THIS CONCERNS YOU... The future of OOH: 2016

The future of OOH: 2016 edition

WELCOME T

his is only our second edition of This Concerns You and it’s amazing how much has changed in a year.

At our tech and inspiration event Moving Minds in 2014 we let delegates play with the newly developed Oculus Rift device. It was amusing to watch our senior agency and client partners wobble and sway as the virtual reality rollercoaster swung them around our tech room.

Great fun and interesting to all of us technophiles, but where was the relevance to media planning and what possible use could this be in the OOH environment?

Fast forward to 2015 and our Kinetic Active team, in collaboration with Mindshare, have used Oculus Rift as part of a very successful experiential marketing campaign for M&S home, allowing potential customers to put themselves in the room with the furniture from the new Loft range and immerse themselves in the brand using virtual reality technology. From quirky gimmick to the hub of a campaign for one of the UK’s best known and best loved brands in less than 12 months is very exciting and gets me really fired up about what we will achieve for our clients in 2016.

Labs offer advertisers, agencies and media owners the chance to really understand how their OOH communication will work and has worked and uses copy testing techniques and behavioural economic thinking.

2016 will see us continue this journey through Implicit Testing methodologies to provide real insight and learning that can inform the next campaign.

This Concerns You 2016 reflects a lot of what we believe is important, not just in OOH but crucially in media planning and marketing communication as a whole. It’s a fascinating read featuring some of the biggest personalities and brands in the UK alongside the very niche and the fabulously quirky. As I sit and write now though, I’m wondering which of those niche and quirky things will be part of one of our mainstream campaigns in just a few months time!

I hope you enjoy it too. @sstuarttaylor #ThisConcernsYou

2016 will see an increased demand for our Full Service Creative offering which offers advertisers an entry into the incredible world of digital OOH. Our in-house creative team will be working closely with brands to develop engaging digital creative specifically designed for OOH. We’re already doing it for some of our client partners and with interest in digital OOH getting stronger by the day, this is sure to be a key growth area for us this year.

I’m also looking forward to seeing more of our partners using the Kinetic Alfresco Labs. The Alfresco

Stuart Taylor, UK CEO

INSIDE ZEITGEIST Stuff we love .................................................................................................................................................................................................. P4 Creatively challenged................................................................................................................................................................................. P6 Jeremy Green from the Creative Circle on the need to entice diverse creative minds and how to go about it

Great expectations..................................................................................................................................................................................... P8 Editor Christy Johnston outlines why it's vital to keep up with emerging tech and trends

CONSUMERS Same as we ever were?............................................................................................................................................................................. P10 Consumers are building their identities more freely than ever, while most campaigns are still planned using broad demographic profiles

I saw this and thought of OOH.............................................................................................................................................................. P12 We investigate the secret life of sharing on our smartphones

Think you know what you are really thinking? Think again...................................................................................................... P14 A look at where Kinetic is heading next in our insight journey

AI, OOH and the singularity................................................................................................................................................................... P16 Rosh Singh muses on a future in a post-machine world

ENVIRONMENTS Owning the connected traveller journey: The Aviator evolution........................................................................................... P20 To push or not to push............................................................................................................................................................................... P24 We take a look at what the industry needs to do in order to bring beacon technology to life in OOH

Why playtime in the key to rejuvenating high-street retail...................................................................................................... P27 Is OOH going airborne?.......................................................................................................................................................................... P30 SENSORY: OOHUMAN A sense of things to come........................................................................................................................................................................... P32 Sensory marketing expert Prask Sutton on why the future is multi-sensory

OOH tech hype cycle................................................................................................................................................................................ P34 New sensations........................................................................................................................................................................................... P36 A gallery of our favourite sensory installations and executions

The time is now: reality goes virtual..................................................................................................................................................... P40 VR experts Visualise offer some tips and watchouts for those looking to jump into VR

DATA Off the grid.................................................................................................................................................................................................. P44 Warc's Lena Roland examines the current state of privacy

Magic happens when science and art converge................................................................................................................................ P47 Kinetic Active's Dominic Murray encourages us to leverage the vast and varied data around us to bring creative ideas to life

Data monsters............................................................................................................................................................................................. P50 The expert view on the current state of OOH and data; where we need to go and how we will get there

Programmatic: the next generation.................................................................................................................................................. P54 Richard Jacobs discusses the multi-skilled OOH workforce of the future

Three hyperlocal marketing trends you can't ignore.................................................................................................................... P55 FUTURES The outlook: a golden age for OOH....................................................................................................................................................... P58 The view from the industry's newly reinvigorated trade body, Outsmart

The future of OOH timeline ................................................................................................................................................................. P60 Coca-Cola's Bobby Brittain talks to us about his enduring love of OOH................................................................................ P63 How to build your own hologram, just like our cover............................................................................................................... P66

ZEITGEIST 2

Consumers are demanding more. Technology is delivering more. Expectations are higher than ever. But as the creative possibilities in OOH expand and become more eclectic are we as an industry adapting and diversifying fast enough?

ZEITGEIST

STUFF WE LOVE

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Tech for good: Thermal imaging, scent trails and music vistas are just some of the innovations being deployed for Cities Unlocked the ambitious project aiming to unlock urban spaces for people with mobility issues.

www.citiesunlocked.org.uk Make your own hologram: The first one was created way back in 1962, but since the very much-deceased Tupac took the stage at Coachella a few years ago (although technically not actually a hologram) holograms have become big news again. We even built the one in the office for our cover. See back page for instructions how to make your own!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YWT tCsvgvg

If you’ve been following our Ahead of the Curve blog (you can find it on our website), you’ll know it’s been a hugely innovative 12 months for emerging tech. VR hit the mainstream, gesture got a helping hand from haptic and there were countless examples of people harnessing tech for good. Here are just some of the innovations that grabbed our attention.

What if you could feel things without touching them? Ultrahaptics are taking gesture tech into another realm by building a system that manipulates ‘puffs of air’ and allows us to feel tactile sensations in mid-air, no gloves or attachments required.

VR theme park: Fighting intergalactic wars on alien planets. Casting spells in the darkest of dungeons. Adventures you’ve only dreamed about. All this and more will be possible in 2016 at VOID, the world’s first VR theme park. And it looks truly immense.

www.ultrahaptics.com

www.thevoid.com

Draw, scan, play! Disney Research brought childhood dreams to life with their app that updates colouring books for the digital world. The app brings 2D colouring creations to 3D life using a camera, a simple algorithm and Augmented Reality.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWzur BQ81CM

Sometimes things need to be seen to be believed. The New York Times brought VR to the masses by distributing thousands of Google Cardboards for readers to use to watch their film Displaced to help “shed light on one of the most dire humanitarian crises of our lifetime”

www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/ magazine/the-displacedintroduction.html

Electric tech gets fast, really fast! As an example of how far technology has come, the fastest road bike in the world is no longer powered by fuel. Instead the Lightning LS-218 manages to clock 351 km/h powered by electricity alone. With Tesla also upping the cool factor for electric vehicles and driverless cars improving all the time, driving as we know it may soon be unrecognisable.

www.goodcitylife.org

WWW.vimeo.com/142208383

www.gizmag.com/lightning-ls218review-ls-218/36470/

Want to know what the things around you are made up of? What’s in your food? How healthy is that plant? What’s in this pill? This tiny, hand held molecular sensor is on its way to building the world’s first database of matter.

www.consumerphysics.com/myscio

Sunshine indoors, all year round: We all need a bit more sunshine in our lives. Based on nano-technology, the artificial lighting system Ceolux replicates how light travels through the earth’s atmosphere. It looks and feels like the sun, but isn’t. It’s so realistic it manages to trick humans, computers and cameras alike.

www.coelux.com

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Improving urban life: We love the increasingly imaginative ways people are manipulating data. So much so we even wrote a whole article about it (Pg 47).

Here’s one we particularly like this year. The Good City Life project inspired us to look at our cities in a different way through crowdsouced data.

Bio material: Lining Yao from MIT Media Lab takes inspiration from the natural world to do remarkable things. Using a particular bacteria’s ability to shape-shift in response to the make-up of the air around it (eg. expanding in humidity) by embedding the bacteria within fabric, Yao has created dancewear that takes on a life of its own as it responds in real-time to the wearer’s physilogical needs.

Innovative 3D sound via century old tech: Invented over a century ago Binaural Audio is making a big comeback as our thirst for 3D everything grows.

The recording technique mimics how our ears hear in order to deliver life-like 3D sound.

Everyone from indie darlings The XX to VR developers are getting in on the binaural action.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd5i 7TlpzCk

ZEITGEIST

06 ILLUSTRATION: James Wadsworth

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Our creative industries are rapidly changing, as is the way we need to manage the route people take to get into our industry. Brands and agencies are facing fierce competition for creative talent from the likes of tech giants Google, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

There are many things that can and should be done, too many to go in to now so I have picked out some key areas that I feel will make a big difference.

Start much earlier. We need to start having some form of industry representation at school career sessions so that 15 year olds are made aware of all the facets and opportunities that this industry has to offer. At present most students only discover us when they are in further education. We need to encourage great thinking – creative thinking – but that doesn't only come from the traditional art school background. You don’t need to draw to be a creative. What about all those great writers out there?

Don’t pigeon hole ‘creative’. Creative ad writing is not what it used to be. If we examine why this is, it seems to be that the advertising courses on offer are dominated by students that have studied an art form, but then where are the great creative advertising writers going to come from?

There is, frustratingly, a lack of proper training for young copywriters and then there are the large fees charged by training organisations.

Encourage diversity. The diversity of Britain should be reflected in the diversity of the creative talent in our industry. We all need to bear some responsibility in how we affect these demographics. We can do this better by breaking down barriers and providing strong role models.

We need to open our doors and provide young creative talent with access to valuable networking opportunities, markets and potential funding. We need to support and encourage students from a much wider audience. We must capitalise on the talent that exists across the country, reaching out to the multitude of communities and groups, and making the industry a viable option regardless of background, postcode or family connections.

Financial support. We need to provide bursary support to allow students from less-privileged backgrounds the opportunity to work as a creative in our industry. But the problems lie quite deep. If you are from a non-elite financial background and you don’t live close enough to one of the advertising agencies to commute then it becomes a near impossibility. I don’t believe a placement’s wage is enough to support anyone living in London or even just outside of London. It’s only possible if you have friends or relatives in or around London. The support we need to offer is more than just educational.

Support the tutors. It has to be our collective responsibility to support and encourage the next generation of creatives. We can help that by championing their tutors.

Keep them informed of the latest industry practice, offer to go and see their students, invite them to see you. We need to do this so that there isn’t such a great leap from education to workplace. Those at the top helping those at the bottom.

Speaking with so many across the industry, it is clear that there is a desire to offer support to young creative talent coming into the industry. But are we doing enough to make that vision a reality?

Nurturing new creative home talent should be at the heart of what we do.

There has never been such a premium on creativity.

Creativity is more and more important to break through the clutter. We need to identify, nurture and develop homegrown creative talent with the greatest potential at each stage of their education and career.

If you are interested in getting involved with helping make a difference to our homegrown talent please do get in touch with the Creative Circle, whose mission it is to make that difference.

The Creative Circle is the oldest advertising awards body in the UK. Their mission is to help promote creative excellence in advertising, while sharing knowledge and experience through educational programs to support young creative people coming into the industry. www.creativecircle.co.uk

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ho are these young creatives aspiring to work in this amazing industry? If we look back and see how this has worked in the recent past, then they might have studied some form of art or design course and then signed up to one of the many creative advertising courses. Spent in the region of £5 to £10k per year on their course and then worked for a couple of years earning not much more than the minimum wage before being offered a job earning around the same as a graduate. Who can afford to survive this process? Not many. They will probably be white, middle lass and the majority of them, boys.

ZEITGEIST

Great Expectations 08

Consumers are increasingly demanding more and they’re not afraid to express their feelings when things don’t live up to their expectations. This Concerns You Editor Christy Johnston outlines why keeping up with emerging tech trends is vital in staying ahead of consumer expectations and succeeding in a world where technology is impacting every facet of our lives.

W

hy do you need to know about volumetric displays, machine learning or indeed autonomous vehicles in an OOH magazine? Because your audience does and consequently they expect to see similar levels of innovation from the services and products they use and buy now. It doesn’t matter that some of these innovations won't be realised for another 5-10 years, if even at all, because they will, or indeed already have, raised consumer expectations.

Trend experts Trendwatching first referred to this ‘Expectation Economy’ back in 2008, and with tech moving at lightning speed the trend has perhaps never been more relevant than now.

Once a consumer hears about one hour drone delivery, they will never view delivery services in the same way again.

Even if a person hasn’t caught an Uber yet, the awareness of what the service offers changes their view on the entire taxi industry. In fact, it has been shown that the longer Uber has operated in a city, the length of time people are willing to wait for a taxi continues to decrease. Whether they use Uber or not is irrelevant.

