EUROPE NEWS

UK: Modern Britain bought to life through outdoor ads takeover

Outdoor advertising space across the UK will be taken over by photographs of contemporary British life for the second Portrait of Britain exhibition.

Starting on 1 September and running for the rest of the month, the photos will be displayed on JCDecaux’s digital screens at Heathrow Airport, rail stations, shopping malls and high streets around the country.

The British Journal of Photography launched the project with JCDecaux and Nikon to showcase amateur and professional photographers and capture “the face of modern Britain”.

The 100 winning portraits, selected from nearly 8,000 entries, feature people such as a survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire, grime artist Skepta, the playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard, a drag queen, and a septuagenarian surfer on a Cornish beach.

Italy: Gucci is taking over the walls of New York & Milan to launch new fragrance

The global fashion brand has collaborated with Spanish artist Ignasi Monreal for a series of unique art installations for "Gucci Bloom"

Fashion behemoth Gucci has unveiled a new wall art project in New York and Milan to create buzz for the launch of its new fragrance—Gucci Bloom.

A special partnership between Gucci and the artist Ignasi Monreal sees the Spaniard create two unique artwork installations—one, on the 760-square-meter wall on Lafayette Street in New York City’s SoHo neighbourhood, and the other on the 176-square-meter wall in Milan’s Largo la Foppa, in the district of Corso Garibaldi.

Over the years, these districts have become regular canvasses for the fashion house’s collaborations with artists. In depicting his interpretation of the Gucci Bloom urban garden concept, Monreal’s designs feature a giant rendition of Gucci Bloom’s pink fragrance bottle and its box-packaging adorned with the Herbarium pattern.

The tableau also has echoes of the Dutch Vanitas genre of still-life painting of the 17th century

UK: Pulse Creative exec talks candidly on how great advertising content can be found outside the mobile screen

Pulse Creative's, executive creative director, Robin Garton has outlined that by informing, entertaining and giving the audience quick, effective pieces of content, in the form of posters, it could lift the rose-tinted glasses where people see online as content's only source.

Before taking on the role as a judge for The Drum Creative Out Of Home Awards, Garton talks ardently about content and advertising merging, how OOH posters are a “simplistic expression of an advertising idea” and how print OOH isn't the ‘dying medium’ it is perceived to be.

What is innovating OOH this year?

We have started to treat OOH as more of a content piece of media. Content and advertising are increasingly merging, but a lot of content led work tends to be online as that's where people believe it lives. But, there’s always been the option of using traditional media to provide entertaining content.

UK: Creative experts line up to judge digital out of home contest

Anna Carpen, executive creative director at 18 Feet & Rising, Aaron Goldring, executive creative director at Partners Andrews Aldridge and Neil Richardson, creative director at Leo Burnett will be joining the judging line-up for the out of home Digital Creative Competition run by Ocean Outdoor, in partnership with Campaign.

A 16-strong panel will select the best digital OOH ideas for campaigns that Ocean can bring to life on its screens in the UK or via The Alliance network in Madrid, New York and the Far East (Hong Kong). Brands, agencies and creative teams have until September 8th to enter the free competition with a chance to share in the prize fund of £650,000 in media space.

Winners will be announced at a ceremony at the IMAX in London on October 5th.

Germany: JCDecaux OneWorld opens a new office in Munich

JCDecaux OneWorld opens a new office in Munich and appoints Henning Heckel as International Client Services Director for the Germany / Austria / Switzerland region

JCDecaux SA has announced the opening of a new JCDecaux OneWorld office. The new branch is located in Munich and covers German speaking international customers based in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The opening of Munich is the newest addition to a network of branch offices that spans around the globe, with London, Paris, New York, Shanghai and San Francisco. This is a new location created within JCDecaux OneWorld, the division that provides international sales and marketing support for clients, media and advertising agencies in more than 75 markets where the Group operates.

Switzerland: The 2018 Out of Home Media offering from APG|SGA: new and optimized advertising spaces and the highest-footfall digital networks in Switzerland

From 9 October 2017, Out of Home Media campaigns and new offerings from APG|SGA can be booked for the first half of 2018. New features include additional digital screens and expanded digital networks throughout Switzerland, a stronger presence in railway stations, cities and shopping centres, and an optimized analogue range. APG|SGA has enhanced its Out of Home offering, which now boasts new network options.

The advertising media portfolio has been expanded in city centres, railway stations and shopping centres in particular. 2018 will also see the provision of extended digital networks. This bundling of selected advertising spaces offers advertisers enhanced efficiency and a wide coverage of areas – from city centres to conurbations.

Malta: A ban on billboards?

