose from! Situated in bus shelters on some of London’s most polluted streets, we launched an anti-pollution cosmetic range for The Body Shop using Airlabs technology to clean the air for waiting passengers! A great example of a brand harnessing new technology in a truly creative and impactful way.

What creative idea do you have sitting in your bottom drawer that you’ve always wanted to do?

Ever since the launch of Motion@Waterloo I’ve always wanted to make a multiplayer platform game that consumers can play with their mobile– the screen is perfect…who wouldn’t want to play 40m long game of Super Mario Bros. 3 whilst waiting for the 17:45 to Guildford?

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JOEL HARRIS

STRATEGY DIRECTOR PRIMESIGHT What are you hoping to achieve creatively this year?

Increase the number of brands supercharging the impression they make on DOOH by tailoring their creative to the specific format and the context it offers. TFL’s app download campaign recently highlighted the Wi-Fi capabilities of InLink units with bespoke copy. Creativity + context + consumer benefit. But also remind clients of the fame-building power of a great classic poster.

How have client creative briefs changed over last couple of years?

Brands want to focus more on using data and connecting on and offline worlds, rather than have them operating in media silos. Dynamic messaging and use of full motion can complement search and social. By fusing data and creativity, brands can tap into that feeling of serendipity (personalisation at scale). But we need to help creative experts understand the scope of what can be technically executed in DOOH.

CLAUDE MERDJAN

CREATIVE ACCOUNT MANAGER KINETIC ACTIVE What are you hoping to achieve creatively this year?

To grow ideational fluency within the Kinetic Active team.

This style of creative thinking allows for the creation of unique, non-traditional ideas, and by being disciplined about using ideation techniques on a frequent basis it will enhance our idea generation routes, whilst instilling creative confidence.

How have client creative briefs changed over last couple of years?

Brands have become more focused on creating exciting experiences to engage with consumers, slowly moving away from a transactional relationship in an effort to reach cultural embodiment.

Has the increase in data available changed how you approach creativity in OOH? Yes, in the age of big data we’ve had to learn how to deal with the data flood and not drown in it. Having access to platforms that provide real-time, contextual customer intelligence offers real value and direct consumer insight. Being creative in a dynamic digital OOH market 30

Has the talent in your team changed over the past few years in terms of skills? How will it change in the next couple of years?

From client-facing to delivery, teams need to be more technically orientated and comfortable using data. Our BT/InLink partnership gives us smart city experts, content and tech specialists complementing our future-facing approach.

Has the increase in data available changed how you approach creativity in OOH? Mobile data layered with Route can offer brands insights into audience segments changing across locations and times of day. Interestingly, traditional audience age groups may become less relevant, with focus on how people consume and behave - The age of the Perennial.

What creative idea do you have sitting in your bottom drawer that you’ve always wanted to do?

Every year we’re asked how a brand can own Christmas.

How about subconsciously with mood synching?

Dominating digital roadside panels whenever the three most popular Christmas songs of all time play on radio.

Emotive and tactical.

is exhilarating; a digital ad has more in common with the Internet than it does a poster - having that connectivity permits access to relevant API feeds, allowing us to target contextual moments, serve relevant advertising and deliver a far better customer experience.

What is your favourite piece of creative work from that last year or so?

It would have to be State Street Global Advisors – “Fearless Girl Arrives”. This tactical outdoor stunt was launched on International Women’s Day, placing a statue of a young girl fearlessly standing down the iconic Wall Street charging bull. This activation highlighted the power of women in leadership. Its contextual positioning saw the statue become a social media phenomenon, attracting people from all over the world. What makes this campaign so great is that the statue became a broader symbol for female empowerment; a tactical stunt that in turn became a permanent installation.

The new face of digital OOH is Reactive, RealTime, Relevant and Rewarding. But with less than 10% of campaigns taking advantage, there is much work to do. We give the current state of play while looking into the near-future, dive into using data to trigger creative and hear from a major client on how DOOH plays a vital role of their OOH strategy.

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HOW DO YOU DOOH?

The digital side of OOH is where the majority of investment and innovation is happening. But exactly how far has the channel progressed? What new creative opportunities are there? Kinetic’s Head of Digital Adrian Witter gives the lowdown on the current state of play and what you can look forward to in the near future.

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D

igital out of home is delivering both marked growth

(15% YoY) and revenue share (42% overall), helping to drive a renaissance within the wider out of home market. The channel has reached critical mass with audience penetration amongst UK adults now at 60% (classic OOH reaches 90%). Helping drive this growth has been significant improvements in the following areas:

VOLUME

There are now more than 24,000 screens across diverse environments such as airports, rail and tube stations, buses, taxis, malls, pedestrianised and vehicular roadside, gyms, cinemas, bars and hotels. A number you can expect to grow, approaching a near 50/50 split in future.

