Some doom mongerers might believe that this rise in innovative digital messaging is another nail in the coffin for printed outdoor advertising. But that’s not necessarily the case. Indeed, many marketers would argue that rather than kill off printed posters what digital has done is heralded a new era of creativity for traditional outdoor print. 

It’s no longer enough just to stick ink on paper and hope that passers-by will take on board the marketing message. Marketers and their print partners, both in the UK and overseas, are increasingly thinking ‘outside the box’ to conjure up print advertising campaigns that drive engagement and create cut through.

Take the example of Carlsberg. Earlier this year it tasked a team of agencies – advertising, media, PR and social – to come up with a campaign and define a “detailed amplification strategy” for ‘Probably the best poster in the world’ – a traditional billboard poster with a twist. 

“Carlsberg is famously known as ‘probably the best lager in the world’ so if Carlsberg did posters they would probably be the best in the world, and would serve beer,” says Dharmesh Rana, senior brand manager at Carlsberg UK.

The prospect of creating the world’s first beer-dispensing billboard wasn’t without its logistical challenges, recalls Lorna Boag, account director at Fold7, which came up with the creative concept alongside branding agency Mission Media, which oversaw the creation of the billboard structure. The first thing the agencies had to do was create a special build site to house the printed campaign for a number of different reasons, says Boag.

“We needed to use private land due to licensing restrictions with council sites, media owners would not allow us to re-purpose an existing site due to regulations and agreements with the council and digital screens would not have allowed us to build the fount,” she recalls. 

Banking on beer

The creative team also had to have a Carlsberg fount specially made to ensure the pouring mechanism worked when facing the consumer. Then there was the issue of ensuring that no one poured a drink who was under the age of 18. When the poster was unveiled at the Old Truman Brewery, in Brick Lane, London, in April this year, usage was restricted through the deployment of plain-clothed security staff who operated a ‘challenge under-25’ policy.

When the poster went live the free Carlsberg beer dispensed by ‘Probably the best poster in the world’ went down a storm with Londoners with hordes of people queuing up for a pint. It also proved a major hit globally. Thanks to the use of digital and social media channels the poster ultimately reached 60 million consumers around the world, with more than 30 million ‘impressions’ on social media channels.

According to Rana, the investment required in producing a straightforward outdoor campaign to achieve the same level of reach would have been far too cost-prohibitive. 

“By creating an experience that consumers were willing to share we maximised our reach and created a piece of viral activity that travelled globally,” he says.

Energy drink brand Powerade achieved similar global cut through to Carlsberg when its ‘workout’ billboards went viral in April this year. The company appointed Ogilvy & Mather Werbeagentur in Berlin to devise an eye-catching outdoor sampling campaign for its drinks.

“They wanted a sampling with meaning, not just a distribution of Powerade bottles,” recalls Tim Stuebane, executive creative director at Ogilvy & Mather Werbeagentur. “People should get a feeling of the brand’s positioning – ‘you are stronger than you think,’ physically. But it shouldn’t be just a promo.”   

So the agency came up with the ingenious concept of creating billboards that enabled pedestrians to work out on the street. 

“It was inspired by an old billboard idea we had for Fanta,” says Stuebane. “There we wanted to run outdoor posters into playground elements, but there was always something special missing – it wasn’t good enough. Then the Powerade brief came in and we thought ‘why not turn billboards into training machines?’”

The creative team came up with three different interactive workout billboards – a rock climbing wall, a ‘punch-meter’ and a pulley bar. These had to be built from scratch.

“At first we thought we could adapt existing ones, but we found out that things became much more complicated by trying to do so,” Stuebane explains. “But then we faced another problem: these specially built boards had to have a certain weight to be able to stand up against strong winds and people using them. And on the other hand we had to move them from town to town, so we built modules that fit into a van and could be put together at each location.” 

The interactive ads were set up across three cities in Germany, with people encouraged to undertake a quick workout on the billboard and in return receive a free drink from a Powerade representative to help them cool down. 