With each new innovation we see in 2016, you can be guaranteed that consumer expectations will rise.

Once you’ve had an amazing experience, there’s no going back, everything else can seem like a let down. And this phenomenon is sector, age and geographically agnostic an amazing experience with a travel app will colour how someone views a completely unrelated retail app experience for example.

It isn’t a finite journey either, but one that requires brands to continuously iterate and innovate to stay ahead of customer expectations. Word of mouth can traverse the globe in seconds, effectively making every launch a global one; you get in wrong in the UK and you might as well have got in wrong everywhere. Understanding why the current crop of innovations are striking a chord with consumers will help us all understand what need they will want fulfilled in the future. And given that many emerging technologies are addressing consumer needs out of the home, it is perhaps more important for us to stay ahead of the curve than any other media. @ceeejae

CONSUMERS 8

One size does not fit all. Basic human drivers and needs might remain the same, but how we access and engage with information has never been more complicated. We look at the secret life of consumers and our phones and ponder what might happen when AI becomes mainstream.

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CONSUMERS

Same as we ever were?

We have access to more information about consumers than ever before, but more often than not campaigns are still planned using traditional (and broad) demographic profiles. In a connected global society we should all remember that demographic rules were made to be broken.

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he next generation will crave authenticity from brands and will be more open to new experiences. This could, and has, been said about every single generation since people started analysing and writing about human behaviour.

Fundamental human needs don’t change. We are driven by the same emotions and desire for recognition and acceptance we always have been. What has changed is how we communicate and access information. The barriers of the past no longer exist; we have instant access to a huge range of influences, the power to curate our own playlists and TV viewing, we filter content from many sources into our private social feeds, we can purchase products from all over the world, we have more freedom to make non-traditional choices. And it is these factors and more that are blurring the lines between traditional demographic groups.

Demographics are not dead though. They will always be useful when planning media campaigns, but we should all take the time to understand the complexities that exist within these traditional demographic groups as access and social groups converge, emerge and evolve.

When you think of a gamer you probably think of a chubby young guy hunched over in a darkened room surrounded by discarded drink cans and crisp packets. Or maybe you picture a group of mates lazing around a lounge room battling to keep their hands around one of the two controllers as each loser is rotated out of the game. Either

way you probably pictured a male. But women now make up the largest percentage of people who play electronic games.

When you think of a fan of a certain TV show you no doubt think of a narrow subset of people with similar likes and lives. But the truth is far more convoluted than that.

And while this may actually have always been the case, with the unfettered access we now have to huge amounts of information, it is more evident now that ever before.

So how is this impacting the planning of OOH media?

OOH by its very nature transcends demographic and interest group boundaries. It exists in the common space that unites us all, bringing eclectic interest groups into the same vicinity. The tribes can be distinct, but they can have common pursuits as well as shared challenges purely through geography.

As we gain access to more detailed movement and behavourial data sets, we are learning more about what consumers actually do and where they go, without having to rely on what they tell us, or what age they might be. We can now infer intent using geo-location and past digital activity, and our abilities to use multiple data sources will only grow.

And while most campaigns still don’t use any contextual or behavioural triggers, you can expect to see far more of this in the near future as consumers, regardless of age, gender, location or any other historical signifier, build their self and communities more freely than ever.i

40%:

50%:

the overlap in 64 and 13 year olds music artists1

By 2020, millennials will form half the global workforce2

34%

1m:

of 18-24 year olds define themselves as non-heterosexual4

the number of UK workers over 65 years5

52%:

Mums:

the share of gamers that are female7

the biggest users of

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of 16-24 year olds 3 never take selfies

49%

60+: the age group with the highest divorce rate6

Millennials are more likely to be unemployed than older working-age people9

3x

54: the average age of solo travellers10

VPAs (eg Siri)8

Sources: 1. BBC Radio 1 Head of Music, 2014; 2. PWC: Millennials at work, reshaping the workplace; 3. Ofcom Communications Market report 2015; 4 YouGov, August 2015; 5 AgeUK, Later Life in the United Kingdom, December 2015; 6 ONS, 2014; 7 IAB, 2014; 8 Kinetic Panel, November 2015; 9 Int. Labour Organisation, 2014; 10. 101 Holidays, January 2015 PIC: elenabsl/ shutterstock.com

CONSUMERS

Kinetic’s Sarah Harding and Sian Bateman investigate the secret life of sharing on our smartphones, finding that pictures are the new WOM and OOH is driving significant amounts of unaccounted for earned media.

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martphones have become that one object we often admit we couldn’t live without. They now act as our notebook, our camera, our entertainment system and our personal assistant. Idle time has become a thing of the past, especially when out of our homes.

As consumers we naturally seek out creative stimulus, products and content that inspire us and the outdoor landscape is a source of constant inspiration. This provides a key opportunity for brands to inspire and connect with us through OOH media.

In collaboration with Clear Channel in 2015 we set out to examine the relationship between OOH and mobile in the purchase decision cycle. One of the key insights we found was the influence that OOH media plays in driving mobile search. We use our devices to source products and other stimulus, often prompted by an OOH campaign. A recent survey from the IAB UK found that 1 in 4 look up further research on their phones or tablets after seeing something on OOH media. We also noticed a trend among our respondents of ‘scrapbooking’ or documenting their lives by taking visual notes on their devices. Our research showed that nearly half (48%) of 18-44 year olds have taken pictures of a poster or billboard. This jumps up to 80% for early adopters aged 18-24.

When it comes to sharing their smartphone scrapbooks consumers curate their content carefully, editing photos using filters and creating messages which portray them in the best light. Understandably consumers sometimes act with caution when it comes to sharing content across certain platforms. For mass networks like Facebook, people will feel that their ‘shares’ will be subject to the most scrutiny. To publicly declare your support for a brand will in turn say something about you especially if the brand has an already established reputation. If an advertiser expects a consumer to share their OOH campaign they must offer some sort of value or benefit for their audience. If they just expect consumers to share their content for the sake of it, they will be fighting a losing battle and gain no fans through it. As one respondent we spoke to, a man in his early twenties said, ‘If it’s coming from a brand it has to be

good enough to warrant polluting your friends feeds!’ If OOH campaigns are useful, relevant or entertaining to the consumer then they may be willing to share them with their friends, family or entire social networks, an opportunity for brands to gain new ambassadors and free earned media.

When it comes to smaller micro networks created on messenger platforms like Whatsapp, people act with less caution, their groups are typically built around friends and family so users feel less conscious of what they share in these circumstances. Brand references are targeted and often sent with an, ‘I saw this and thought of you,’ sentiment in mind, sometimes on a one-to-one basis, offering brands premium opportunities to talk directly to their customer.

Another aspect of sharing which OOH advertisers often forget are images or links shared through platforms like SMS and email, all avenues which are difficult to measure for advertisers but often providing more weight as again the messages are usually targeted and personalised.

Our research shows that we live in visual times. Images have become the new word of mouth especially for younger audiences. People aged 26-35 engage with social media more out of home as opposed to indoors and are willing, and already are, sharing their images of OOH campaigns. @SianBate @s_wothers

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This makes OOH ripe for sharing. In a separate piece of research Kinetic and Exterion Media investigated what makes an OOH campaign a shared OOH campaign. Our research found that 39% of people have previously shared OOH content on social media and a further 71% would be willing to share a campaign but only if it appealed to them.

In order to make their OOH campaigns shareable brands need to take into account the context of their audience, where they are, what they are doing and the mind-set they are in when out and about. It is also important to bear in mind who the consumer is talking to as this will influence the type of content they share and the platform they share it on.

CONSUMERS

Think you know what you are really thinking?

Think again.

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For the past two years Kinetic has been on a behavioural economics journey

Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company on your instinct?

David Ogilvy

Kinetic is investigating the implicit impact of branding on our clients long-term profit and success.

In 2015 Kinetic launched the Alfresco Labs, which pioneers OOH media planning routed in behavioural economic thinking. In 2016 we are progressing this concept with implicit testing because we believe that there is value employing an implicit methodology to understand how OOH branding campaigns are working in the short-term to predict their longer-term impact on profit and sales.

The advertising industry has struggled to demonstrate to clients how OOH broadcast messages are working, often relying on explicit brand measurements and seeing shortterm tactical price promotions having the biggest impact on short-term sales. By employing implicit methodology we are not focusing on short-term sales metrics. Instead we are looking at the long-term health and success of our clients. Helping them to understand the potential for their campaigns to reduce price elasticity in the market, drive brand metrics and drive profits in the longer term.

Never stop testing and your advertising will never stop improving David Ogilvy

Cognitive psychologist brought implicit testing theories to the mainstream in the 1980s.

In the 1980s reaction time tests became the mainstream way psychologists understood human cognition and emotion. Implicit research using reaction times and brain

imaging has shown that many attitudes and feelings are hidden from the individual. They work at below a conscious awareness level, but nevertheless influence behaviour.

One of the first to point out implicit and explicit decisions occur in measurably different time scales, and that there are two routes to decision making was Daniel Kahneman.

He showed how System 1 is thinking fast and uncontrolled while system 2 thinking is deliberate and slow. System 1 reacts automatically and stores information associatively.

According to many neuroscientists it accounts for around 95% of our daily decision making. Implicit testing works on the premise that the speed with which other related concepts are activated by the primed concept is directly related to the strength of their association with that brand.

It also works conversely. We are uncovering what people store in their heads about a brand and how advertising can influence this behaviour.

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investigating how employing behavioural nudges in OOH campaigns can influence consumer behaviour. Jennie Sallows tells us why Kinetic is now turning to implicit testing techniques for the next leg of the journey.

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals David Ogilvy

We are developing a groundbreaking implicit methodology for OOH. So how are we doing it? We are adapting semantic priming tasks that are widely used in market research for OOH advertising. These tests are designed to measure the strength of association between a range of brand attributes (or primes) between different brands and products. We are working with two clients on this methodology and have two pilots for 2016. Only time will tell if this methodology will help our clients grow their brands and profits, but employing this methodology should give us an early indication.

PIC: patrice6000/Shutterstock.com

CONSUMERS

AI, OOH and the Singularity Will we ultimately end up talking to screens more than each other? Will AI take over the design function in OOH? Or should we just relax and enjoy where technology is now? Kinetic Active’s Rosh Singh takes us on a journey into a post-machine revolution world.

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T

he futurists of the 70s and 80s have screwed us; the utopian painting of the future we saw in The Jetsons and Back to the Future has made the reality in which we are living seem like a rolling disappointment. Where are the real hover boards, the flying cars and the orb-like floating cities in the sky? Retro-futurism sometimes muddies quite how amazing the present day is and while exponential technologies may not have accelerated in the directions that we were led to believe they would, the leaps we have made in the last 27 years is nothing short of extraordinary.

Ok Google, Hey Siri, Hi Cortana. Five years ago if you had been caught having a conversation with your mobile it would have been presumed that there was someone on the other end and not that you were speaking to your artificially intelligent digital assistant. We take Siri and Google now for granted (84% of people are aware of Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs), with almost half of us having used them*), but the Artificial Intelligence embedded within all of these services represents the beginning of a new revolution - The Machine Revolution. The complex algorithms that Google Now uses process a huge amount of data in real-time drawing correlations from your life and predicting your needs before you can - similar to a very good PA, but better.

It never gets tired, it only thinks of you and it never stops - it understands you better than any person could. Siri also understands you, albeit more literally.

Natural language processing (NLP), a machine’s ability to truly understand human speech seemed like an unsolvable problem only a few years ago, but the leaps in affordable processing power (thanks to Moore’s Law) and the advancement of machine learning has led to us solving this problem much quicker than anticipated and to brilliant degree of accuracy. Siri not only understands complex questions she has an understanding of human nuance and can deliver a sensible answer within seconds.

Exponential computing

It may make some feel uncomfortable, but society is becoming more accepting of machines that think. We are beginning to expect our devices to be smart, to anticipate our every need and adapt to our lifestyles and this is as true of public devices as it is for our personal devices.

Using an anonymised and cloud based standardised data framework (which will be ushered in through IoT standardisation) digital signs could start to truly understand you and help you about your day. Knowing you are about to embark on a trip to America the screen outside your flat would show you a checklist of common things to remember before travelling as well as vital flight status.

Integration with apps such as CityMapper will allow the screens to know where you are trying to go as you leave the station serving you a simple nudge in the right direction turning the digital OOH screen into a public service as well as an advertising platform.

The notion of personal digital assistants is relatively accepted and in the quest to find more ways to improve human lives through machines will see these technologies expand to the world around us from DOOH, to transport, to retail, tailoring every experience to match our needs and our desires.

The Machine revolution is going to have a clear impact on the labour market, unlike the industrial revolution where the automation of factory jobs up-skilled the labour force.