DATA

The official industry measurement body, Route, recently signed off another £17m in industry-wide funding to further expand the granularity and robustness of the data - from per 1-min partitions to per 2-seconds - an increase in data points by a factor of 30x.

We now combine Route data with a curated roster of quality geo-location data partners giving us access to a further 100m data points per month. General demographics, media consumption and app usage by location add additional layers of data-depth for timely audience targeting.

TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE

Many of the technical and operational bottlenecks that impacted our ability to scale campaigns have been addressed. By Q4 2018 we will have direct integration into each of the top four media owners. £25m+ of screen investment is ensuring the most luscious on-screen visuals and full motion capabilities.

At the same time, online display advertising is suffering from a glut of issues including ad fraud, ad blocking, viewability and brand safety issues.

While online direct response advertising i.e. achieving a cost per click, cost per engagement, per quote, per sale etc. remains an effective use of digital online, none of the aforementioned challenges lends the medium to a safe and effective brand building proposition.

Online direct response marketing capabilities:

CAN DO (EASILY)

CAN’T DO (WELL)

STRUGGLES TO DO (AT ALL)

AUDIENCE TARGETING

MASS AUDIENCE REACH

FREE FROM AD BLOCKING

RAPID DEPLOYMENT

LOCATION TARGETING*

FREE FROM AD FRAUD

CAMPAIGN MEASUREMENT

HIGH IMPACT, DYNAMIC CREATIVE

HIGH VIEWABILITY

PROGRAMMATIC*

BRAND BUILDING*

BRAND SAFETY*

Let’s go deeper into the attributes highlighted by asterisks above:

LOCATION TARGETING

DOOH enjoys the distinction of being a location-based media channel at a fixed site with an associated latitude and longitude. No guessing if a client’s ad was delivered to someone outside of the sphere of influence of their target retail or event location.

DOOH sites are typically being installed as replacements for poster sites in existing, highly urbanised, high traffic areas, ensuring maximum coverage of all key audiences across a national footprint. This puts DOOH firmly in the upper echelon of channels for overall audience reach even when compared to TV, radio, display and social.

Further to this, the proliferation of quality data sources for geo-location data (from telco, map services, mobile SDK etc.) offers clients a plethora of smart data combinations to extract efficiency from their DOOH media buying and, verify and attribute the effectiveness of a campaign: •

Footfall via mobile geo data – e.g. auto dealer, FMCG, retailer footfall uplift in store/dealership visits

•

Brand impact via live panel research data – e.g. uplift in propensity to buy, intent to buy, brand fame, product consideration, brand awareness etc.

•

Audience delivery via Route – e.g. reach and frequency, GRPs against target audiences

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BRAND BUILDING AND BRAND SAFETY

The stunning visual impact offered by DOOH is incomparable. Screen resolutions are now of the highest quality and dwarf even those found in the most highend AV showrooms, with 4k full motion becoming the norm. These branding credentials are further boosted by the sheer scale of the displays and prime locations they occupy. It’s ironic that so many mobile or desktop creatives are celebrated for their impact and full screen takeover, when overall these formats tend to be obstructive, interruptive and dwarfed by a factor of over 100x in sheer scale.

DOOH environments are brand safe, bereft of ad fraud or ad-blocking. They stack up favourably in a variety of measures for long-term brand building and driving intent, be that via search or footfall against other frequently associated media such as TV or online display.

PROGRAMMATIC

The one key outlier here is programmatic, which up to this point has been a red herring in an OOH industry where simple automation – of key components, let alone the entire end-to-end process – has been severely lacking. However, in the past year the wider industry has addressed many of the technical and operational hurdles.

To give it a definition, programmatic is automation based on machine-to-machine communication. In the context of digital media, it refers to the practice of buying digital advertising space automatically, using computational processing, various data sources and tools of analysis to decide which ads to buy and how much to pay for them. There are four key components within that:

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AUDIENCE PLANNING & TARGETING

REAL TIME BIDDING

MEASUREMENT & TRACKING

RTB

AUTOMATION IN BUYING

Of the above features, the RTB element, whilst an attractive component, is optional. The RTB nature of programmatic at its inception was a cause for many of the current problems facing the online world as the tools necessary to verify ad buying in real time were never able to fully filter the available inventory to enable safety and effective pricing protocols.

Uniform real-time availability in DOOH is consistently a challenge. Negating the RTB element means programmatic can be achieved in DOOH today. Clients can enjoy the benefits of more efficient and rapid deployment of their ads per their desired audience targets and KPIs.

