The World of OOH Advertising

OOH or outdoor advertising has been one of the oldest models and ways of brand promotion which has been widely adopted and used by various brand owners across the world in many creative ways. In India Outdoor Advertising has been synonymous with advertising itself. Outdoor advertising is no more confined to billboards. With consumerism on an unprecedented rise, and more and more brands bombarding the Indian market, outdoor advertising is all set to break the jumble of advertising in traditional mediums and fill in the gaps left by the other media.

First of all, it is no more outdoor advertising - it is out-of-home (OOH) with the addition of alternative innovative media like halogen projection balloons, dynamic interactive displays on the floor etc. And it promises good returns on investment.

According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers' report, the Indian OOH market is currently Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in size and will grow to Rs 2,150 crore (Rs 21.50 billion) by 2010, growing at 17 per cent per annum.

TV advertising is getting more and more expensive and less and less effective. Similar tendency is observed in other traditional media – radio, newspapers and magazines. Advertisers are getting frustrated and turn to modern outdoor advertising for consolation. For the past decade the outdoor advertising has drastically changed for the better, became technically advanced and offers new opportunities for advertisers.

The TV is no longer attracting working and active people: their attention is split between dozens of channels and the Internet. Therefore, TV has lost a large part of its luster in respect to delivering an advertising message to the final consumer.

On the other hand, Out-of-Home advertising does not have buttons to change channels or mute the sound, it works 24-7 and theoretically fills all public spaces and takes every imaginable form. In literature on the subject it has long been named “advertising you cannot avoid”. Not surprisingly, these are attractive qualities from advertisers’ point of view. Parts of consumers vocally protest against all-pervasive outdoor advertising and clever advertisers are utilizing this protest while planning new advertising campaigns.

New technology comes to help. The choice of instruments is enormous: from ideal modern color printing to full-color LED advertising screens and sign boards. The way to present advertising materials is of critical importance as well: entertainment, humor, elements of eroticism, paradoxical and unusual presentation, combination of advertising and useful social information, offer of discounts and gifts – these are just a few methods in the long list of contrivances that are meant to attract our attention. Advertisers are spending a lot of money on designing new ways to motivate people to look at the advertising messages they deliver.

Below are some of the avenues of OOH advertising. The list is certainly not exhaustive

• Advertising in the air: on balloons, and small dirigible airships
• In cinemas: over the fringe of the screen, LCD panels in halls etc.
• On various inflatable carriers and structures
• In pedestrian zones: networks of LCD panels, on kiosks, large boards and banners
• Advertising in shops: in restrooms, on cashiers’ machines, on product trolleys, on plastic bags, on coffee cups, on the floor etc.
• Advertising in the stadiums: on safety barriers, on message boards, on seats, in dressing rooms, on all kinds of banners and billboards
• Accompanying advertising: on telephone booths, on passenger sheds near transport stops, on light poles
• Advertising at filling stations: displays on the pillars, stickers of all sorts, messages on parking barriers etc.
• official graffiti-walls
• drawings on pavements
• umbrellas and painted kiosks
• sculptures of sand
• advertising on ski-lifts
• on envelopes and book covers

Some really out of the box examples of OOH:

World’s First Edible Chocolate Billboard

The world’s first edible chocolate billboard didn’t last long. Thorntons, a British chocolate company, unveiled an 860-lb, 14.5ft – 9ft billboard made with 10 chocolate bunnies, 72 giant chocolate eggs and 128 chocolate panels in London in 2007. The billboard was consumed by shoppers within three hours of going up.

Sony PSP Transparent Billboards

Adventure is anywhere, these billboards seem to say – any ordinary place could be the setting for a range of exciting activities when you’ve got a Sony PSP. Unfortunately, these were not real Sony billboards but a clever concept created by an advertising student.

Cingular Drops Calls

Cingular turned consumers’ biggest complaint about cellular phone service into a gigantic Times Square advertisement featuring a cutout of the word ‘calls’ on the ground below the billboard.

Heineken Hand

What would be an extremely simple and perhaps boring billboard otherwise is transformed into something memorable by the addition of a three-dimensional hand reaching from behind in an attempt to grab the bottle of Heineken.

Impressive optical illusion ambient ad by Colombia based ad agency Ogilvy & Mather.

Company benefited - 'Hot Wheels', the iconic toy car manufacturer.

'Ambush Marketing Strategy' through OOH

Smart advertising idea by a casino in Goa. They converted a luggage carousel at the Goa airport into a roulette table!

Adidas World Cup

Adidas was clearly very excited for the 2006 World Cup when they unveiled a series of billboard ads so attention-grabbing, they risked causing accidents. This particular billboard depicts a soccer player – or football player, if you’re outside the U.S. – stretching over a road like a mythological giant.

Bic Shaves the Grass

It must be tough to come up with a creative ad campaign for disposable razors – after all, how many times can you show a man’s smooth hairless face and still get people to notice? This billboard takes a different tack, with a giant razor seemingly giving a stretch of grass a nice close shave.

McDonald’s Billboard Sundial

What time is it? Pancake-o’-clock, if you go by this incredibly creative billboard ‘sundial’, installed by fast food giant McDonalds in Chicago in 2006. The Leo Burnett ad agency commissioned for the project worked with an engineer to choose the best possible location to achieve the best effect, with an aluminum replica of the iconic golden arches casting its shadow over a certain menu item each hour.

Source: http://weburbanist.com/2010/01/11/creative-billboard-advertising-campaigns/

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