And currently much of the discussion has been conducted with an ominous tone (1,000 robotic experts, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk wrote an open letter in January 2015 warning of the pitfalls we could face by developing AI to superhuman levels). But AI is likely to start to eat into white collar service jobs - jobs that were once thought to be out of the realms of machines. Factory jobs that require a high level of dexterity will start to disappear due to advancements of robotics that allow robot arms

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oore’s Law predicts that the pricepower ratio of computing doubles every year or so, meaning that the computational power of a £1,000 computer roughly doubles every year or 18 months.

Predicted by Gordon E. Moore in the 1970s, his observation has grown to become a proxy for the exponential growth curve that underpins all modern technical innovation over the past 27 years.

Using Martin Ford’s example from his book ‘Rise of the Robots’, imagine if you began driving in a car at 5mph, a minute later you double your speed to 10mph for the next minute and so, on and so forth, not only does your speed exponentially increase, the distance you travel per minute also increases. In the first minute you would travel around 440 feet, the third minute at 20mph would cover 1,760 feet and in the 5th minute you would travel over a mile - the 6th minute would need a faster car. The speed of the car in the 28th minute would be 671 million miles an hour covering 11 million miles, enough to get you to Mars in 5 minutes.

We are now in the 28th year of modern computer science and Mars is edging ever closer.

*Kinetic Panel Nov 2015

PIC: Makushin Alexey/Shutterstock.com

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Digital OOH screens have huge potential to become public digital assistants, flexing, changing and adapting to the people around them, serving them little nuggets of information to make their day easier or better. (A quarter of people already expect this to happen*)

CONSUMERS to have the same amount of control as a human hand. As machine vision improves, robots will be able to perform nuanced vision based tasks such as factory line inspections further impacting a $6 trillion industry in monumental ways. The scope of these machines is increasing inversely with the cost, Baxter (right) costs on average 75-85% less than a traditional industrial robot.

And mechanised production is only the start of the machine revolution, AI developments are soon set to start encroaching on jobs previously thought to be out of the reach of machines - deep learning is teaching a machine how to think using the same synaptic methods as humans. With early experiments in artwork creation already being tested in OOH it doesn’t seem like a too distant future where the role of the creative in advertising is replaced by machines.

First creative, then planning, then client services - as machines start to become more human like in their thinking and their form, more of our jobs will start to be replaced by machines.

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In the short-to-medium term we should be able to rest easy as this technology remains instructive, meaning that we have to tell the machine how and what to learn, but as AI continues to improve exponentially into the future, the notion of an autodidactic machine (A machine that teaches itself) seems more and more plausible, blurring the line between humans and machines and leading ourselves into the singularity (a time where machines learn how to better themselves infinitely without the need for human instruction or interaction, leading to a super-intelligence) - a time where human and machine are inextricably linked. As scary as this sounds the opportunity to leverage a collective and exponentially recursive intelligence has the ability to add huge amounts of value to human existence and allow us to solve the biggest issues we are facing today - global warming, world poverty, income inequality would all be problems of the past.

Emotive and predictive technologies like Siri and Cortana represent a relative surface scratch in terms of the power of AI, and it remains to be seen if the singularity will manifest itself or will become retro-futurist kitsch, but in the mean-time we should take a step back and admire technology’s ability to add untold value to our lives. @BillyRoshan

www.rethinkrobotics.com/baxter

84% of us have now heard of virtual personal assistants. But are we using them? If you are young or a mum, then the answer is probably yes.

17 Ever used a virtual personal assistant?

63% South East

54% 18-24yrs 63% mums

And what are we using them for?

Searching online 52%

Map related tasks 39% Communication 42% (65% early adopters)

And what is holding us back from using them more?

Embarrassment 49% (18-24yrs)

Kinetic Panel Nov 2015. n=1000

Quicker to search myself 38%

Being understood 26%

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ENVIRONMENTS How we navigate our urban spaces is evolving, with technology a key agitator.

Increased connectivity is turning our cities into a living entity we can now augment to suit our needs. Retailers are tapping into our innate love of play to drive loyalty and tempt shoppers back to the high street. While a new Kinetic partner is taking OOH to the skies.

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ENVIRONMENTS

Owning the Connected Traveller Journey: The Aviator Evolution In recent years the travel industry has witnessed an age of consumer empowerment.

The rise in global affluence, increased connectivity and enhanced retail and leisure facilities have all transformed the travel experience. Kinetic’s Global Head of Aviator, Janice Tan tells us how Aviator is evolving to connect brands with influential individuals throughout their entire travel journey.

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F

or years now our industry has been experimenting in an attempt to refine and deliver customised solutions for brands using technology and mobile services. The travel industry has often been at the forefront of this and over the last 10 years we have really seen the breakthrough of digital disruption.

Uber, the world’s largest taxi company owns no taxis. They have now also attempted to muscle in on the corporate livery services market. Airbnb became the largest accommodation provider without owning any actual real estate, creating much cause for consolidation in the hospitality industry in an attempt to bulk up. Recently we saw Marriott inking a deal with Starwood and most recently Accor buying Fairmont, Raffles and Swissôtel.

Even the ever-formidable telcos are not spared as they lose billions of dollars in revenue to Skype, which has become the largest international phone carrier. Somewhat closer to home, we see the emergence of two massive media ecosystems in Google and Facebook. Facebook, arguably the

most popular of media owners, creates no content. Likewise, Google and Apple, the largest software vendors don’t write apps.

Other proof points include Alibaba, the world’s most valuable retailer, owning no inventory and Netflix, the world’s largest movie house, owning no cinemas.

“The natural evolution is for Aviator to connect brands with influential individuals not just in airports...but also throughout their entire travel journey. ”

What does this mean? Well, it is a given that the mobile phone will be used to enhance the travel experience.

Consumers now being the owners of the customer relationship, will, and have to, take centre stage. Brands need to be able to create a value exchange with the right personalised content, distributed appropriately and always connected, to build and create trust.

Travellers go through lots of data silos as they go about their trip. With the right partnerships and thanks to mobile and big data, almost every part of the industry can sell almost every part of the travel experience. It is through the development of personalised experiences, delivered in the right context, where value exchange is created. That is what in turn drives business results.

The natural evolution is for Aviator to connect brands with influential individuals not just in airports and the airport environment, but also throughout their entire travel journey. We offer global insights into travellers, their lifestyles, behaviours and attitudes in addition to niche aviation specific patterns and intelligence. Aviator layers

data with traveller insights and travel trends to formulate precise marketing strategies. Leveraging partnerships and custom content we aim to effectively reach and engage high value travellers globally.

Diving deep into consumer insights, data and through interpretation we strive towards consumer centricity and building 1:1 communications. Through this methodology, we are able to not just deliver solutions to airlines and hospitality companies but also use the global traveller as a proxy to the affluent consumer and key decision makers. Effectively delivering custom marketing and media solutions for the entertainment, luxury, financial services and B2B industries, specifically targeting those hard to reach globally connected audiences. @janicetansy

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Basic services have now been industrialised and are delivering benefits to the connected consumer today.

Travellers are now empowered with mobile devices able to deliver functionality related to location, payments and realtime information flows; in addition to offering on the go access to their social network.

ENVIRONMENTS A selection of our favourite airport campaigns from the last year...

There’s no more appropriate time to be reminded about data roaming than when you are heading off on holidays. Vodafone know how important connectivity is to modern travellers so they took advantage of the wide variety of impactful media available at major airport environments to promote their roaming offers.

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HSBC celebrated their long-term partnership with the WWF by bringing the sound of China’s Yangtze River to Gatwick Airport’s Skybridge. As travellers cross the bridge they are treated to real-life sounds of the Yangtze, with the sounds changing to reflect time of the day, weather and even the movements of the travellers.

To help travellers get into London as quickly and as cheaply as possible, the Heathrow Express is using five separate data triggers to visualise live price and journey time comparisons between taxis and the airport’s train service on DOOH screens all around the airport.

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Air France found a novel way to showcase their new upgraded cabins and entertain passengers waiting to board their flight at the same time.

By downloading the interactive Cloud Slicer game, passengers could swipe their way to an upgrade on their next flight, with live scores displayed on screens around the departure gates to help keep participation levels high.

As part of a wider ‘Year of Mexico’ campaign to entice travellers to choose Mexico for their next trip, the country’s tourist board turned St Pancras station into an immersive and exotic playground that included ambient sounds and a stunning 3D butterfly wall that invited passers by to take one home with them as a souvenir.

Marriott brought the inspirational style, comfort and attention to detail of theirSpringhill Suites properties directly to the airport environment, delivering a much-welcomed moment of relaxation at one of the more stressful moments of travelling. Soft furnishings, clever projections and live queue information all combined to create a unique atmosphere and provide a welcomed moment of respite on behalf of SpringHill Suites by Marriott. The airport activation covered multiple, often under-utilised air travel touchpoints: it transformed pre-security queuing areas with couches, the actual security zones with lighting and music, and the re-composure areas post security with additional furniture, carpeting and projection media.

PIC: Daniiel/Shutterstock.com

ENVIRONMENTS

Hello!

Hi!

KS

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to push or not to push Beacons have the potential to be a powerful marketing tool for reaching people out of the home. But let’s not let them go the way of NFC; we need to test scenarios and then test again before we unleash the tech on wary consumers.

B

eacons, iBeacons, Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE, Bluetooth 4.0, however you know them, by now you should know them. These tiny devices have the potential to change the way we market to consumers, bringing the online and offline world ever closer through proximity in the quest to make advertising more relevant, more creative and more effective.

As with all disruptive technologies in the early stages of adoption, it is vital that we make sure that industry confidence, client expectations and consumer trust are managed appropriately to ensure that Beacons are a long

term solution and not a flash in the pan fad that never breaks through the trough of disillusionment (Hi NFC).

Quite what the long-term future of beacons looks like is unclear at this stage, but there are various use cases that need testing and putting through some rigour before we can make a strong stance on the best practice to beaconcentric marketing. Naturally at this stage there are built in risks working with an untested technology with unproven hypothesis and this needs to be clear to all involved (media owner, agency, client) from the very beginning. But we think this is work worth doing.

Pull

Push messaging is the most obvious way to integrate beacons into OOH, the very idea of sending someone a push-notification as they walk past a poster has whet many a marketeer.

NFC presented the ultimate tool to allow our audience to pull the content they wanted from posters; it was (and still is) a frictionless one-way technology. The complicated bit sat with the device and the tag itself was a relatively simple unique identifier - the technology behind NFC was almost perfect, but in essence the fact that it existed as a technology rather than an experience was its downfall.

While it may be the most obvious approach, it may however not be the most sensible. Brands have carefully thought out contact strategies when it comes to pushnotifications and it raises the age-old question - to push, or not to push? The attrition rate when it comes to push messaging can be extremely high and we want to avoid sending spammy messages which create a wholly negative brand experience and could potentially kill beacons as a marketing tool altogether.

It is too early to say if push should be discounted, but it should most definitely be tested.

“the fact that nfc existed as a technology rather than an experience was its downfall�

Beacons give us an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and test pull interactions from the beginning again, this time without the consumer facing technology barriers that faced NFC. A user would see a call-to-action on a poster, pull out the specified app which automatically recognise the content referenced on the poster - no new behaviours to learn and the simple interaction mechanic delivers content to a user within seconds.

Of course the user, in most cases, needs the brand app installed on their device but Google’s new EddyStone Beacons framework will allow all users to pull content directly to their web browser (if they are using Chrome) without the need for a specific native app installed on their device. Granted this is a new learned behavior, but it is not beyond comprehension that Google can achieve the goal of a ubiquitous app-agnostic beacon mechanic considering their size, scale and reach.

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Push

ENVIRONMENTS

Context A certain film released in 2002 starring everyone’s favourite Scientologist painted a rather colourful dystopian (or utopian if you are a marketer) picture of what advertising might look like in the future; tailored broadcast advertising at a 1-2-1 targeting level knowing everything about you and talking directly to you. This idea is still very much science fiction, but beacons give us the opportunity to start to tailor advertising in much richer and more interesting ways, understanding micro-audiences in realtime and adjusting and serving creative based on the people around them and their interests.

A connection between a beacon and a mobile device determines proximity to that particular digital screen, the browsing, purchase and behavioural habits of that user can then be used to change creative in real-time based on the people around a screen at any particular time.

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There will of course be privacy concerns with this type of marketing, which makes it vitally important that as an industry we approach this from a human-centric perspective - how will our audience feel when they see the ad? Plastering someone’s name across a billboard as they walk past will get their attention, but our trust in advertising, privacy and technology is not in a place where this would be widely accepted without uproar. We instead have to build trust and make sure that our data is anonymised and aggregated into sample sizes that don’t represent privacy concerns and we have to make sure that the overall effect adds value to the user without making them feel uncomfortable.

A wrong step through clumsy strategy or ill-advised execution by a handful of marketers could sound the death knell for beacons in OOH so thought and caution needs to be applied. As a first step this would be perfect for event based marketing through an opt-in engaged audience as a safe test case.

