Outdoor advertising is back and looking good!
It’s going digital with an explosion in creativity.
Over the past months, several outdoor campaigns have caught my attention (it’s been a while since that has happened).
This can be very exciting for aged care and retirement village marketers who want to advertise ‘locally’.
Outdoor takes on many forms including installation pieces, events and of course billboards, street furniture and bus backs.
The advertiser take up is turning into money and action. Major outdoors media group oOh! Media just announced a 16% revenue growth compared to 12 months ago. They have 8,000 digital panels across Australia/New Zealand and 12,000 classic panels.
Now they are buying their competitor Adshell for $570M who have 13,000 street furniture installations (bus shelters, benches, phone booths, escalators), 3,500 digital screens and 2,000 7-Eleven panels.
The excitement is about creativity that digital allows.
Fast food outlets are no strangers to outdoor advertising and I apologise in advance for my three examples if you’re hungry (or scared of clowns).
Burger King’s recent outdoor campaign “come as a clown, eat like a king” promised to give a free Whopper to anyone that came to their restaurant dressed as a clown.
Yes, it was the intention to poke fun at McDonalds’ mascot Ronald.
McDonalds also recently held a creative outdoor campaign utilising the traditional billboard in a not so traditional way … the “follow the arches campaign” cleverly cropped the golden arches into directional arrows pointing customers in the direction of the closest McDonalds. A huge job as each of the billboards had to be customised depending on its location to nearby restaurant.
KFC stuck with the basics, using traditional billboards but focused on fantastic creative. Swapping out explosions for images of the chicken, presenting KFC’s Hot and Spicy chicken to that of a real-life fireball. A simple, universally understood campaign.
Retirement villages and aged care our partners in the local community. Doesn’t it make sense to market ourselves locally? Now we can – creatively.
Allison