THE INEVITABILITY OF IT ALL

In an ever-faster paced society where media content is rarely anticipated but instead demanded with increasing levels of relevancy and speed, why would we not use a service that offers a similar utility at a fraction of the time and cost, massive flexibility, personalisation based on algorithmic behavioural scoring, and reams of data learnings? If the price is a relatively minor pivot from one measurement or planning framework to another, why would we stand in the way instead of embracing it?

THE FUTURE

As technology improves it has significant impact on the distribution, access and selling of media. Things that were once not so scalable become tenable, and ideas that were once unfathomable become common sense to execute, from movies to music and books to billboards.

PROGRAMMATIC

The change can be an onslaught or an opportunity depending on the willingness and readiness of industries and business to adapt.

Using this framework as an example, we can attribute OOH from the past 10 years and project the next 10.

YEAR

BLEEDING EDGE

MAINSTREAM

PREMIUM

2008

DOOH

BUS T-SIDES & ROADSIDE 6 SHEETS

PICCADILLY CIRCUS

2018

PROGRAMMATIC DOOH

AUTOMATED DIRECT DOOH

PICCADILLY LIGHTS

2028

AR X INTERACTIVE X IOT DOOH

PROGRAMMATIC DOOH

TFL DOOH TAKEOVER

As you can see, the retrofitted premise applies well and will continue to do so as more innovation spills over into the DOOH offering, consistently rejuvenating the ‘bleeding edge’ pool of technologies and forcing innovations to prove their effectiveness or see themselves discarded.

We are already seeing the seeds of this innovation being planted, from the InLink devices providing smart city infrastructure in New York, to the Internet of Things and added connectivity of devices for synchronised communications across channels.

DOOH is agile and increasingly connected, allowing it to play an important role in integrating with, and amplifying messages across other digital platforms. A plethora of quality geo-location and DOOH specific data is allowing us to be much more powerful, precise and personalised in our messaging. Technology is driving creativity in DOOH, it enables the synchronisation of screens, driving interactions between mobile and DOOH and this synergy between channels is producing some really exciting results. It’s going to be quite the year for DOOH!

I believe that the nature of this change will flow through the Product Pyramid: FEATURES

MARKET SHARE

INNOVATION, IMPACT, EFFECTIVENESS AND EXCLUSIVITY

CURATED PREMIUM DOOH SOLUTIONS

25%

IMPACT, EFFECTIVENESS AND EXCLUSIVITY

MAINSTREAM TECHNOLOGY & INVENTORY

60%

BLEEDING EDGE TECHNOLOGY &INVENTORY

15%

INNOVATION & IMPACT

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OLD MEDIUM, BRIGHT FUTURE DEMAND ATTENTION

Nick Ashley, Head of Media and Campaign Planning at Tesco, shares why he’s excited by digital OOH’s growing capabilities, and the importance of true collaboration to creating brilliant and effective work.

A

t the heart of Tesco is helpfulness. Letting customers know what time their store is open to buy that last-minute Mother’s Day gift? That’s helpful. Giving directions to an Express store in the panic of Christmas shopping? Every Little Helps when you are determined to host the best Christmas ever.

That’s what excites me most about developments in DOOH - being localised and relevant but delivering at scale. The ongoing digitisation of the landscape has unleashed new possibilities and potential. Yes, I love seeing the vibrancy of a Food Love Stories 96 sheet on a damp, grey Tuesday afternoon, but using the same site to serve “Andy’s RedHanded Breakfast Flatbread’”at breakfast, “Iain’s Proper Croque Monsieur” at lunch and “Frankie’s Late-Night Breakfast” in the evening is even more powerful.

We all know that tech integrations can be difficult to build.

The temptation is to start overloading a piece of creative work with multiple data sources, just because you can.

Having invested in the tech, and in the premium for buying digital space, you’d better get your money’s worth! That’s why the best digital OOH examples require effective 36

collaboration between the client, creative agency, media agency, OOH specialist and tech provider to remain singleminded.

Examples like Jaguar’s speed-triggered campaign where the creative referenced the specific speed of the traffic and adapted copy accordingly. Or the wonderful #MarchForGiants campaign where a personalised elephant marches from Manchester to Botswana via multiple cities on large-format digital screens, all to highlight the ongoing poaching that sadly continues. This is a powerful fusion of social media and OOH, all powered through a quick donation and a beautifully created animal (as I write mine is four hours from appearing at Westfield London).

Driving relevant reach is critical to pretty much every advertiser. When we can use data to make OOH more helpful, more disruptive and noticeable, or more contextually relevant, the future for the world’s oldest advertising medium looks very bright.