David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising, said, “Man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard”. A public consultation exercise on billboards and advertising was carried out earlier this year.

The first sentence in this exercise claimed that the display of outdoor advertising is a common feature of commercial activity. Thankfully, the consultation document did acknowledge that a balance had to be reached between the need to protect the environment and the commercial interest of advertisers to promote their products and services in the most prominent places.

But nobody seems to have questioned whether, in this day of social media, we need billboards at all to communicate with consumers. Now that regulations have been published, apparently allowing more billboards along one of the most scenic roads in Malta, I would like to reiterate that the elements on either side of the balance are not equal, and therefore the ‘balance’ ought to be weighted in favour of the defence of the environment.

UK: O2 runs 'broken' billboards to show off screen replacement offer

Mobile brand O2 dialled in plenty of attention last week when it placed five apparently broken billboards across the country to create buzz around its offer of free screen replacment on new phones.

The stunt involved buying four modified billboards in London and one in Liverpool – some have been surrounded by safety barriers to heighten the 'accidental' feel.

USA: What’s Next? Big Things Happening in OOH

Nancy Fletcher OAAA President and CEO

OAAA’s fall calendar is loaded with new benefits to help you sell, manage, and promote OOH advertising. In October, Nielsen will release new research that shows how OOH activates online advertising. This is the next phase of Nielsen research, building on its recent study that shows how OOH activates mobile media compared to other offline media.

Meanwhile, OAAA continues to take the OOH story directly to ad agencies and planners. OAAA’s Steve Nicklin will visit agencies in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Providence, and San Francisco.

Likewise, I will present at the Independent Billboard Operators’ Conference in St. Louis (IBOUSA, September 27-29), and my OAAA colleagues are presenting at state association meetings during the balance of the year.

USA: Now This is Media Engagement: Strategist Proposes Using Out-of-Home

Here's the brief: Convince a former out-of-home media strategist to marry you.

The execution? Splash your love across a New York Times front page, a Times Square billboard, LinkNYC kiosks and the side of a bus. Zenith Senior VP-Strategy Evan Kory started dating fiancée, Horizon Media talent acquisition partner Alli Grabell, after they worked together at Horizon and played on the company's tennis team. So for Kory, it made sense that his proposal come in the form of a video revisiting media spots across the city where the couple reconnected more than 20 years after attending preschool together in New Jersey (a fact they didn't uncover until they'd begun dating.)

The video shows the future groom going about his day while being bombarded by reminders of his relationship with Grabell on a New York Times front page he picks up at a food cart, an ad on a Pandora station, and more.

USA: Smartlink controls billboards during eclipse

Billboard Insider has written before about the benefits of using SmartLink to remotely control the illumination on your boards. One of the benefits of the SmartLink system is that you can remotely set your illumination schedules from anywhere simply on your cell phone.

Here’s an actual Lamar board which is equipped with SmartLink. During the eclipse, the lights were scheduled to come on at 1:15pm and then turn off at 1:45pm. Before SmartLink, operations would have had to manually visit each location to accomplish this feat. Insider talked with Smartlink’s Vice President and General Manager Franklin Olive.

Did Lamar make the eclipse adjustment to all its signs?

The SmartLink illumination schedules were only set for the Nashville, TN market. Nashville was one of the major cities along the eclipse path of totality. SmartLink reached out to Denise Shewmake, Lamar Vice President and Territory Manager for Nashville, and she was equally excited to showcase the SmartLink technology.

Australia: APN Outdoor reaches 2017 goal of 100 Elite Screens

APN Outdoor has exceeded its anticipated goal of reaching 100 digital billboards by 2017.

In a number that is unsurpassed by any Outdoor Media company in Australia, APN Outdoor has announced they have reached and exceeded their anticipated goal of reaching 100 Digital Billboards by 2017. The digital out-of-home heavyweights confirmed the news this morning, with the exponential growth being attributed to a number of notable additions across the country in recent months. The Elite Screens portfolio of digital billboards reaches over 65% of the general population and engages a staggering 10 million contacts every month.

The lead up to this milestone has seen the continuous and strategic growth of APN Outdoor’s Elite Screen portfolio in all markets, with a focus on high quality screens in premium locations. Expansion includes expansion into regional Queensland and a series of Billboards due to be converted to digital sites following the company’s retention of the Tullamarine Freeway contract. Rounding out the century of Elite Screens is the commanding Heyington Overpass site, located on Melbourne’s busy South Eastern Freeway.

Australia: oOh!media Unveils World-first Transactional Data Campaign For Cadbury

oOh!media has announced the launch of the latest campaign for Cadbury Favourites using the world’s first optimised planning solution to harness real transactional data.

