Ooh Media boss challenges marketers to move away from outdoor stunts and embrace digital
The CEO of outdoor company Ooh Media has challenged marketers and their agencies to think about outdoor advertising for more than just public relations stunts.
Speaking at a media launch for Ooh Media’s new interactive retail panels, Brendon Cook argued too many marketers/agencies saw out of home digital panels as an opportunity to try and “go viral”, without realising the potential to reach a mass audience on the panels themselves.
Citing the success of the Pepsi unbelievable bus shelters campaign in the UK Cook said: “When you look at the great things being done around the world, including in Australia, often they are just stunts.
“(Pepsi bus shelters) was done on just one bus shelter. Pepsi didn’t even buy a campaign on bus shelters and that never made sense when all this technology is enabling us to think differently.”
Cook was promoting Ooh’s 50 new Excite interactive panels that are being rolled out at shopping centres across the country and which combine multi-touch screens, gesture control, voice recognition, web-cams, Wi-Fi, and audio into the one digital retail panel.
“(One off campaigns) are quite expensive programs to put together around one creative idea and then, if you are the client, you are hoping to god it will go viral,” he said.
“We have been talking to marketers about where there would be interactive capabilities. There are opportunities for consumers to engage with brands and what would you create to give them the most opportunity to change the way they could create quickly and on scale.”
Challenged on whether 50 new interactive digital retail panels were enough to deliver brands the scale and reach they wanted Cook noted that there eventual plan was to get to 300 interactive panels.
“300 is real scale when you look at it in terms of audience reach when mixed with other things,” said Cook who noted that many clients were buying the panels as part of a broader offering.
“The product is the driver of an integrated campaign,” he said. “A client will buy for example 450 (static) signs, they are buying digital and they are buying the Excite panels. They are buying a full engagement to deliver mass reach.”
Asked whether creative agencies need to do more in terms of creating campaigns tailored to these interactive digital panels Cook said: “The creative industry also has to be able to showcase what this technology can do.
“We have taken on the mantle to do that and the campaigns that are all coming up have been the marketer, creative agency and media agency all collaborating.”
On the question of whether Ooh was getting the right premium from marketers and their media agencies for these new digital panels Cook deflected the question, but noted that the challenge was to sell the potential of the more immersive experience.
“Our job is to show them the potential but then it’s their job to take that and turn it into gold,” said Cook.
“We are starting to see some really strong engagement but part of the challenge has been that the scale wasn’t there for them to do it. ”
Cook said they would start 50 excite panels before scaling up.
“We will know how far we are going to roll this out by the middle of next year. We can move pretty quickly.”
Nic Christensen
Whilst Cook has a point, the reality is most of these outdoor panels are white noise.
Given the average person is exposed to 3,000 messages a day, it’s fucking hard to stand out with a panel.
That’s why brands are trying to create more experience-based comms. It makes sense. Engage people less times but with more impact
The analogy I’ll use is if I’m trying to pick a girl up at a bar, if i just stand there with a cool leather jacket and look at her, i may not get her attention. There are plenty of other joes everywhere. If i talk to her and actually get her involved, then i’m more likely to take her home. Tenuous link but you get my point.
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I saw one of these new interactive panels last week at Chadstone. It was promoting a film and had a game for children. It was a forlorn sight. I ate my meal and watched countless hundreds of people walk past with kids for 30mins during lunch hour.
The one thing stunts have is street teams to engage people – sure they’re annoying but they break the barrier and rope people on. A large advertising unit in a public space no matter how great the visual stimulus on it, does not facilitate human interaction well. Immersive as the content may be, the actual hurdle is the unit. It’s not interaction friendly.
Marketers, stick to your street teams.
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@ Chadstone.
Another words – no one wants to look like a d#ck in public.
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