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DATA DRIVES CREATIVITY HOW DO YOU DOOH?

Data is everywhere. The type of data, and how we leverage it to uncover consumer insight, can have a big impact on the effectiveness of a campaign. Kinetic Active’s Dominic Murray urges us all to unlock new creative possibilities through real-world data.

P

rocrastinating over a data article, I recently discovered the word with the most definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘set’, with 464.

What influences the meaning of a word over time is context - our background and environment. The word snowballs with new uses and connotations until it becomes a crutch for a writer looking for a start or the word becomes a factoid itself.

Perhaps that’s why writing about ‘data’ is difficult, the story changes greatly depending on the context and in the last five years the word has become allencompassing. There are many different definitions of data and different points of view on just how our personal data (biological, behavioural, social) should be collected, accessed, processed and shared.

Companies will continue to mine our existence for valuable insights and information upon which new industries and futures will be built - Eric Schmidt of 38

Alphabet believes big data is so powerful, nation states will go to war over it.

Amy Webb, a brilliant futurist of NYU Stern and the Future Institute, can envision an optimistic version of the future were our data is mined to the advantage of our health. Projects such as the Human Cell Atlas, run by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, attempts to create a comprehensive map of every cell in the human body and create a resource for future medical services and research. This doesn’t sound so bad - the exchange of my personal data for the promise of improved medical services and the advancement of humanity. It is when the perceived value of my data transaction is not in line with the return that problems for the consumer (and marketer) arise.

Diminished value for the user is an issue blamed for the rise in ad-blocking. Ad networks gorged on the fresh feast of consumer data and overstepped the mark,

22 Li Kin kes eti cw 6M INU wW TE SA e lo G O

ve

#O

OH

1

increasing tracking and subsequent targeting to a point it was visible and off-putting to the consumer.

Of course, it is now possible to collect personal information without cookies. Megvii Face++ is a Chinese company developing biometric readings so accurate that ‘faceprints’ could soon replace passwords. Home Assistants, such as Alexa and Google, could detect your mood from your distinct vocal pattern, the size of room you are in and even what the walls are made of.

American researchers have scanned the cars parked outside houses on Google Maps to build socio-economic profiles of neighbourhoods. All of this data can be processed through AI systems to pull insight in a fraction of the time it would take a human observer.

In a 2016 article Faris Yakob, co-founder of Genius Steals, reminded us that the future depicted in Philip K Dick’s Minority Report was in fact a dystopia, not a blueprint for sales and marketing. Right now, we have unprecedented access and insight into the lives of our

consumers. This abundance of data available to us as marketers and creators is a privilege.

“THE ABUNDANCE OF DATA AVAILABLE TO US AS MARKETERS AND CREATORS IS A PRIVILEGE” It is now possible through the wealth of data available to us to build a real-time understanding of consumers beyond just their online profile. Our behaviour changes when out of home, decisions and mindsets are influenced by many external factors. The majority of us feel the same way about heavy weather, queuing in traffic or commuting home on a Tuesday evening. Real 39 39

World data APIs like Met Office Data and TfL Timetable Data are available openly, others can be built using the data deposited from our daily digital lives.

Brands can be present at these pivotal moments in our daily lives. Readily available data derived from real-world sources gives us insight into environmental conditions around a DOOH screen and from that, combined with other indicators, we can gain an understanding of context.

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And this is where data can only inspire greater creativity, each moment is an opportunity for your brand to be relevant, useful and desirable. It is the challenge of the Creative to find a relevant territory or purpose for your brand in that unique moment in consumers’ lives.

Relevance is key and not all moments are relevant for every brand. How does your brand message, product or service relate to what the consumer is experiencing?

More importantly, can you empathise with them authentically?

Not every iteration of creative needs a new hilarious location-based pun or time-relevant copy line, simply changing the featured product or offer to match the customer’s context or dynamically publishing location name can drive increased footfall and sales.

In 2017, B&Q used 10 years of historic weather data and customer sales data to predict the products that would most likely be sought after by DIY enthusiasts each weekend, based on the current and predicted weather conditions. Knowing that as herd creatures, their audience planned projects when the weekend weather forecast is positive, B&Q would publish the most

relevant products. On occasions when the weather was not favourable for outside projects, B&Q would serve indoor DIY products. Data is available to teach us about the triggers and resulting behaviour of our audience, and DOOH tools ensure that our message is relevant to the viewer.

CityMapper have used their audience data to extend their offering into relevant territories. Based on user data from London, they have created an exclusive bus service that will enable their users to travel more freely across the city.