“google’s eddystone beacons framework will allow all users to pull content directly to their web browser” Measurement The data afforded to us by beacons has the potential to be the most exciting, relevant and valuable use of the technology in the long run. Real-time audience metrics and attribution have been two areas OOH has struggled with in the past, but beacons being the bridge between the physical and digital worlds give us an opportunity to start to fill some of these gaps and as we move into 2016 where OOH Programmatic is on everyone’s agenda it gives us an opportunity to test new and exciting business models. At this stage scale remains a primary barrier, but as adoption rises this problem will quickly solve itself.

We can then start to look at their behaviour in the days and weeks after and try to ascertain the effectiveness of our campaigns. For a bricks and mortar store we can deploy beacons in store to track if they have walked into store. If that store has a loyalty program, we can then tie that specific purchase back to our campaign. But for online or app based retailers the loop is much easier to close and we can track our user’s activity pre and post walking past an OOH ad to ascertain if there has been any behavioural change or purchase as a result.

We are still at the genesis point when it comes to the adoption of beacons in OOH and while there may be some barriers to its adoption the opportunity remains for us as an industry to shape and mould this technology to work the right way for our clients.

Ultimately the responsibility remains with us to manage our clients’ expectations and sell them on the benefits, but also to educate them on the risks of deploying a beacon campaign. As with all new technologies the pioneers seldom get it right first time. Get in touch with Kinetic Active if you want to talk more about how beacons can work in OOH.

Why playtime is the key to rejuvenating high-street retail

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Words: Alasdair Lennox, Executive Creative Director, EMEA FITCH

Play is a natural part of life for children and is a big part

of learning. As we become adults, reason takes over and sometimes it feels like we’ve lost all the fun. But play is not just fun, it facilitates learning and creates memorable experiences that increase wellbeing, helping us form an emotional bond with the world around us.

(The HTC One Skatepark at Selfridges photo from Selfridges)

ENVIRONMENTS Most people recognise that a playful approach increases creativity – but are they as aware of the commercial value play can have for retail brands?

Along with creativity, play can unlock happiness, innovation and learning, creating powerful, emotional connections between people and brands.

The art of play is by no means a new concept.

Over a century ago the founder of Selfridges, Harry Gordon Selfridge, coined the idea that “a shopper should shake hands with the brand and get to know it face to face”. Selfridges still swears by this today, with in-store activities and an ever-changing rooftop that has hosted everything from a boating lake to a forest-themed restaurant. Selfridges experiences are not just PR stunts, they’re part of an omnichannel ecosystem that creates a distinctive, continuous experience for its shoppers.

We firmly believe in creating an Experience Signature for every brand. It’s all about using different touchpoints, be it physical, human or digital (PHD) in order to bring the brand to life and offer the consumer a unique, defendable experience.

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Earlier this year, Hamleys launched a new store in Russia with the aim of creating a whole new and playful experience for shoppers, mixing retail, attraction and entertainment. The new store is made up of areas including an Enchanted Forest, Motor City complete with go-kart track, and a Safari section, making Hamleys more than a store, it’s an attraction that’s become the most visited store in Moscow within three months of opening.

(Photo by Stuart Ramson/Invision for Microsoft/AP Images)

It may feel easy for a children’s retailer to make a success of play but innovative retailers across categories are beginning to recognise its importance. Microsoft’s new flagship in Manhattan is designed to allow shoppers to experience not only the products they can buy, but products and ideas that are on the cutting edge, like the virtual reality HoloLens headset and the latest Microsoft fitness band.

(Photo by Bompas & Parr / Nick Westby)

“play can unlock happiness, innovation and learning, creating powerful, emotional connections” (Bompas & Parr / Nathan Pask Photography )

(Hamleys World Moscow, photo from FITCH)

It’s imperative in the face of highly competitive e-commerce and mobile shopping, for retailers to make shopping at a bricks and mortar store as much fun as going to the cinema with friends. With the Oculus Rift set to hit the public in 2016, we will see retailers investing in more augmented experiences for their customers, allowing them to be fully immersed in their product before they’ve even purchased it. Earlier this year, outdoor brand Merrell wanted to inspire a sense of adventure and exploration. VR allowed people to hike the Italian Dolomites wearing the latest high-tech boots.

Retailers that allow customers to create experiences with them are going to outlast their more conservative competitors. The emotional impact of play brings brands to life and what better way to become acquainted with a brand than through a playful, bold thinking and continuous experience?

FITCH is a global retail and brand consultancy. It transforms consumer experience by combining the physical, human and digital elements of a brand to create unique experience signatures. www.fitch.com

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(Photo by Merrell Trailscape, Hill Holiday/Framestore)

ENVIRONMENTS

Is OOH going airborne?

One of Kinetic’s newest partners is taking brands from the street to the air. And with many major tech brands dabbling in the drone space, you can expect to see more drones doing more things in the near future.

A

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dvertising as an industry has significantly changed since its Don Draper Mad Men-esque days. The suit-wearing men and floral tea-length dress women never had to worry about standing out in a variety of channels on television let alone media channels. The world of advertising has had to change its step with the ever-quickening pace of the consumer, but why walk when you can fly?

DroneCast, the world’s first company to specialise in aerial drone advertising, made a splash when it started just a few short years ago by Raj Singh. Providing a custom shop for brands their drones have been used to deliver promotional goods, carry banners and even project images.

Kinetic is the first agency partner of DroneCast.

While OOH advertising is traditionally thought of as large billboards and bus wraps, the Cannes Lions outdoor winners would tell you that isn’t the case. Winners like the Samsung Safety Truck and The Water Foundation’s Paris Marathon show a much more out-of-the-box approach to the industry.

Screens can now be digital and drones can now be used commercially.

The drone shop can provide drones for just about anything you can dream up. They have an in-house 3D printer meaning you can print in pretty much any shape or size you want.

Is a new age of OOH advertising upon us where the sky is no longer a limit? www.dronecast.com

SENSORY: OOHUMAN

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OOH is no longer all about the eyes; with a little imagination it can now deliver full sensory experiences. From VR to haptic to binaural audio, we take a look at the emerging technologies that you will be using in the very near future. After all why touch one sense when you can stimulate them all?

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SENSORY: OOHUMAN

A SENSE OF THINGS TO COME The line between reality and fantasy has never been more blurred as emerging technologies create unprecedented levels of immersion. Sensory marketing expert Prask Sutton asks are you ready to embrace the multi-sensory world of the future?

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Popular technologies such as VR and AR are opening up a wealth of possibilities for brands investing in OOH, looking for immersive digital experiences. This is all the easier thanks to the steady stream of new hardware flooding the market, making the creation and consumption of digital reality ever more accessible.

However, the emphasis to date has been on the visual and, to a lesser extent, audio aspects of these experiences.

The ability to fully capitalise on the level of immersion possible with these and other technologies will not be truly realised until all senses are catered to.

With respect to touch, advancements in the fields of ultrasonic free-space and air vortex haptics mean that tactile sensations can be delivered without consumers having to don additional hardware. For years we’ve known that having touched a product, people feel a greater sense of perceived ownership and are generally happy to pay more for it, having experienced some physical control over it. However, even though it’s not always possible to put a product in people’s hands, the haptical illusions afforded by these new technologies can have as powerful an effect.

There have, to date, been various experiments and attempts to take the mute off OOH, but the likes of directional sound start to seem far less appealing in the light of audio solutions such as Beakle and Hark, which when triggered through a frictionless mobile engagement technology like Wi-5, allow for streamed audio through users smartphones within just a few taps, all perfectly synchronised with video content on a DOOH screen.

VR and AR technologies are also seeing innovation within the audio realm, with binaural sound fast becoming a mainstay of such immersive experiences. What, after all, is 360° video without 3D sound? Magnetostrictive and bone-conduction speaker technologies incorporated into headsets are even allowing the audio to be internalised, giving us the power to literally become the voices in consumers’ heads.

With all these advancements in multisensory technologies, it is clear that we’re only just starting to see how truly encompassing future OOH experiences have the potential to be. However, as always, relevance is the key to ensuring this sort of activity is engaging and efficacious.

Rather than shoehorning a technology into a brief because it’s en vogue, we must continue, as Kinetic’s Director of Innovation, Rosh Singh, advocated in last year’s edition, “to consider ourselves experience designers.” Tools not rules.

The sooner we find our collective feet with this nascent Multisensory 2.0, the more effectively OOH will grow and mature with it. Only in this way can it become an integral part of Outdoor’s future, able to positively affect the direction in which the industry grows. Proficiency in using these tools at this stage will also ensure we are ready to embrace what the future may hold for multisensory, such as the direct stimulation of the somatosensory cortex to promote tactile illusions and hallucinations!

It is also worth considering the consequences of the widespread and successful adoption of such technologies and the potential impact and effects on brands of the inevitable retreat into a hyper realistic and engaging digital realm. How will this in turn influence the state and determine the fate of the physical world left behind? @PraskSparkParks Prask Sutton is Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Nock, a fullservice creative solutions marketing agency specialising in interaction design realised through cutting edge technologies and methodologies. www.nock.agency

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U

p until recently, multisensory marketing and advertising in OOH was generally associated with what could be termed real world interactions, such as scent wafting out of a 6 sheet on the high street. Although the relevance of such activity persists and indeed has still to come into its own, the ability for multisensory elements to become integrated into tomorrow’s digital OOH experiences is what constitutes the bleeding edge of today’s multisensory technologies and methodologies.

Olfactory experiences are coming to a headset near you, too. Scent-on-board PCB delivery systems loaded with microdots of fragrances that one can snap onto an Oculus Rift or similar will be triggered to release myriad smells to the noses of users with to-the-second timing. A no-brainer for food and beverage brands, but there is also huge scope here for scene setting and mood enhancement.

SENSORY: OOHUMAN Plateau will be reached in: Less than 2 years

expectations

2-5 years 5-10 years More than 10 years Connected DOOH, improved back-end systems and audience data enable the automation of OOH advertising. Kinetic are currently developing a solution for the OOH marketplace that will drive efficiencies and improve service levels.

2015 saw the first ever AI DOOH campaign. As machine intelligence and deep-learning continue to improve at exponential rates, machines will become as good, if not better at making decisions than humans ushering in a new era of creative potential within OOH.

Early innovations such as the Nest thermostat or Philips Hue have proved popular with consumers and the proliferation of connected devices in our homes feeds the IoT and the data that sits within it. The change in mindset this will bring means that we expect our devices and screens to work for us and on our terms, rather than remaining passive.

Connected home Haptics

AI Mobile payments are shortening the gap between the physical and digital worlds and the time between consideration and purchase. Twitter’s Buy Now Button, Apple Pay and Barclays bPay all offer quick and convenient ways to pay on the move. The quicker we can pay the less time we have to think!

Owners of the Tesla Model S woke up one morning recently to discover their software had been updated and their car was now driverless. Google cars have clocked over 1m miles with only minor incident (all due to human driver error).

This change in behaviour and how consumers spend their attention will have a huge impact on creative execution and planning in OOH.

A term first coined in 1999, the Internet of Things is almost upon us. Experts predict there will be 50bn connected objects by 2020, communicating with or sensing another, generating reams of data, which we can ad-serve against and derive insights from.

Feedback created by vibrations, movement and in some experiments puffs of air trick the brain into feeling contours and textures via screens. When this technology matures and becomes available, OOH consumers would be able to feel the texture of a coat or the outline of a product while waiting for a bus.

Drones Emotion recognition

OOH programmatic

The most effective way to begin using Beacons is by activating it within any existing consumer facing app, executing simple creative messaging in retail locations, for example a welcoming message and seeing if those customers are spending any time in vicinity of planned OOH.

Beacons Mobile payments Autonomous cars

Multi sensory

3D volumetric

IoT platform

OOH is unique in its ability to engage all five senses.

For some time now OOH campaigns have carried scent emitters, provided heat, incorporated sound and enabled taste through sampling. Researchers have shown that multi-sense campaigns for food products deliver a higher taste perception than those that do not.

AR

NFC

Once the preserve of sci-fi movies, 3D volumetric displays will revolutionise OOH. Perhaps influenced by Star Wars and BTTF, customer panel data shows that 3D is increasingly on their minds. The technology itself is relatively mature, but it remains bulky, fragile and expensive – not suited to widespread OOH use yet.

Innovation trigger

Peak of inflated expectations

Despite low levels of customer engagement to date, the frictionless nature of NFC still holds huge potential when it comes to consumers pulling content from OOH sites, especially given Apple’s adoption of the technology to facilitate their Apple Pay product.

Trough of disillusionment

The OOH hype cycle

In the future the skies will be utilised as delivery routes, as photography studios and as advertising spaces. Companies like Dronecast are already innovating in this space with drones capable of carrying large banners overhead, delivering wow experiences indoors and jaw-dropping sampling techniques.

Emotion Recognition software scans a still image to provide ratings for anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. As the tech improves it may be applied to OOH as a measurement tool or as a content trigger.