Although this was predominantly a print campaign Stuebane says that it organically became a digital one thanks to the YouTube videos, social media chatter, blog and press coverage that it garnered. “That’s what happens automatically with good ideas – they get viral,” he adds.

It’s a view shared by Carlsberg’s Rana who says that there are a number of different factors that brand owners and marketers need to take into consideration to ensure their campaigns are successful. 

“Interactive outdoor campaigns tend to be standalone pieces of activity so it’s essential to try and achieve brand awareness above and beyond those who have the opportunity to engage with the activity while it’s live,” says Rana. 

This is where digital channels and social media can really complement and help to heighten awareness of cutting-edge creative campaigns, with people tweeting images and/or sharing video content on Facebook or YouTube simply because they like something. 

And that’s ultimately because “consumers value experiences,” says Rana. “By creating an experience that is out of the ordinary, such as a beer-dispensing billboard, consumers are naturally more engaged than they would be with a standard communication. These pieces of activity create social currency and consumers are happy to share their experience.”

Different strengths

That’s not to say that print is always going to be the medium of choice for marketers looking to deliver an interactive campaign. While print may provide a great way of delivering consumer experiences there are some examples where digital screens are going to be more effective than printed equivalents.   

“Digital is fantastic,” says David Nicholas, managing director at digital large-format specialist Fosco Hayes Hurdley. “It looks great and you can obviously be so creative with moving images in a way that you can’t with a static print. Digital clearly has eaten into the print market and I am sure it will continue to.” 

Nicholas foresees a strong future for printed outdoor “until the day comes when digital screens are more cost-effective to companies to mass install them on their sites and of course this doesn’t suit every site that’s out there. This may happen in the future, but not in the near  future. Print is also always becoming more competitive, print quality and colour vibrancy are continually getting better”.

It’s also worth pointing out that interactive outdoor advertising campaigns such as those outlined above wouldn’t have been possible using digital screens, which is why Stuebane is optimistic that printed billboards will survive the current digital onslaught.

“Print will have a future because it’s real,” he explains. “And in reality you can do things that you can’t do digitally, and vice versa of course. But print has to deliver that additional value of real-life experience that digital cannot deliver. Otherwise for most brands it will be more efficient to invest in online display advertising with good targeting.”

So as long as printed outdoor campaigns continue to deliver these ‘real life experiences’ and drive higher levels of engagement, they appear to have a long future ahead of them. 

Digital distractions: creative outdoor digital campaigns of 2015

Yawning is contagious. According to research conducted by New York State University, 70% of people yawn when they see someone else yawning. That’s why agency Lew Lora/TBWA came up with a playful ‘contagious billboard’ to advertise coffee brand Café Pele, in Brazil. A live-action display fitted with a hidden motion sensor triggers a man on the screen to start yawning. The more people who walk past the screen the more the man yawns and in theory he causes passers-by to yawn.  After reaching a critical mass of contagious yawning a message on the screen pops up saying ‘Did you yawn too? It’s time for coffee’, which is the cue for Café Pele representatives to appear and hand out free shots of espresso.

Even for seasoned drivers parallel parking can still be tricky. To highlight this fact and showcase the rear mounted parking assistant fitted to the Fiat 500, creative agency Leo Burnett came up with an animated billboard that helps people park. In a space opposite a specially erected billboard a car was fitted with Fiat’s ultrasonic parking assist sensors, as was the poster itself, which allowed the billboard to monitor a car’s position within the space as someone attempted to park. This manoeuvring triggered a series of characters to appear on the billboard and show the driver of the car – using the width of their arms – how much available space they have behind them. People who park successfully get a thumbs up from the parking ‘assistant’.   

Facial recognition technology is increasingly being used by marketers to deliver targeted messaging – earlier this year one German beer company created an animated advert that was only activated when it detected the presence of a woman. On a more ambitious scale, UK charity Women’s Aid wanted to raise awareness of the plight facing abused women by creating a poster that featured the picture of a victim with a bruised face. A camera hooked up to facial recognition software scanned the audience and when it detected someone had stared at the advert for long enough the bruises visibly started to heal. The screen also featured a timer to show how many people had stared for long enough to activate the healing process.