OPEN 2

TELL ME A STORY
Andy Lark, Founder & Chief Executive Officer,
Group Lark
...
Few start with it. Even fewer end with it.
Most include it – more or less. But rarely
does anyone start with it and let it dominate.
That’s how it’s always been with Out-of-
Home (OOH) advertising.
Some of the most memorable campaigns,
however, launched alongside Australia’s roads,
inside bus shelters and atop our buildings, teach
us that OOH is more than just part of the mix;
a checkbox to tick in effective planning. They
underscore that OOH can be the starting point
– or even the entire platform – for the creative
idea and campaign.
Who can’t recall the roadside image of
the kid’s eyes bleeding in the rain to emphasise
the need for driving safely in the rain? Or,
for us Kiwis, Tui Beer’s now iconic Yeah
right campaign? How about last summer’s
brilliant Bonds’ Boobs billboards? (pp. 20–21)
They all bet big on OOH and won – not just
hearts and minds, but also wallets. Much like
the Commonwealth Bank Can campaign,
Bonds teased the idea of Boobs before the
campaign broke, creating both anticipation and
talkability. OOH wasn’t just part of the mix,
it ignited the mix.
So it was at Commonwealth Bank in
opening the Can campaign. Billboards across
the country created anticipation and planted
the idea firmly in the minds of Australians.
By the time the campaign broke a week later,
Commonwealth Bank owned ‘Can’ and had
provoked a national conversation. OOH had
again proven its effectiveness as a potent
creative platform for reaching consumers.
Today the fight for consumer attention
has never been more intense and difficult to
win. As other traditional media channels dive
in priority in the face of the onslaught of digital,
OOH remains a crucial way to win mindshare.
It has firmly established itself, not just as an
integral part of the mix, but as a pivot point for
driving the success of campaigns. But simply
changing the way we think about using OOH
won’t be enough. We have to re-imagine the
potential of OOH itself.
Three forces are going to make OOH even
more crucial in the years ahead.
First, mobile. What happens on the phone
is less important than what the phone interacts
with. The camera, GPS and accelerometer
are just a few of the technologies driving
interaction. QR codes became one of the first
tools for driving interaction with phones. While
achieving limited popularity here in Australia,
it’s hard to encounter OOH in Hong Kong that
doesn’t feature them.
Like all early technologies, QR codes
were a signal of things to come. Near Field
Communications and iBeam will afford new
opportunities for interaction – for both content
and commerce. Imagine buying what you see
with a simple ‘tap and go.’
Second, data. To date, the majority of
OOH has featured limited interactivity. Most
video has been a rotation of fixed mass-market
messages. Big data coupled with dynamic
presentation will mean OOH gets personal.
Very personal.
So you ‘friended’ your favourite car brand
on Facebook. They’ve captured your photo,
digitised it to create a data fingerprint, and
reconciled your profile with their customer
database. They now know that presenting you
with a new car offer might not be so smart –
you just bought a new car months ago – but
presenting you with insurance, a credit card,
or other services will make much more
sense. So, as you are strolling down the road,
billboards change dynamically.
It’s all very Minority Report. And it’s
here now. Already, digital display systems that
identify consumers individually and then serve
the most relevant ad are being tested across
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