We have already seen early campaigns use expressions such as smiles or yawns to trigger vending experiences

Taking inspiration from Gartner's famous hype cycle, Kinetic's OOH hype cycle maps the emerging tech that will impact the OOH industry in the near and far future. If you want to know more give our tech and creative experts in Kinetic Active a shout.

VR is on the cusp of the consumer mainstream thanks to accessible and affordable solutions from Samsung (Gear) and Google (Cardboard).

As the cost of creating 360 content comes down the more interesting experience will be available to consumers.

2016 will see the first generation of VR headsets sitting under the Christmas tree waving in the VR era.

Dynamic DOOH

VR

Gesture

Whether in device or applied to DOOH screens, AR can enable spectacular surprises, like in the case of Pepsi Max Bus Shelter, or provide utility through enhanced navigation services. Microsoft’s Hololens will start to bring the true value of AR to life through industrial use, and you should expect to see more nuanced and elegant uses surfacing within OOH.

Slope of enlightenment

Customers are becoming accustomed with the tech as it is integrated into smart TVs and games consoles. Simple, intuitive movement, that don’t feel too silly, are key to adoption in DOOH.

Consumers want DOOH copy that is live, reactive, entertaining and useful.

Data driven and digitally enabled campaigns such as Jaguar Feel Wimbledon or Lynx and C.A.L.M have pushed the boundaries this year.

Constant investment into hardware and back end software will increase opportunity in this space making it quicker, easier and cheaper to develop and deploy dynamic DOOH campaigns at scale.

Plateau of productivity

time

SENSORY: OOHUMAN

New Sensations 36

Historically OOH has primarily been a visual medium, and while this will never entirely change, the ability to manipulate all of our senses to create deep, immersive experiences has never been easier. We’ve collected some of our favourite installations and executions from the past year to inspire you to get in touch with your senses.

www.themuseumoffeelings.com

Claiming many records; world’s largest terrain mapping, world’s longest projection, this ambitious installation in Cappadocia, Turkey is currently telling the 5 billion year long story of our planet. And it will take 10 years!

www.facebook.com/Pigalle-Paris-108050522594442

www.vimeo.com/143054034

Artist Anila Quayyum Agha used light and geometric patterns to cast shadows to cover the walls, floor, ceiling, and even visitors for her Intersections installation.

Visitors become part of the experience by interupting and augmenting the shadows as they walk around.

Train operator Thalys used the power of sound to encourage people to get out and explore other cities.

After capturing thousands of unique sounds, passers by were transported to a different city simply by plugging in their headphones.

www.ricegallery.org/anila-agha

www.youtube.com/watch?vltcNSZu0nZc

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Fashion brand Pigalle took over and decorated their head designer’s childhood urban basketball court which sits in proximity to their store, embedding the brand in the landscape while rejuvenating a public space.

SENSORY: OOHUMAN

Tate Britain’s Sensorium exhibition surrounded famous paintings with sounds, tactile experiences and scents to help visitors understand and connect with the pieces at a greater depth.

Artist Ann Veronica Janssens’ immersive installation used brightly coloured mist to envelop visitors making it impossible to determine the depth of the space or surface details, disorientating them and heightening their state of being.

www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/display/ik-prize-2015-tate-sensorium

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www,wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/states-mind-ann-veronica-janssens

Combining Oculus Rift and Leap Motion, Kinetic Active created a VR experience that teleported users into their own swanky loft where they could flex their interior design skills and furnish the space with products from the M&S range.

Projected face mapping and digital makeup transformed Kat Von D in an event that blended music, artistry and cutting edge tech to create a memorable sensory brand experience. www.wildbytes.cc/work/kat-von-d-live-face-projection-mapping

www.kineticww.com/uk/our-work/ms-creates-virtual-showroom

Grand Central Station in NY was the setting for Lipton Sparkling Iced Tea’s sensory experiential installation featuring aromas alongside projections on specially built nano-particle diffusion screens.

www.youtube.com/watch?v-i-ACyQ1NhfU

www.kineticww.com/us/our-work/lipton-sparkling-iced-tea-tinybubbles

Air freshener brand Glade have created an amazing way to show off their scent credentials through their fully interactive and immersive Museum of Feelings.

Jaguar shared the feeling of being at Wimbledon with a wider audience by analysing biometric data captured via wearables worn by the crowd, atmospheric data generated by sensors placed around the court, along with social media sentiment.

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Laura Kriefman choreographed a rather unusual sensory experience that brought to life three huge cranes on Bristol’s waterfront through movement, lighting and music to the delight of viewers.

www.themuseumoffeelings.com

www.kineticww.com/uk/publications/digital-ooh-showcase-june-2015-2

SENSORY: OOHUMAN

The Time is Now: Reality goes Virtual The immersive OOH experiences possible with Virtual Reality are hugely exciting and with over half the population already keen to experiment with the tech*, we asked Henry Stuart from VR specialists Visualise to give some advice for brands looking to get involved.

40 PIC: ssuaphotos/Shutterstock.com

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ith headsets such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR being made widely available to the public in the first half of the year, 2016 will be a huge year for virtual reality It’s an exciting time for an industry that people still have a lot to learn about. There is a whole spectrum of VR with two main camps at each end. Passive VR, usually a live action 360 video, and fully interactive CG based VR games and experiences. Purists will say that 360 video is not real VR, by definition. This is a whole other debate but one thing is certain in my mind - good live action VR films shown on VR headsets are transportive, immersive and can emotionally connect a viewer in a way that only virtual reality allows. As such I believe passive VR is totally valid as virtual reality.

There are, in fact, such a huge amount of rules to adhere to in VR that creating good content can be challenging.

Little things can trip you up - put the camera too low and the world looks like the perspective of the Ant Man, make it too high and you feel like a giant. Make the scene too distracting and you avert attention from the storyline, have visible seams in shot and you break the feeling of presence.

The list goes on.

The great thing about VR though, is that the opportunities for brands are endless and extend much further than gaming or entertainment.

Education and training, for example, are going to be huge opportunities. The ability to do science experiments at school that require absolutely no health and safety measures is really quite exciting!

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A single demonstration could be performed once for the whole UK school system and recorded in a way that allows students to watch on demand. Students wouldn’t have to watch their teachers, clad in oversized safety goggles dropping a tiny piece of sodium in a beaker; instead they could watch a crane drop a lump in a swimming pool, KABOOM!

The reason for this preamble is that 360 videos work really well on smartphones - with or without headsets, meaning that brands wishing to put spend behind a VR experience are not reliant on people owning hardware.

Desktop and mobile is another way to engage with viewers. Apps created for Google Cardboard, for example, typically have a question at the start: Do you have Cardboard? If you select ‘No’ then you can still view the experience by tilting and moving your device; this is commonly known as ‘Magic Window’. YouTube and Facebook have already enabled 360 videos on their platforms, using the VR medium to enable brands to reach their audiences in new and unique ways.

For those looking to create VR, it’s vital they recognise that it’s not the same as creating other media; it’s a whole new medium and therefore requires specialists.

At Visualise we’ve spent the last three years pulling together the best minds in VR; people who eat, sleep and dream the tech and we have learnt a lot along the way. These learnings are subtle, but very important; don’t twist or strafe cameras while filming, give users frames of reference if the camera is in motion. Without this knowledge, the end result could cause motion sickness for viewers, creating a negative impression. *Kinetic Panel: November 2015

SENSORY: OOHUMAN

From a training perspective think about surgery training or bomb disposal. Driver training in F1 (I’ve got some inside knowledge on this - it’s happening!), pilot training, you name it, if it’s expensive or dangerous in the real world then VR is going to drastically change the industry.

For those looking to get involved with VR, my advice would be don’t forget the basics - there are huge pushes to do something unique in VR. Everyone wants to be the first or leaders in something, but as VR is such a new medium there is still huge scope for just creating a piece of content that tells the story really well. You don’t always need divided storylines, CG overlays, drones, etc to make an engaging piece of content.

Secondly I’d say use VR specialists and get them involved early - there’s a whole heap of potential hurdles and pitfalls in VR creation - the earlier we’re involved in scoping creative and feeding back on ideas the more we can contribute.

Creating relevant, compelling and high quality content across all platforms is key to the growth of the VR industry.

Build for the future too. Activations are not just for malls, stations and stores, there will be a consumer market in a matter of months, so make sure to have a content distribution plan for Q2 and Q3 2016 at the ready.

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Visualise is an award-winning, international production company that specialises in virtual reality filmmaking and immersive experiences. www.visualise.com

DATA

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How are we using the data we have now? What data do we need? And what are we doing about it? With automated and programmatic trading on the horizon do we have the right skills to deliver? How can we use the weird and wonderful data around us to inform creative? Big data, small data, we love all the data.

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DATA

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OFF THE

GRID

From embedded audio trackers to interactive Barbie dolls, Lena Roland from Warc takes a look at how new technology is increasing our vulnerability to privacy invasion and urges us all to think privacy first before consumers take themselves off the grid.

Digital Catapult, a national centre reporting to Government to advance the UK’s best digital ideas, conducted a survey of more than 4,000 UK consumers to assess their views on personal data. The survey found 94% want more control over their personal data, 65% are unsure whether their data is being shared without their consent while 60% admit they are uncomfortable sharing data.

Further, 76% are concerned that they have “no control over how data is shared or who it is shared with”, causing 14% to refuse to share any personal data at all. Figures such as these should worry the advertising industry.

Consumer data underpins effective marketing; when used effectively it enables brands to reach consumers at the right time, in the right place and in the right context - the holy grail of marketing. Indeed studies show that some consumers welcome and even expect relevant and personalised targeting. That said research suggests consumers are growing wary of brands’ intrusive tracking practices.

Transparency and trust A report by Altimeter Group, The Trust Imperative: A Framework for Ethical Data Use argued that consumer trust affects a brand’s reputation and its business performance and therefore trust is “a CEO issue”. This highlights the need for advertisers and agencies to be transparent about the way they collect, store and use personal data.

But in the hyper-connected age transparency and trust can be difficult to achieve. In particular marketers keen to exploit location based technology walk a fine line between personalisation and creepy. Tony Regan, founder of Brand Performance, insists “there is great potential for mobile and OOH campaigns to work well together” but he cautions that “planners need to factor in the consumer’s concern about intrusiveness and invasions of privacy. It may be some time before the consumer is comfortable with an ad being served to their mobile device, triggered by the ‘knowledge’ that they have just been exposed to a message from the same campaign on a digital screen they passed moments earlier”.

With the continued advancement in sophisticated tracking technology such as Bluetooth, RFID, GPS, and more recently beacons and drones it is imperative for the OOH industry to avoid ending up on the wrong side of creepy and therein lies the challenge. With firms like Amazon, Audi and Domino’s experimenting with the potential of drones for various uses it will be interesting to see who gets it right, and who gets it wrong…

While 2015 saw the cessation of sales of Google Glass to the consumer market, a variety of other brands are pushing privacy boundaries. The ‘Smart TV’ market was taken to a whole new level when the privacy policy for Samsung’s Smart TV advised customers: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party”.

Elsewhere, Mattel has launched the world’s first interactive Barbie Doll, which uses voice-recognition technology to respond to children’s questions, but recordings are shared with third parties thus raising privacy concerns.

The ability to track our online behaviour across devices is marketing nirvana. And companies such as SilverPush are working on ways to deliver this – and causing a privacy storm in the process. Privacy advocates are concerned about the lack of transparency in such tracking technology which has the ability to detect inaudible, high-frequency sounds across devices. This has prompted the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) to submit a letter to the United States Federal Trade Commission pointing out that “the user is unaware of the audio beacon… and there is no way for the user to opt-out of this form of cross-device tracking”.

Further, CDT point out “SilverPush’s company policy is to not “divulge the names of the apps the technology is embedded,” meaning that users have no knowledge of which apps are using this technology and no way to opt-out of this practice”.

“some consumers welcome and even expect relevant and personalised targeting”

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T

echnology is advancing at an astonishing rate and the hyper-connected age is about to get even more hyper and even more connected. The networked society is both fascinating and complex in equal measure and one of the main areas of complexity is the issue of data privacy. Who owns consumers’ data? Who has access to it? How is it being used? Is it hackable? These are some of the questions that consumers are starting to ask and are at the heart of the ongoing privacy debate.

DATA Trackable is hackable More broadly, high-profile cyber-attacks are drawing consumers’ attention to the vulnerability – and value - of their data. 2015 was the year that warned consumers – and brands - that trackable is hackable. The data breach of Ashley Madison leaked the personal details of some 32 million members, while the hacking of Carphone Warehouse exposed the personal data of up to 2.4m customers. More recently, a cyber-attack on TalkTalk exposed the personal details of 157,000 while nearly 16,000 bank accounts were stolen.

But the marketing industry is waking up to these issues and the World Federation of Marketers (WFA) has found marketers are becoming increasingly respectful of consumer privacy. Based on responses from 32 companies with a global annual marketing spend of US$35billion, the research found that 85% of respondents considered privacy integral to building consumer trust, and more than just legal compliance. Further, 73% of respondents want to build direct customer relationships via the use of first-party data, considering this ‘business critical’.