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As every aspect of our lives is quantified and recorded, the data can be processed to develop new, applicable insights or information. Spotify Maps that show the most popular genre by City are an indication of mood and mind-set by location. Strava have created a global heat map of Play based on the fitness data of their users. This resource can be applied to our campaigns to understand when, where and how our customers exercise and play.

The Internet of Things will present the next wave of personal data that could be applied to marketing to serve hyper-relevant messaging on the understanding that a consumer is low on milk, for instance. But it’s more likely this data will be anonymised and used to understand broad patterns of behaviour that can inspire new creative and media approaches.

With a greater understanding of customer behaviour in real-time and the ability to monitor and react to the real-world influences on our behaviour, we can tailor campaigns to specific key moments in daily life and uncover new creative territory for our brands. OOH is a channel that encourages you to apply human data in a way that is human, tied to a real-world experience. @dominic_murray0

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Craft has the ability to take an ad from the good to the great. And we need more of it. If we don’t take care making each piece of work as creative as possible, why would a consumer care to pay it any attention? We must all strive to not allow obsession with data analysis replace smart, human-centric creative thinking.

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CRAFT WORKS

In the dopamine-drenched world of digital planning where clicks and instant gratification rule, Kinetic’s Steve Payne argues that a long-term brand strategy is still key to business success, and why OOH is perfectly positioned to do the job for you.

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W

ith the increasing focus on DOOH, it’s perhaps understandable that classic OOH formats are being somewhat overlooked at the moment.

But for many advertisers, classic OOH has been the foundation on which their brands have been built, and the strengths of the medium should not be overlooked when it comes to creativity or effectiveness.

Beyond standard formats, we have also seen a resurgence of interest in larger-scale wall murals; not only are they visually striking, they can be painted in urban areas where large format poster sites are rare, dominating the attention of consumers as a result.

The primary strengths of Outdoor – mass reach, visual impact and location – are crucial factors in justifying why the medium should continue to appear on a media schedule, and classic OOH continues to deliver this, costeffectively and at national scale.

Brands like Jack Daniel’s, Fiat, and Coca-Cola have all shown how consistent great creative on classic formats can tell a story over time, drawing in their audience through bold visuals or great copy.

But why is long-term branding still so crucial? Binet & Field’s seminal study, The Long and Short of It (2013), clearly illustrated why long-term messaging is critical to building sales over time, avoiding the peaks and troughs that are seen if an advertiser focuses solely on shortterm, tactical messaging. In a later study, Media in Focus (2017), Binet & Field demonstrated that OOH was the second strongest medium, behind only TV, for generating “very large business effects” – significant sales gains, market share gains and so on.

It is the very nature of classic, static billboards that makes them so good at driving brand metrics over time. It’s these familiar images that not only draw the eye, but also convey their message more easily to the consumer, thanks to the familiarity that has been developed over multiple campaigns. Through the use of a consistent creative approach, brand saliency is enhanced, helping furnish what neuroscientist Heather Andrews calls the “brand room” in consumers’ minds – in other words, growing our understanding of what that brand means to us and priming us to purchase as a result.

Additionally, special builds are becoming increasingly inventive and interactive, bringing a brand to life in a tangible way that not even full-motion digital can replicate. Recently, brands such as Warner Bros., Aperol, and Three have all utilised physical installations and special builds to augment broader OOH campaigns, using them as tools to drive social media and PR coverage, as well as enhancing the impact of the OOH activity itself. Increasingly, we’re seeing special builds that incorporate emerging technologies such as VR, adding further layers of interaction and emotional connection with the installation.

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This is all well and good, but creativity should be a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. So what evidence is there to demonstrate that creativity is more than just a ‘nice to have’? Multiple studies have shown the business impact creativity can drive, notably demonstrated by Binet & Field in The Long and Short of It – in essence, creatively driven campaigns that generate an emotional response are more effective at driving sales and making customers less sensitive to price. In other words, they think the brand is worth more.

Kinetic, too, has conducted a range of studies that relate to creative and format – from understanding the ‘framing effect’ that can enhance the perceived value of the advertised product, to the way in which food advertisers can best tap into neuroscience to drive an emotional response from the consumer (known as ‘gastronomics’).

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We are big believers in the core strengths of OOH first and foremost as a brand-building medium, and classic formats should still sit at the heart of any plan where scale and impact are key considerations. The re-emergence of murals and the continuing evolution of special builds demonstrate that when it comes to creativity in OOH, it’s not always all about digital.

CRAFT WORKS

PAINT THE TOWN

A city is what you make it. So why not make it something special and create an experience to delight and divert people going about their daily lives? A myriad artistic techniques, from the simple to the sophisticated, are available to add something special and elevate your work from the normal to the truly creative! Here is a selection of some of our favourite installations from last year to inspire you.