The campaign is the result of oOh!’s exclusive partnership with Australia’s largest data analytics company, Quantium. Using ‘oOh! Insight powered by Quantium’, Cadbury Favourites will be able to more effectively target those identified, based on transactional behaviour, as having a greater propensity to purchase for social occasions.

This optimised approach means the campaign will now reach more than 15 per cent more of this valuable audience than would traditionally have been possible.

Brendon Cook, CEO of oOh!, said Mondelez International’s latest campaign for Cadbury Favourites was a game-changer for not only the out-of-home industry, but for how media is planned and bought.

Australia: Adshel CMO: Why Relevance Is Adland’s New Engagement Currency

In this guest post, Adshel’s head of marketing, Charlotte Valente says “being relevant” now pervades all parts of our lives and it should be true for the advertising industry, too…

I have been thinking a lot recently about relevance. I know, doesn’t seem like much, yet I believe it is the key to engagement. If something is relevant to you, aren’t you more likely to pay attention?

I lead the marketing team at Adshel, a leading out-of-home media company that has an aggressive digital growth strategy, and recently I have been thinking a lot about our digital proposition and its link to engaging audiences at scale.

When we launched Adshel Live, the world’s first national digital street furniture network, we developed a distinct value proposition that clearly defined the value digital out-of-home offers – contextual relevance and dynamic messaging being two. In fact, Adshel Live is ‘relevance at scale’.

Lebanon: MEREO optimizes Pikasso's revenue

Beginning in June 2017, MEREO has supported PIKASSO in optimizing its revenues and satisfying its customers in the various segments and markets covered by PIKASSO.

This work covers the analysis of sales data, the structure of the offer, business processes, and the implementation of software solutions to optimize the created value.

PIKASSO is the leading outdoor advertising company in the Middle East and North Africa. Based in Beirut since 1986, PIKASSO is present in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia and Mali. MEREO is the world leader in revenue opimization / Yield Management on traditional outdoor advertising (OOH) and Digital (DOOH).

Antonio Vincenti, CEO of PIKASSO says; "Our cooperation with MEREO is intended to provide our sales team with the needed new tools to optimize our offering, and therefore our revenue in those times of uncertainty.”

AFRICA NEWS

South Africa: Real world metrics for real world impact

Imagine sitting a maths exam where marks were awarded for how neatly you drew your graphs. As a marking system, it would be useless: Your teachers would be none the wiser about your abilities with numbers and instead gain an unwanted insight into your art skills.

The same applies for campaigns that are measured against any metric except what the marketer is ultimately trying to achieve. If a campaign’s aims and the metrics by which it will be measured are not in perfect alignment, then the results will simply tell the wrong story. Sometimes, the matter of measurement is easy.

For a publisher with an email newsletter, the choice might be between open or click-through rates. But for more complex campaigns that harness location data, doubts persist about best practice for measuring success – so below, we’ve given a rundown.

South Africa: Primedia Outdoor partners with AAA School of Advertising

Primedia Outdoor and the AAA School of Advertising have partnered with the aim of helping bolster education in the media and advertising industries of South Africa.

The partnership will result in four students from disadvantaged backgrounds being granted scholarships for full-time study (up to three years), commencing in 2018, at the AAA School of Advertising. Students will be able to apply for either a bachelor of arts (BA) in marketing communication or a BA in creative brand communication degrees.

The school offers students the opportunity to learn from professionals in the advertising, marketing, and communications industries. The partnership also means that staff members of Primedia Outdoor can refresh their skills by attending short courses that range from analytical and financial decision making to creativity and problem solving.

India: How badly was the OOH sector hit during #MumbaiRains?

India's financial capital, Mumbai, came to a standstill on Tuesday due to torrential rains. It was being compared to the infamous July 26 deluge back in 2005. As most businesses grappled with nature's fury, the outdoor sector found itself in the eye of the storm. Almost fully dependent on business inventory exposed to the elements, it was noteworthy to see how OOH agencies and media owners handled the situation.

Historically, the OOH sector sees a drop of 15-20 per cent revenue during the monsoon season in Mumbai due to fear of high rainfall and the associated disruption of services and damage to outdoor inventory. Sharath Chandra, President at Times OOH, told us that there was some damage to hoardings and flexes, however, this did not escalate to structural damage.

“Mumbai is perhaps the only city where we see heavy rains for an extended period so we are usually quite prepared for it. In case there is a situation where we cannot do anything, we inform the agencies and clients and they are on the same page,” he said. Incidentally, Times OOH handles advertising both inside and in the immediate premises of the Mumbai International Airport.

FEPE OOH News 7th September 2017