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With hacking and covert tracking on the increase so too is the rise of “do not track” software which enables consumers to “go-dark” i.e. navigate the web without being monitored. The growth of ad blocking tech can be seen as a sign of consumers’ growing intolerance for invasive marketing tactics. The Cost of Ad Blocking, a joint study from PageFair, a provider of adblock solutions to publishers, and Adobe, said that the number of ad block users worldwide had increased by 41%.

“the number of ad block users worldwide had increased by 41%” Consent-by-design As the adoption of facial and voice recognition, digital assistants, wearable technology, artificial intelligence and the emergence of the Internet of Things become more widespread, the privacy debate will remain hot throughout 2016 - and beyond. There will likely remain more questions than answers. But it seems clear that brands interested in forming long-term relationships with consumers should put transparency and trust at the heart of their approach to customer data.

One way to do this is to implement privacy-by-design, an initiative that promotes privacy and data protection compliance from the start of a project, not as an after-thought. Privacy-by-design - or consent-by-design should become the industry’s mantra. @RolandReckons Lena Roland is Knowledge Officer at Warc, who offer advertising best practice, evidence and insights from the world’s leading brands. www.warc.com

The most recent Kinetic Panel shows that we are increasingly willing to share our personal information if we know what the value to us is, with younger people more willing that most. The only information we appear less willing to share than a year ago is our email address. Perhaps a reaction to increases in hacking and spam emails.

What basic information would you be willing to provide in order to...

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recently heard that 90% of data articles in the world today have been created in the last two years. Or was that just data?

Whatever Google’s Eric Schmidt may have meant, it illustrates how quickly the landscape changed. In turn our businesses have also changed as we reconfigured our systems and developed fresh skills to meet new expectations and partake in the ‘revolution’.

But this article is not about the hard side of data that will drive efficiencies or optimise workflow. This is about the more peculiar, fun and quirky side of data. The resources maintained by enthusiasts, artists and anthropologists, the offshoots of corporate or governmental research and how we can leverage these resources as a catalyst for creativity.

And what better time than now? Last year saw a Creative Data category introduced at Cannes that

recognised the impact of data on creativity and the maturity of campaigns being developed in this area.

Data is everywhere. All aspects of our existence are now quantified, tracked, automated, scheduled and likely open source.

The website for Ubisoft title “Watch Dogs” demonstrates the extent to which this is true. A live and navigable map of London, Paris and Berlin aggregates and publishes geotagged data highlighting the staggering amount of free, open sources available. It can be mesmerising to track an Underground train as it makes it way from King’s Cross to Russell Square knowing it will arrive in exactly 56 seconds.

While this site is not new and the idea of integrating TFL timetable data into a campaign isn’t either, simple data streams like this help us contextualise and understand our environment providing us a calming sense of order and control.

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Artists and scientists have more in common than you might think. Both disciplines require imagination and the ability to visualise and communicate complex ideas.

Kinetic Active’s Dominic Murray encourages us to leverage the vast and varied data around us to bring creative ideas to life.

DATA As humans we constantly seek feedback and reassurance that our environmental context and behaviour is the norm.

Glances at timetables are one way we quickly seize control.

Research in Seattle showed that perceptions of public transit punctuality were greatly improved with the provision of data. Even when the system was not running efficiently, those who had the data to hand, via OneBusAway app, felt satisfied with the service. Just knowing that someone somewhere has their eye on things means we can relax and turn our attention to others tasks. Brands who integrate data into their campaigns as a trigger or output can thrive on this human need.

Smells of the City A team of University of Cambridge researchers have mapped the smellscapes of seven major cities. The smell map can now be navigated with streets tagged with descriptors like trash, putrid, vomit, lavender, fruity and BBQ. This data is personal, contextually relevant and potentially controversial. A possible opportunity for air freshener or hair-care products.

For brands, data provides an understanding of context, which leads us to understanding of a need or a behaviour and the opportunity for creativity. While the arrival of a schedule train may seem a mundane occurrence, when analysed alongside other relevant other data sources we begin to see countless scenarios emerge, each one a opportunity to connect with the consumer in the moment. A moment we, have in a sense, engineered for our advantage.

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The more connected our world becomes the greater and more varied the data available to us becomes. In the quantified age, everything from our sleep patterns to excited reactions at sports events are already being captured. The challenge to us is how we chose to interpret and apply these insights. Each seemingly niche or oddball area is itself a provocation that can spark creativity.

And here is a collection of some of our favourite datasets you might not have considered that are available to use now. @dominic_murray0

www.goodcitylife.org

Popular Times - Google Now when you search for stores, restaurants, bars and museums, Google will display the busiest times experienced by that venue. Designed to help you plan your evening, this data can be hijacked by brands keen to offer alternative services or distractions. DOOH screens in proximity to the venue can be used to target consumers in their moment of frustration or need.

goo.gl/hjjlZn

Walkonomics Walkonomics is a new app/database that enables commuters to select a route that balances both beauty and speed. The best walking routes are graded on architectural aesthetics, proximity to nature and distance from pollution hotspots or congestion. The founders hope to encourage more commuters to walk by enabling a positive experience.

So if your brand wants to promote the good life, associate themselves with more natural surrounding and attitude, this data set could be the start of an interesting initiative.

www.walkonomics.com

Serendipity

Jawbone

Every second, a few people around the globe hit play on the same Spotify song at the same time. It was based on this insight that digital artist, Kyle Macdonald created Serendipity, a live visualisation of the song matches made in real time.

The developers of the wearable band conducted research into the sleep patterns of their users and found that women on average get 20 minutes more sleep a night than their male counterparts. What changes would you make to your advertising knowing your consumers had a bad nights sleep? www.jawbone.com/blog/category/data

Taxi Trails Stockholm

www.spotify.com/uk/arts/serendipity

The Swedish taxi company turned journey data from their local customers into a guide for tourists visiting Stockholm. The firm purports that visualising this information provides the “clever tourist� with an idea of where the locals go, indicating popular places to eat, socialise, receive an injection of culture or shop.

Live Earthquake Maps

Satellites Above In-the-sky.org plots the position of orbiting satellites as they pass over our head. Useful to those boasting their prowess in providing communication services maybe?

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Weather data has been a standard of the developing data driven DOOH trend. But what data is there beyond the Met Office feed? A Live Earthquake map tracks tremors across the global to visualise on a map. At the time of writing the UK is recovering from a 1.7 magnitude quake, 6 hours ago in Warsop. www.quakes.globalincidentmap.com

www.taxitrails.se/en

Coca Cola - Happiness As part of their long running Choose Happiness campaign, Coca-Cola tracked happiness levels by measuring the number of positive and negative mood words used on Twitter alongside mentions of #ChooseHappiness. The data was published as a live barometer on over 300 screens each week.

www.in-the-sky.org/satmap.php

Lightning Maps A data feed with the potential to spark creativity. Live Lightning plots the location and frequency of lightning strikes across the globe in real time. Maybe it will strike twice! www.lightningmaps.org/realtime

www.coca-cola.co.uk/packages/choose-happiness

DATA

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Data is playing an ever-increasing role in the planning, buying and evaluation of OOH media, but we are really only scratching the surface of what is possible. With programmatic trading peeking over the horizon we get the expert view on where we are at, where we need to go and how we will get there.

Mungo Knott Primesight

Sarah Speake Clear Channel

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

We need robust data at a single location/moment level. Advertisers are happy to invest at a far greater CPM to buy more discrete and targeted audiences when we can show that audience has an increased value to them.

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

We need to plug the audience data more effectively into the transaction process and to facilitate this the industry are currently improving the core data structures. The launch of SPACE, which is a collaboration by the media ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ side, is an important part of this, as is the current tender by ROUTE for an API developer and the introduction of an industry DisplayID format to detail both digital and classic ad-placements.

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

For automated trading to work ROUTE needs to provide more granular data. In practice that will mean data tailored for individual panels and data that is accurate to the minute.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

By 2017 captured mobile data from ad serving, social feeds, beacons, wi-fi and phone operators will be commonly used. We will see 3rd party live data influencing automated buying and copy serving across most DOOH and by 2020 this will be the norm for trading DOOH. And what is Kinetic doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

Test and learn, and test and learn again. We are bringing a new data scientist skill set into the industry as we test locational data from mobile ad serving, paid social, beacon, search and operator data.

We test intent and action with search and social listening; we test baselines; we trial uplift. Mostly we test that the data is credible and test its limitations. We are tech and data agnostic and understand we will need to adopt a range of data sets.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

Data that captures population movement is key. Price, audience attribution and access have all provided barriers to the incorporation of mobile as a core data set so far. But beacons have the potential to create a very valuable data set for the industry.

The combination of time, place and user accepted engagement through app notification is a powerful data collection channel. Primesight are introducing beacons into a range of their products for 2016.

And what is Primesight doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

We are committed to improving structures that will facilitate more effective and efficient transfer of data to support the buying and selling process. We will continue to open our digital inventory to allow faster and more flexible access to clients.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

We recently experimented with tracking people’s gaze and engagement levels to generate an algorithmically “perfect” creative execution for a fictional coffee brand. Also, beacons are a core part of Adshel Live’s rollout and are a fantastic chance to offer tailored information to shoppers based on their purchase history. The big caveat however is that people are only willing to share data if they understand why we are collecting it, what we are going to use it for and crucially, what’s in it for them.

And what is Clear Channel doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

Play iQ is already powering our Storm and Adshel Live screens. The next stage is to offer live availability.

We’re very excited about making the system as open and transparent as possible and using APIs so that our partners can integrate it into their own systems.

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Gideon Adey Kinetic

DATA

Richard Malton Ocean Outdoor

Amy Horton Kinetic

David McEvoy JCDecaux

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

The outside world doesn’t know enough about ROUTE’s understanding of people on the move, and its use within the OOH industry is still not consistent enough. We need to challenge ROUTE to be more relevant, more pervasive and better understood.

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

ROUTE needs to evolve to measure actual impressions. This is where the possibilities of aggregated mobile data become interesting.

The integration of this deeper behavioural data with ROUTE data will enrich our planning capabilities.

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

Audience data is essential to the future of OOH and is central to our planning and trading system, SmartBrics. ROUTE should be a source of pride due to its global best in class status and it’s amazing that with such a rich data set at our disposal, client and agency KPIs often still revolve around price per panel regardless of the audience delivered.

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What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

The industry has to become very confident with mobile data, but I think we have to be careful about the obsession for data. I prefer to think about it in terms of understanding. If we are not careful the art of great communication will get completely swamped by data and this will be a disaster.

And what is Ocean doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

We have invested in ORC and CACI data to support our city centre pedestrian networks and fusing these with ROUTE will be key. Longer term it is about the technology we build into our screen locations that will lead us into a whole new area of data collection and audience understanding.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

For OOH to reach its dynamic potential, to feed ads in real time at real locations, we need to have more granular and frequent data that enables us to track variations across time against different audience profiles.

We also need to understand the effects of our advertising impact as we match response metrics to our audience profiles. Social media and behavioural metrics combined with first party audience data will enable us to enrich and improve our current planning approach.

And what is Kinetic doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

We are evolving audience understanding in a variety of ways to align OOH measurement capabilities with other media. From integrating mobile data and social metrics into day-to-day planning, to measuring the social amplification effect of a campaign, we are investing in developing future proof products that will rollout for wider usage in 2016.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

Why ask for more data when ROUTE the richest data set in OOH globally is not a central core planning and trading tool? That said there are geo-locational data sets from mobile and social usage and expenditure segmentations from companies like CACI available.

Data captured out of the home is some of the richest available, providing context, mindset and behavioral insights that were once a pipe dream. If you overlay this with ROUTE the possibilities are immense.

And what is JCDecaux doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

We already have a platform that optimises campaign performance based on millions of data points. We also have a data acquisition strategy to augment this with new sources for social media, mobile app and web usage and new mindset data from a large community we poll daily.

Anthony Waithe Exterion Media

Grant Branfoot Outdoor Plus

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

DOOH can no longer be effectively measured via a standard two-week campaign period; it’s about eyeballs per hour. We need an industry system that can cope with that demand and measure it accurately, one that can amalgamate classic inventory alongside DOOH to give a true picture of coverage and campaign effectiveness.

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

The next frontier is to produce outputs and insights that are needed to drive automated and programmatic trading. ROUTE needs to be closer to real-time and contextual to reflect changes in travel behaviour and seasonality and also needs to have the ability to integrate with other data.

How do you think ROUTE needs to evolve going forward?

Route doesn’t enable planners to factor in audience engagement and interaction so we need to be able to fuse ROUTE with other data sets to provide greater levels of insight on engagement. The data also needs to become more robust at panel level.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

Mobile and live data is the holy grail. Consumer usage of Wi-Fi networks installed at DOOH locations has only just begun to be explored; this data alongside real time audience demographics accessed through inbuilt cameras will help us to build a thorough data picture for OOH. And what is Signature doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

Our unique online trading platform, The Loop Live, is the closest thing the industry has to programmatic, yet there’s still work to be done to move the system from automatic to truly programmatic.