Perrier transformed a metro station in Shanghai into a beautiful jungle to promote a collaboration with artist Juan Travieso. Giant trees triggered with sensors lit up when people passed by, while a lion’s roar could be heard. A magical way to create impact in an environment most people just pass through.

ECHO is not a billboard. It’s a brand-new display format for OOH that creates jaw-dropping, large-scale images without a screen. It projects images directly into your eyes that appear to overlay the city landscape. Marriott were the first brand in the world to use it and lit up London’s South Bank in the lead up to Christmas

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn_ug37wjBY

www.kineticx.co.uk/lightvert/

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Forget digital, paper is still a powerful and versatile medium to create unique and lasting impact in urban spaces - as shown here by artist Emmanuelle Moureaux. Her Colour of Time installation alters appearance depending where you are standing in relation to it, creating a dynamic and immersive experience. www.emmanuellemoureaux.com

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100,000 volumes combine to create the Parthenon of books; an unmissable installation in Kassel, Germany, designed to provoke debate around the subject of censorship by South American conceptual artist, Marta Minujín. By taking over such a public space and having citizens contribute, it can’t help but stimulate conversation.

H&M’s latest collaboration with designer Erdem was brought to life in a magical way via a beautiful and rich installation for people to wander through and view the collection up close.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGQ5J-_9r6c

www.vimeo.com/241147568

ESPN World highlighted the lack of gender equality in the sporting world by physically painting the differences on real sporting courts in Brazil. Differences in share of media coverage and pay are some examples. A brilliant example of creating a powerful message through urban infrastructure and paint. www.vimeo.com/222197972

Getting up close with nature can be difficult in big cities, so design studio Party created an immersive greenhouse experience in Tokyo to encourage people to tap into all their senses and experience the wonder of plants, bringing sounds, scents and lights to life through the power of touch. www.vimeo.com/238703497

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Kinetic NL helped transform the whole city of The Hague into a living, urban Mondrian painting to promote the museum’s exhibition, The Discovery of Mondrian. Pieces of Mondrian appeared in unexpected places, around corners, on transport, buildings and posters giving residents the feeling of living inside a Mondrian. www.vimeo.com/241529852

Thinking outside the box - a real estate company, AP Thailand, turned unusable scraps of land in a heavily built-up area into football pitches. Each pitch is unique in shape as it has been built to fit the space available. The result being a reduction in derelict spaces and more safe areas for young people to play. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf3Cjpn9qHY

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As head of Kinetic’s creative arm, Rosh Singh is a passionate advocate of infusing creative thinking whenever possible. Ann Wixley is Wavemaker’s first ECD. Here’s what happened when they sat down to talk about creative ideas. Where to find them.

How to inspire them. And why you need more of them!

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THE INTERVIEW

RS

AW

Wavemaker is a new generation agency - we are about the combination of media, content and tech. I guess my job is about helping to combine the humanities and the sciences connecting logical and lateral thinkers and emulsifying their skills to get amazing ideas that are also logically very smart, efficient and effective.

I use “emulsifying” because I think you have to keep stirring, otherwise it settles and then the humanities go one way and the sciences go the other.

RS

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Y

ou occupy quite a unique position as Executive Creative Director in a media agency. How does that differ from an ECD in a traditional ad agency?

Do you think that has a kind of amplification effect, because you have two distinctly separate types of people and you’re

emulsifying? Do you think the output is more exciting?

AW

Yes, yes. I have to say two yesses because I’m a massive believer in diversity of skills and ways of thinking and different kinds of people combining together. That’s where you get to really interesting stuff. I think that’s why I’m an ECD in a media, content and tech agency, because you get to those intersections and connections that are magical. The challenge is that it’s really hard work getting all those bits together and getting it to stick long enough to get to something magical and effective.

RS

And those difficulties, would you say they’re structural difficulties? Mindset difficulties? Talent difficulties? Do you think the structure’s right in a media agency to be outwardly creative?

AW

I’ve been in the UK for 11 years and this is the hottest, most exciting time and place I’ve been in, where we can create some of the things I’ve always wanted to create.

RS

I see our job as trying to foster as much creativity from all partners, not just creative agencies. Do you think there are things we should be doing to make that process easier?

There’s an opportunity to create this incredibly diverse range of ideas - communication ideas that people see and invisible ideas that they don’t - engineering ideas that happen under the bonnet and get people from A to B faster.

We’ve got the most diverse set of inputs into the process to help us come out with that.

