Freedom Day — an update for OOH?
Back in 2020 we released a review of how OOH (out of home) ads were doing while the world was trapped inside. While some companies used the time to experiment with OOH ads, doing something different that might get talked about, many companies clearly didn’t know what to do with longstanding outside advertising contracts that would be seen by a handful of people at most.
However, now that the UK has reached ‘Freedom Day’ — the day when the government rightly or wrongly removed all pandemic restrictions — what has this meant for OOH advertising?
Speaking to The Drum, Talon Outdoor chief client officer Luke Willbourn has observed a “really positive return to market from brands across the summer”. According to Willbourn specifically digital OOH revenue at Talon is at around 60%, while “traditional sites remain crucial as we find audiences still active locally.”
This mixture of digital and OOH advertising still seems as crucial now as it was last year — in part due to the speed at which governments are making lockdown, or freedom, decisions. Most OOH, and indeed general advertising, campaigns are designed and planned months in advance. The UK’s ‘Freedom Day was only announced about 2 weeks before its July 19th date, leaving very little time for new advertising.
“The first few months will be interesting, as some businesses move to a hybrid model of working from home and from the office, but already we are seeing an increase in commuter travel, and with audiences increasingly on the go, brands will need to be incorporating digital OOH into their marketing mix.” — Johnny Whitehead, board director, Skyrise Intelligence.
With all this uncertainty, and the need for ads that have a life beyond their billboards, its no wonder that storytelling is one of the key trends in 2021 OOH advertising.
Anna Smotrikova of Movia Media explores this in more detail — ‘people are looking for even more compelling stories to engage with, learn something new, or simply to just entertain them while they’re stuck in lockdown. This is exactly why the art of storytelling has drastically increased in the past few months and will continue to do so over the course of this year.’ Like, perhaps, the giant 3D cat making waves in Japan!
The 1,664-square-foot curved LED screen in the Shinjuku district is, frankly, a little terrifying, but thanks to its other-worldly appearance (and I guess the internet’s love of cats) this billboard is everywhere.
While most brands probably don’t quite have the budget for this kind of advertising, it speaks to a wider trend, that has continued from last year — get people talking. That way, even if hardly anyone sees it in person — because you misjudged when freedom day is or because we *touch wood* have gone back into lockdown — plenty of people will see it on Twitter.