We will continue our investment in ORC data and modeling alongside investment in live scheduling.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

It’s becoming more and more evident that OOH advertising becomes significantly more effective when third party data is used to plan. We will see a shift towards real-time data, such as client, travel and mobile data, rather than simply using historical data as a predictor.

The Internet of Things will be an enabler of this.

And what is Exterion Media doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

We want to super-serve our advertisers by giving them as much intelligence as possible, so we are working with our clients to understand the wealth of data they hold. We also work with our partners, such as TfL and Telefónica, to overlay multiple data sets. We will also continue to invest heavily in our urban audience panel, work.shop.play., to add a qualitative layer to the data we have access to.

What source(s) of data does the OOH industry need to gain access to going forward?

More client data, including econometrics and campaign results (quantitative and qualitative) plus consumer mobile data.

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James Harrison Signature Outdoor

And what is Outdoor Plus doing to tackle data needs in 2016?

We will continue to partner with clients on automated OOH campaigns. Genuine programmatic or automated activation can only work through collaboration across all parties, from client through to the tech and software teams.

Illustrations: James Wadsworth / Background: Dariush M/Shutterstock.com

DATA If people are our most important asset, are we as an industry equipping them adequately for the future, are we employing people with the right skillsets in the first place?

How valuable is a media degree in the dawning age of programmatic?

A recent Guardian article talked about the digital skills gap in the UK, not just in media but across the wider economy. With competition from other sectors, the gap in media could be getting wider unless we start to look at new ways to recruit and retain the right people.

Calling all Creative Analysts. Kinetic’s Marketing Director Richard Jacobs on the multi-skilled OOH workforce of the future.

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Programmatic is coming to OOH and, now we are all on board, it’s coming quite fast. It’s taken the OOH industry a while to work it out but finally there is broad agreement that joining buyer and seller electronically is not only an inevitability, it’s also something we should actively embrace.

I spent most of my career in Radio which has been trading electronically (although not programmatically) for over a decade and media owners talking to agencies via an online platform (J-ET) has been a mainstay of the planning, buying, post campaign analysis and auditing of radio campaigns for much of my career.

From an inventory or ‘plant’ perspective, OOH is streets ahead of radio and the industry worked out early on how its digital offering can benefit clients’ campaigns by offering more engaging creative that bears a closer relationship to video, TV and cinema than it does to a static press ad for example.

Despite the huge creative leaps, we’ve still been pretty slow to embrace the idea of electronic trading but finally we’re getting there and it’s starting to look very interesting.

At its core, programmatic is very simple. Computer software trades OOH inventory based on pre-determined criteria from a client’s brief. Clearly the detail is a touch more complicated than that but this article isn’t about how programmatic works or who’s doing it. What I’m interested in here is what automation or programmatic means for our businesses from a human perspective.

A senior director at a leading UK media agency commented, “The UK media industry has extraordinary depth of talent. But the digital talent pool, in particular, struggles to keep pace with the level of demand, not only from agencies, but also from clients and technology companies.” Data skills are clearly going to be important but media plans rely on strategy and creativity so simply being an analyst isn’t the answer either.

The Guardian’s piece suggests that the “ideal marketers of 2020 will be creatives with technical abilities as well as soft skills to deal with clients and colleagues.” A combination of talents will be in demand and the idea that someone is employed as a ‘designer’ may become outmoded as agencies look for a ‘designer / coder’ perhaps.

That may be true for some agencies but in the OOH specialist area it’s likely to be ‘creative / analyst’ or ‘planner-buyer / analyst’. Someone who can interpret data in real time and use it creatively or strategically in the planning process.

At Kinetic we understand the importance of digital skills and that shortages can impact on our business. It’s early days but in the programmatic world of the near future, we will still need people with an understanding of media and marketing. However, they will need to come equipped with data skills and strong numerical aptitude.

They will need both the left and the right brain firing on all cylinders and they will need to be able to talk about both the strategic and creative elements of a campaign, alongside the implementation and delivery.

Traditionally you might expect a media company to recruit media graduates but perhaps we need to look further afield. It may be easier to train a naturally data oriented school leaver or graduate in the world of media than it is to take someone who’s passionate about media and advertising and make them crunch numbers.

It’s not a black and white argument but what is certain is that change will bring a need for new skills. As we develop the software and hardware to bring programmatic trading into our business, we are also looking very closely at who and what we need in our workforce to actually make it all work!

Your beautiful and clever OOH campaign has prompted a consumer to search online to find you, but what they find online is more often than not a let down. David Jowett, President of DAC Group on how brands can no longer afford to ignore the hyperlocal brand experience if they want to own the purchase journey.

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t’s easy to think of digital and physical shopping worlds clashing and colliding, with each looking to steal a piece of the pie from one another; but in reality, most customer buying journeys are likely to crisscross between the both worlds.

Those journeys may be triggered with a ‘traditional’ touchpoint such as an OOH poster, but brands then need to use the digital environment to push the consumer into the store, navigate the review world and buy. And contrary to popular belief, the high street is not dead. Research from PwC’s annual consumer survey finds that nearly 40% of us make purchases inside a physical store at least once a week, compared to just 27% who do the same online.

This means that brands still have to win ‘the last physical mile’. At the most basic digital level, Google reports that the “get directions” button is the single most used feature on a smartphone. Seriously, take a moment and consider how many millions of customer journeys that now include that simple but fundamental step!

The digital hyperlocal space is an open goal for brands that take the opportunity to put themselves in the right place at the right time, and create real value for the consumer. After all, why spend time and money building a national brand, to not capitalise on that investment all the way through to the local store?

So what do marketers need to know about the hyperlocal opportunity? Three hyperlocal marketing trends businesses can’t ignore...

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Three hyperlocal marketing trends you can’t ignore

DATA Perhaps the most interesting development from the giants is Facebook’s M, its new virtual assistant. A combination of AI and human intervention, M seems to be a large scale personal assistant available serendipitously via Facebook messenger and driven by a huge local database of reviews, citations and NAP information. How powerful is that? And how significant for brands who rely on local presence for the final yards of the consumer journey?

Facebook’s goal, it says, is to make Messenger the first stop for mobile discovery, for anyone looking to do or buy anything. It’s something local businesses can’t ignore.

1. The consumer expects and demands that brands deliver digital hyperlocal experiences

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When was the last time you searched online for a brand or generic service locally and found fantastically optimised local results? I suspect, rarely! A crying shame given that locality and mobility go hand in hand. Furthermore, in the ‘push’ era our phone OS and navigation apps are telling us what they think we need, when, and who can supply it.

According to Ipsos Mori, 52% of customers look specifically for local business hours on search engines. Consider that against data from the InfoGroup, where 44% of people report having an outing “ruined” by incorrect information relating to trading hours. This is not trivial stuff.

In his article, ‘Think with Google’, Matt Lawson, the company’s director of search ads marketing, says: “We want things right, and we want things right away. As a result, the consumer journey looks markedly different than it did just five years ago. Instead of a few moments of truth, it’s a series of ‘micro-moments’ when we turn to mobile to act on a need.”

We’ve grown to expect our smartphones to serve relevant, local results. ‘Near me’, ‘closest’, and ‘nearby’. All phrases that would have meant little just a decade ago are beginning to dominate the billions of queries every month.

In fact, ‘near me’ searches have nearly doubled in the last year.

People are increasingly making critical purchase funnel decisions on the move and the amount of revenue a business without a local presence is leaving on the table remains an unknown quantity.

2. The technology giants are delivering against this expectation, ahead of everyone else Over the past few months we’ve seen many of the tech giants of this world make local a major focus. When these guys bet big, they are usually right.

Additionally, Pinterest recently announced that users will be able to make phone calls and get directions to bricks-and-mortar locations from within their iOS app (with web and Android coming soon). Pinterest is automatically pulling in the location data via the public Foursquare API, for its nearly seven billion Place Pins.

And don’t forget Amazon, which has just partnered with Yelp to give Alexa, its voice assistant, some street smarts.

Alexa, who lives inside Amazon’s Echo Bluetooth speaker, now plugs into Yelp to pull out local search results.

These developments show how keen the big tech companies are to deliver an amazing local experience for their users. It used to require a clunky combination of the Yellow Pages, a map, and a telephone. Look how far we’ve come.

3. The local search ecosystem is gaining in prominence Google now lists local search results above organic results. It’s a game changer, particularly for the mobile consumer who rarely scrolls below the fold. Google has also made its local results feature a three-pack of businesses instead of seven, which creates a pretty tough environment in which to cut through.

Consequently it is more important than ever for businesses to optimise their local landing pages with information that is relevant to the location. Uniquely local landing pages should be developed for individual locations, and be SEO optimised to take into account shopping behaviour for a specific store, or store-specific offers or discounts maybe.

Consumers are naturally more open to dealing with organisations that present them with information in a way that works for them personally, and particularly at a local level.

DAC Group is a full-service digital agency specialising in location-based lead generation. Their use of proprietary technology makes campaign management and optimisation smarter. www.dacgroup.com

FUTURES

We’ve rounded up the events and happenings that will impact us all in the near future and chatted to one of the biggest brands in the world about their enduring love of OOH. With a new industry body, improved accountability and servicing capabilities and more technology than ever at our fingertips, the future for OOH looks very bright indeed.

FUTURES

LOOK:

The OUT a golden age of OOH Following a recent rebrand and hiring spree, the reinvigorated trade body for the OOH industry, Outsmart, is off and running and keen to fulfil their mission to inform, educate and inspire people to do wonderful things out of home. Chief Executive Alan Brydon gives his thoughts on three key areas of opportunity for the near future.

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T

here is absolutely no doubt that the OOH medium is in a fantastic place, or that it will continue to develop, grow, and offer ever more exciting and effective opportunities for advertisers over the coming few years.

Technology will mean that the digitisation of the medium will continue, at lower cost, more quickly, and to even better levels of quality; trading processes between media owners and specialists will become better and more efficient (indeed they are already with the introduction of SPACE); and real-time automated trading will develop apace, again allowing not only efficiencies but better and more effective deployment opportunities for advertisers too.

Technology is also driving consumer behaviour in ways that are bringing challenges for other media - audience decline, ad avoidance, ad blocking, etc. But in OOH, technology is driving consumer behaviour only in ways that are enhancing things - more people out and about for longer, in ever more connected ways. People are searching, snapping, sharing and shopping when out and about like never before.

But in my view, what happens over the next few years is only part of the issue - How all the members of the OOH family manage and maximise the opportunities is just as crucial.

Ray Kroc of McDonald’s said this, and everyone in the OOH industry has to remember this over the next few years, probably above everything else. Outsmart is seeing terrifically collaborative approaches from its members, and our initiative to work closer and better with the IPAO and its members has been fully reciprocated and is already bearing fruit. We have to continue and develop this – if we all work together the cake will get bigger.

By how much each slice increases is something for each individual company to address of course, but this must come after we’ve grown the cake together.

THREE KEY AREAS OF OPPORTUNITY I think there are three broad areas in which the OOH ‘family’ can work in an aligned manner. Effectiveness, ‘The Art of the Possible’, and A Basic Truth.

EFFECTIVENESS Demonstration of effectiveness is, quite rightly, a prerequisite for any medium. But the OOH medium has in the past been rather on the back foot in this area. It has allowed others to take the lead in the ROI area at its expense, and it has been rather disjointed in the blowing of its own trumpet in all effectiveness regards. And yet, as I’ve already found in my first few months at Outsmart, there is a whole load of evidence that OOH works. Of course there is, because of course it does! And what’s more, as well as case histories and bespoke research, a lot of that evidence is squarely in the ROI area. We - all of us in the OOH family - need to coordinate a fact-based and evidence-

based effort to make advertisers and agencies aware of the realities. Namely, that when econometric modelling is applied correctly, and when the ‘R’ in ROI is correctly defined and measured, then OOH can be as potent and as effective as any medium. Outside companies such as Ebiquity and Gain Theory are absolutely of this view, so they should be seen as our allies in this.

ART OF THE POSSIBLE A few weeks ago I’d have said that this should be an initiative aimed only at the creative community - educate them as to how the OOH medium in 2016 has so many opportunities for great creative work that simply aren’t being taken.

But in talking to all parts of the industry, I’ve evolved that thinking, and now I think that a) ‘enlightenment’ is a better word than ‘education’, b) clients and some agencies aren’t fully aware of the possibilities of the medium, and c) those possibilities involve more than creative excellence – they involve usage of Route, data-based planning, geo targeting, automation, and other things as well.

A BASIC TRUTH This sort of falls into ‘The Art of the Possible’. It’s perhaps obvious, it is certainly not new, but in all the recent talk of from what John Hegarty famously called the ‘digital taliban’, I think we need to remind people of it: All brands desire cover, frequency, awareness, fame, memorability and iconicity. And OOH provides this as well as any medium, and better than most.