AW

RS

You see so much more creativity coming from media agencies now than you ever have done, do you think that is causing a friction between media and the creative side?

Certainly in the OOH industry, many focus on inspiring ad agencies with creative stimulus and coming into media agencies with the numbers, the scale, the tech and innovation. I would like to see creative presentations delivered to the media and ad agencies together. We have to make a conscious effort every time we’re taking something out to market to do it for an integrated audience, with the client in the room. But time is often an issue.

RS

I think lack of time, while it’s a struggle, is also quite exciting because we have new ways of executing ideas and that makes us more creative.

AW

Yes. Creativity and innovation both come out of painting people into a corner.

RS

Do you think technology is making creativity easier, harder or a kind of balance?

AW

I think it’s an incredible opportunity. It’s complicated harnessing it and using it wisely, but I’m very optimistic about what you can create, because you can take ideas and scale them.

AW

The trick will be in combining creative and media because we each have something the other could make use of. I have a very healthy respect for ad agencies. They’re masters of creating magical work, getting clients to be brave, with an obsessively-honed craft in messaging. We’re masters in playing with context, are audience-obsessed, with a diversity of thinkers, and we have more and more access to innovation and technology right at the start - working with the fabric of how people communicate, experience and buy things.

I believe in being open and collaborative and not competitive. I believe in access and collaboration… over ownership.

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“EVERYONE’S CURIOUS ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU JUST NEED TO FIND WHAT THEIR TRIGGER IS”

I think what tech makes harder, is it takes you out of a corner. When I come to you and ask, “what can we do”, and you say, “we can do anything”, that’s probably the worst possible answer! Technology opens everything up, which is what makes it so difficult, but also what makes it so amazing.

RS

We’ve talked about creativity from a media perspective but what about from a personal perspective. You have a background in ballet.

How do you think that’s affected the way you view creativity and the way you look at ideas?

AW

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There’s some craft that I learnt in my first career that I apply now. You have a certain amount of stamina, endurance and grit, which is useful. As a dancer, your job is to play a role within a bigger piece and be aware of what’s happening around you and the story

that is being told and the context. There are times when the spotlight is on you and you are leading the story, and times when it’s your job to stand down and somebody else is telling that story. In my job as a performer, it wasn’t about me. It’s about enabling the audience to have a cathartic experience. It’s about them. And, now in my job it’s the same principle.

RS

Do you think the difference between a creative and an artist is an artist does something for themselves and a creative does something because it’s right for the audience?

AW

Yes. I think our job is to find a way to express an idea that engages and empowers an audience. So, it’s not about us. But I think you do have self-expression in the craft of creating something. Every idea is personal but at the same time every idea is work and we need to be able to put a piece of work on the table and walk around it as if it’s a sculpture - look at it objectively and listen to the critics, and use that to either build it out and make it better. Or make another one.

RS

And that’s hard to do, right?

AW

Yes. So, that’s another thing that I found useful from being a performer. My job was to be in me and understand where everything was in space, and to be outside of myself observing objectively at the same time. So, “is this reading? Can the back row see what I’m doing?” You’re toggling between kind of

being in the flow, creating something, and then looking at it objectively. So, it’s a constant switch from personal to objective.

RS

Yes, I feel there’s a switch, when an idea stops being yours and it starts being everyone’s.

AW

Yes, the idea has to live in other people’s hearts for it to go forward. I think the job of a creative as you get more senior becomes more complex, because your job is a coordinator, a connector, matching different people together.

You’re an alchemist in some ways because you create and curate some of it, but much of it is about getting other people creating, in order to scale creativity - inspiring them, giving them the tools and leaving them alone to work their own magic. And then it’s also to be a statesman of sorts, to be able to persuade others or inspire them to persevere.

RS

AW

It’s quite easy to be self-contained in the advertising industry. You just look at what your peers are doing. How important is it for you to look outside advertising for sources of inspiration?

It’s more important than anything. The trick is trying to get enough time outside of the office, just wandering around, shopping in the supermarket and not getting a delivery.

Inevitably, if I’ve got a brief, if I’m in a cab, I’ll talk to the cabbie about stuff or if I’m talking to my partner’s kids, I’ll run ideas by them and I chat to a lot of people outside the industry.

RS

What’s it like running quite big problems past a teenager?

AW

I’d love to get more kids into our brainstorms.

They’ll probably nail it faster than us because they see it straight, fresh and naïve. You often get a very logical response. Sometimes the best ideas come out of basic logical thinking taken to an extreme, but we’ve just forgotten to think like that because we know too much. And too little at the same time!

RS

What do you get out of the supermarket? Why shop at the supermarket rather than get it delivered?

