Socially Interactive Outdoor

Much has been made of Outdoor’s natural affinity with mobile, people are out of home, they see posters, have a mobile and they can be prompted to interact. Going back only five years, a century in tech time, Blue-tooth was the channel of buzz, with lots of talk about how people would download film clips, photos and other multi-media. Handset compatibilities and network limitations made Bluetooth campaigns hard to set-up and manage and the experience was in the main extremely people unfriendly. As time has gone by mobiles have become powerful pocket computers and people are used to downloading software and smartphones. Apps are now mass-market. NFC is currently high on the hype curve, although little has yet been demonstrated where business needs match what the technology can deliver, and people want. What has risen rapidly up the media and communications agenda is social media - Facebook, Twitter and Youtube have millions of people using their services daily, as well as Foursquare which promotes the concept of location check-ins - gimmicky perhaps but it seems some people aspire to be the digital mayor of their local Domino’s Pizza. Although it’s still early days it’s also apparent many advertisers and brands are keen to run socially enabled campaigns to generate PR, social buzz (word-of-mouth) and test levels of interaction. Here we highlight some interactive and social campaigns that have caught our attention. The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) wanted to raise awareness about how people can intervene to stop domestic violence. Using the eMotion poster advertising screens at Euston station people were encouraged to use their mobiles to interact with the screens and drag away a man haranguing a woman causing him to move away across the adjoining screens. Europcar ran an outdoor media campaign promoting their hire car delivery and collection service which could “save an hour in your day.” The campaign was based on a Twitter stream #myextrahour where people described what they would do with the hour they gained. The tweets were shown across JCDecaux’s D6 network and on the “i” digital site on Cromwell Road. As part of Nike’s multimedia campaign with top UK athletes they wanted to inspire people to make their own pledges under the #makeitcount initiative. Shoppers at the Nike store at Westfield Stratford could have their picture taken by a professional photographer and hand-write a pledge on how to better themselves. Photos and messages were then beamed across CBS Outdoor’s 100 LCD digital screens at the shopping centre. To celebrate the global nature of the UEFA Champions League Final, Heineken UK ran an integrated social media and digital out of home (DOOH) campaign to capture the global conversation inspired by one of the largest annual sporting events in the world. The Twitter powered world map dominated digital out of home sites across London and encouraged people to “Feed the Tweet Map.” Traditional Outdoor will continue to deliver for brands looking for broadcast, targeted and proximity communication but there is no doubt we will also see a more socially interactive world of digital out of home. Bio Talon Outdoor is the only independently owned out of home media specialist. It offers a fresh approach to the planning and buying of all outdoor media, including poster advertising, bus advertising and tube advertising.