Charles Vallance, of VCCP recently made this point brilliantly: ‘Advertising isn’t supposed to be private. It’s supposed to be overheard, shared, stumbled across and discovered.

This is why so many brands use relatively indiscriminate media, such as posters. They want to be ‘overseen’.

Modern media analytics are in danger of taking the medium back to being the medium alone.

If we continue down this path, we may end up on a fool’s errand, mistaking accuracy for effectiveness and precision for persuasion.’

If we can align all parts of the OOH industry, and enlighten advertisers and agencies as to the possibilities, then we really do have a golden age ahead of us. www.outsmart.org.uk

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“NONE OF US IS AS GOOD AS ALL OF US”

FUTURES

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When will programmatic trading make an impact in OOH? Which environments have major transformations planned? We've mapped out the big events, investments, happenings and predictions that will shape the OOH market over the next five years

Eurozone re-enters recession Kinetic trials programmatic trading London hosts World Athletic and Paralympic Championships Mobile battery-life trebled National Rail contract tenders Heathrow contract assigned 100% voice activated smartphones launched AI drives 50% of all programmatic online 3D printed furniture downloads introduced

Kinetic trials automated ‘real time’ availability LU outdoor contract awarded Digital Roadside 6 sheets reach 2,500 ‘Night Tube’ launch Extra runway for Heathrow approved England lose in semi-finals of Euro 2016 Kinetic trials of automated trading Brazil Olympics and Paralympics London Mayoral election DX3 (replacing XTP) launches on Underground Government auctions 5G Spectrum Mobile accounts for 15% of online buys for 1st time VR headsets most wanted Christmas gift

FUTURES

Waterloo re-development completed Wireless re-charging of mobiles available on buses and trains London population exceeds 9m Crossrail 2 construction begins ‘Smart dust’ drives first DOOH display ‘Universal translation’ standard on smartphones Digital 6 sheets reach 20,000 25% of tube trains driverless Last diesel-fuelled car in Europe produced

Mineral mine goes into production on the Moon UK General Election 10m self-driving cars on the planet England lose in Euro 2020 semi-final South Korea hosts Winter Olympics

DNA-readers replace PIN numbers

Under-skin Contactless payment chips go on sale 2018 World Cup in Russia 5G rollout begins Driverless car lanes tested on UK motorways 1st holograph ads delivered to mobile Tfl trials WiFi enabled carriages on two tube lines Crossrail opens Neuro-gaming consoles top Xmas lists

ILLUSTRATION: Ben Edwards

Bobby Brittain Marketing Director Coca-Cola Great Britain Richard Jacobs UK Marketing Director Kinetic Worldwide

As one of the most famous brands in the world it’s fair to say The Coca-Cola Company knows a thing or two about marketing. And as one of the biggest supporters of OOH it’s fair to say Marketing Director Bobby Brittain knows a thing or two about our fabulous industry. Kinetic’s Richard Jacobs meets the man in charge of the Coca-Cola brand to chat about why he loves OOH and where he sees our industry heading.

OOH and I go way back. My first experience of OOH was a More O’Farrell site tour around Bristol in the early 90s.

That day I had my eyes properly opened to the possibilities.

The thing that really got me was realising that it’s literally a canvas, and what makes it such a transparent and appealing medium for me is, unlike TV or any other form of communication, it’s there for a while so boy does it have to be good.

You are held up to scrutiny for a number of days, weeks and sometimes longer and as a result it really interrogates the validity of your work.

What impact do you think OOH has on your brands?

Or in other words, why do you use OOH? The Coca-Cola Company’s commitment to OOH is pretty well known. It would be hard to imagine a summer or indeed Christmas occasion without there being a high preponderance of Coca-Cola OOH presence.

Not just for Coke though. Our portfolio as a whole really benefits from OOH. smartwater is a good example. It is a new brand and so the absolute presence, the salience of that brand, in our consumers' mind is paramount and OOH played a critical role in establishing that salience.

On top of that, (to reach people) at a point in their consumer journey, as near to the point of purchase as possible, including the proximity to the point of consumption, OOH is that much stronger than other media.

On smartwater this year we’ve nearly doubled the investment we’ve made in the OOH environment because we know it offers us all of the benefits of recency, driving real salience and brand awareness fundamentally and we know, because Millward Brown tells us, there’s a really strong correlation between the awareness we’re driving and the OOH medium.

How do you see OOH changing in the future? Are you looking forward to more digital OOH? How much do you value you classic static formats? Do you want to engage consumers directly using ibeacons for example?

I might be betraying my digital immigrant status here but I don’t want OOH to change altogether. I think it’s really important that it has permanence, giving it an almost appointment to view nature.

For some of our brands, Oasis would be a good example this year, we’ve adapted the medium for our own ends and played a few jokes with consumers and the industry. That was only possible because of the existence of a particularly well-known form of advertising, in this case the six sheet posters we refer to in our communication.

I don’t want to lose that appointment to view nature the way in which consumers are offered the permanence of the sites. Having said that, of course we’d like accountability and transparency of any media. So leveraging OOH’s competitive advantage of being close to the point of sale to drive even more transactions with great use of ibeacons is obviously one potential avenue of innovation.

There are some things that OOH does really well and I wouldn’t want to lose that.

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What do you love about Out of Home advertising?

FUTURES

“A really strong piece of OOH creative stands out in a way that I don’t think is possible in any other medium” What do you find most interesting about OOH? I’ve been a fan of the medium for over 20 years and I love the consumer scrutiny of the medium; there is nowhere to hide by definition.

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A really strong piece of OOH creative stands out in a way that I don’t think is possible in any other medium giving it a real creative edge. The creative possibilities are pretty much endless and some of the spectaculars that we’ve done recently are literally outstanding.

We talk a lot at Coca-Cola about

integrated marketing and while

we’re not unique in that I think

OOH is a medium that plays

very well to our portfolio of

media. It allows us to be truly

integrated. For example, as

part of the one brand approach

for the Coca-Cola family this

year, we branded 75 black cabs

across London. It’s a great piece of

OOH and it’s disruptive because in the main most cabs aren’t red and suddenly there’s 75 that are!

The additional benefit though is that once a week, every Wednesday, we sample at 3 degrees centigrade, Coca-Cola, Coke Zero, Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Life from those Taxis.

So, if you get into a Coca-Cola cab on a Wednesday you’ll get a free sample of one of those 4 products and that’s not something you get in any other medium. There’s a real living breathing experiential dimension there.

I think it’s a medium with boundless possibilities to be integrated with a wider campaign.

Do you have a favourite OOH format either personally or professionally? Is there one your brand couldn’t do without?

I’ve got two. One of course is the Piccadilly sign. Because of its iconic nature, its stature and because we’ve been associated with it for so many years and we’re such an integral part of that piece of OOH that it would have to be in my desert island OOH list.

The other one is 6-sheets because I think they are a literal canvas on which we should aspire to create modern day masterpieces. Ok, they are transient and have a short lifespan but, to use the Oasis example, they are there for entertainment, engagement and to make a connection with consumers, often at the point of purchase.

Our summer copy ‘you’re thirsty, we’ve got sales targets’ only works in a 6 sheet static environment near a point of purchase and as a result, it’s a valuable piece of our media armoury.

How do you see OOH fitting within the wider media mix? How do you see this changing in five years?

We have a significant commitment to OOH and we don’t see that changing. I don’t see OOH being usurped by any other medium, particularly digital because OOH does a different job.

It works for brands. Brands work on people. OOH works on people. An individual walks down the street, it’s very much an individual experience that I have with that medium and so for an FMCG brand of any description and especially Coca-Cola, that’s a relationship that’s there to last.

I think it has and certainly when we do a campaign of any description we will have a third party conduct a tracker for us on the entire campaign and all the channels we’ve used.

As a result, the learning that we get is actually more important from the perspective of the entire campaign rather than drilling into one particular medium and really critiquing that. It’s never only one particular medium we’re using so we’ll look at the whole ensemble rather than a particular piece.

But yes, obviously greater accountability and transparency is something that we welcome but only in the context of everything else we’re doing and that’s why having a third party like Millward Brown to give us the data is the approach that we’ll stick with.

Which technology or innovation is having/has had the biggest impact on your business?

It’s a fascinating question and I think inevitably I would say the Internet. Now I don’t think it’s been all good and I don’t think for FMCG brands it’s really been beneficial for transactional reasons either. But there’s obviously greater transparency and accountability that we as a brand now have because of the immediacy of consumer and stakeholder feedback and the dialogue we have with those parties in a way that didn’t exist 30 years ago. So I would say that it’s been the biggest changing factor over the last 20 or so years.

How has the talent changed in your teams over the last few years in terms of skills? Are people more data focussed, more creative, more insight biased?

Once upon a time, marketers at the Coca-Cola Company would have described themselves as spenders of money.

We’ve got a budget and our ambition is to get more money to spend and obviously make our brand metrics and brand health as strong as possible.

Those days are far behind us and we are no longer spenders of money. We’re makers of money and the commercial focus that we now have is critical and that means that everyone in my team has to be a general manager. They have to consider the commercial health of the business as much as the brand health because it’s only through the commercial scorecard that we really know we’re winning.

The conventional brand management approach is not enough and I encourage people to think about the making of money and that the investment of resources into making more money is the critical way to success.

What do you look for in an agency partner now vs five years ago and in five years time?

There are some values in any partner that are immutable and those are being really committed, both to our business and to their business. That commitment shows up in having a very strong point of view, having talent and not being afraid to say no to us as a client.

In other words, the last thing I want is for any agency partner or anyone in my team to say ‘yes’ because if that’s what’s being said then one of us is surplus to requirements and that’s not particularly good. So it’s having a really great, strong perspective and ensuring that we understand that point of view, particularly when it’s unpalatable.

It’s also having a specialism. Being known for something and doing it brilliantly is never going to go out of fashion!

Any final words for us?

I am a fan of the medium and the investment that we make is pretty big. It’s great working with Kinetic, it’s only been a year now since that relationship started and I think that it’s going really well.

The innovation we’ve done collectively is certainly something we’ll look to build on for next year and the number of brands from our portfolio using OOH just goes from strength to strength. More of the same next year please!

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Has increases in available data, e.g. social, geographic, online analytics, changed how you approach or view the role of OOH?

FUTURES

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how to Build your own hologram If you want to get in on the hologram action, we can vouch for the fact that it is easy to do and the result is mesmerising. We built the projector for our front cover using both the method and measurements opposite (which we sourced from Mrwhosetheboss on YouTube) as well as building a 6-sheet sized version with a little help from our friends at Russell Signs.

Here's what you need: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Graph paper A CD case (finding one of these in the office was actually one of the hardest parts) A pen Scissors A knife or glass cutter Tape or super glue A smartphone Step two.

Cut out the shape using your scissors. Then use this as a template to cut four identical rhombus shapes out of your CD case using your knife or glasscutter. To make it easier break off the sides of your CD case before you start cutting.

Step three.

Once you have cut out your pieces the next step is to tape or glue them together into the shape below.

A small open square should naturally form in the centre, and once they are firmly together you now have your very own hologram projector!

Step four.

Download a “hologram-specific video” such as this one (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uftu0RaIDkw), or search for “hologram video” on YouTube, press play and lay your smartphone down on a flat surface in a dark room. Place your projector so it is resting on the middle of the screen, sit back and watch the video come alive in magical 3D.

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Step one.

Grab your graph paper and draw a small rhombus shape with the dimensions, 10mm x 35mm x 60mm. It should look like this:

PICS: Mrwhosetheboss, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YWTtCsvgvg

About Kinetic Worldwide Our mission is to pull forward and make real the future possibilities of the world of Out of Home communication.

Fully owned by WPP and part of the tenthavenue performance marketing division, Kinetic’s expertise and insight helps deliver solutions for clients that seek to achieve ambitous brand and marketing goals.

We have an ongoing commitment to understanding and engaging with people on the move. Kinetic has developed centres of excellence in digital and aviation media, research, insight and data, mobile strategy and OOH printing and production.

We strive to maximise the impact of our clients’ investments by embodying a culture of restless creativity, data-centric planning, and the intelligent application of scale.

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Kinetic’s network reaches across the globe. From offices in 43 cities in 17 countries, we offer dedicated expertise in consultancy, planning and buying solutions and have developed strong partnerships with clients, agencies, suppliers, media owners and technologists.

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

Editorial Director Christy Johnston christy.johnston@kineticww.com Assistant Editors Sian Bateman Richard Jacobs CEO Stuart Taylor Staff Writers Sarah Harding Dominic Murray Jennie Sallows Rosh Singh Janice Tan Designer James Wadsworth Cover Image Ben Edwards Christina Smith Russell Signs Publication Consultant Forward Worldwide Printed by The Color Company

Kinetic 24 - 28 Bloomsbury Way London WC1A 2SL

@kineticwwUK #ThisConcernsYou