AW

Because you see normal people, not like you, wandering around, deciding which deodorant they’re going to pick or just chucking it in the basket. I’m always interested to see what people have chosen and wonder what they are cooking, what they’re into etc. You just watch what people do, what they buy, what they wear, what they said to their kid. I’m always soaking up as much as I can of people.

RS

Do you think it’s important to have that inherent curiosity, trying to understand the world, the people and the things around you, when it comes to hiring talent?

AW

Yes, absolutely. It’s what keeps you learning without too much effort. I think everyone’s curious about something, you just need to find what their trigger is, what motivates them. I 55

“YOU COULD THINK OOH FIRST, JUST AS MUCH AS YOU COULD THINK OF OOH AS A COMPLEMENT TO WHATEVER ELSE IS HAPPENING”

RS

Okay. Let’s talk about OOH. I’d love to understand what excites you, and why are you so passionate about it?

AW

There’s so much opportunity to do amazing stuff. We’ve barely scratched the surface. The fact that you can deliver content digitally and yet it lives in real life - that you can kind of bash your head against it, is inspiring. You’ve got the best of both worlds. And you’ve got tech at the service of big ideas that can literally confront people on the pavement.

I’m a big fan of Richard Serra’s work. He works in steel and creates these massive sculptures that when you come up against them, how they make you physically feel is a thing.

Because they’re bigger than you on multiple levels. And I think there’s something of Serra in OOH too.

OOH has been seen as an extension of the above the line campaign, of the TV ad. I think the opportunity is to think of it as its own channel in its own right. When you get a brief, you could look at the brief and think OOH first and see how you would use it just as much as you could think of OOH as a complement to whatever else is happening.

RS

OOH first is a great way of thinking, we encourage you to do that. I think we are just beginning

think it takes all different types of people. If I’m hiring, I’m looking for diversity. I’m looking for a curiosity, a deep love of something.

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RS

And does it matter what that is?

AW

No. Our jobs are so wide-ranging. Well …it’s probably that they want to create something that other people will be interested in too. They must have love for people in some way. The most important thing to me is that they’re smart and open.

to get the message across that OOH is not just one media channel. If we did a straw poll at Wavemaker, what would the opinion of OOH be?

AW

Once-off impact pieces that are relatively expensive but fame-generating. Or always-on communication that tells you where the nearest shop is.

RS

Directional stuff.

AW

Yes, and of course brand-building presence that extends TV. All effective and useful, a favourite is the Thames Pulse Campaign, taking data on the river’s water quality and visualising this through the exterior lights on our building. But I believe we’ve only just got started.

The middle bit - innovation at scale - taking a fabulous idea and being able to scale that across loads of different sites and make it contextually different per site, we don’t do enough of that yet. So, that middle bit is missing, that’s the digital story.

Behaviour-change stuff. That’s the best of both worlds. That this could be an extension of your digital campaign, that this could be beautifully crafted dynamic creative optimisation, you know, exploded. That’s super exciting. And that’s the mindset I’m keen to encourage with our clients too.

RS

How do we rectify that? Do we just need to come in and just tell the story?

AW

What I’d love to do is take a brief and look at it from an OOH perspective and see what we can do to create a specific OOH element to that campaign working with the ad agency, working with you guys, and be able to test it to show new ways of using OOH effectively, new kinds of ideas for our clients - to open up more opportunity for them using OOH.

RS

What’s your favourite OOH campaign of the last year or so?

AW

I loved Mytaxi. It had two ideas to it. The one that was very programmatic, understanding the surge triggers. And then you had the execution of the app on the bus stop. It was using different sites differently, which is smart, and also a bigger idea of just using OOH in a digitally savvy way and both ideas were contextual.

How that creative looks, depending on time of day and other things, that should be always on.

RS

Business as usual.

AW Yes. RS

Our goal is to get everyone where you are, to be thinking about it as a hygiene factor, business as usual, it goes on every single plan and it’s just how you use digital OOH.

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About Kinetic Worldwide Kinetic is the leading agency in helping brands connect with, and activate, their audiences while they’re on the move. The world’s largest planner and digital innovator of Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising, Kinetic understands the customer’s physical journey better than anyone.

With dynamic data and technology, we turn that journey into an Active Journey, driving people to take action in context.

For more information about us, please go to www.kineticww.com/uk or follow us on Twitter @kineticwwUK.

Editorial Director Christy Johnston christy.johnston@kineticww.com CEO Stuart Taylor Staff Writers Nicole Lonsdale Dominic Murray Steve Payne Jennie Roper Adrian Witter Editorial Assistant Sophie Horan Designer James Stone Printed by The Color Company

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