OPEN 2

TELL ME A STORY
Ben Welsh, Executive Creative Director,
M&C Saatchi
...
OOH!
If I had been asked to do an Out-of-Home ad
I would have written:
‘OUT OF HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS’
Then I could have got someone to make
it look nice, put my feet up and had a beer. But
for some divine sense of irony, the brief was
800 words on OOH. So here goes.
I was lucky enough to judge Outdoor
at Cannes last year [2013]. It was a remarkable
experience. There were over 5,000 entries and
they covered everything from a set of bathroom
scales with a mirror (don’t ask) to a massive
outdoor construction that captured drinking
water from the air.
The category encompassed pretty much
everything that appeared in the show, from
innovation to good old-fashioned 24-sheet
posters. It varied from daft to inspired, shit
to sublime, but at the end of four days of talking,
the ideas we were considering for the Grand
Prix tended to have one thing in common:
a social purpose.
These advertisements weren’t just
effortlessly communicating something, they
were part of the local community and they were
solving a problem. And in doing so, they told
a cultural story.
Let’s start with Egypt. Apparently loose
change is in short supply, so in the equivalent
of their milk bars you might be given a couple
of carrots in place of a few coins. This turned
out to be a huge opportunity for Vodafone
Prepaid. They circulated recharge strips, called
‘Fakkas,’ of varying small denominations to
these change-strapped milk bars. This use of
possibly the world’s smallest outdoor medium
led to Vodafone becoming the pre-paid network
of choice.
Closer to home (well, Cannes was home
that week) IBM were creating interesting
stories in Paris with more traditional OOH
with Smart ideas for smarter cities (pp. 114–115).
It was also one of those things that could have
been so very dull and corporate, and yet here it
was, not just delivering a message but providing
a useful function. After much discussion, it
ended up winning the Grand Prix. It was so
simple and clear and, if I’m honest, refreshingly
traditional (the mirror on those bathroom
scales had clearly upset everyone).
On the other side of the Atlantic, people
in Brazil were finding an opportunity in
another cultural phenomenon, football. The
state of Bahia, like the rest of the country, had
a problem with blood donations. They also
had a football club called Vitoria who proudly
wore black and red jerseys. To raise awareness
of the need for blood, the team took to the field
in black and white. As donations started to flow,
the red returned to the jerseys, one strip at
a time. My blood is red and black, and pure
genius. It wasn’t a poster, but it had thousands
and thousands of people staring at it for over
90 minutes, four weeks in a row.
On the other side of the Andes, a billboard
in Lima for the local University of Engineering
and Technology had been turned into a water
dispenser (pp. 116–117). Not through plumbing
but through, well, I don’t honestly understand
what. It had something to do with an air filter,
a condenser and a carbon filter. Anyway, the
end result was 96 litres of drinking water a day
served up to the world’s driest city, and a lesson
in why thirsty young Peruvians should choose
University of Engineering and Technology.
Okay, another ocean crossing, this time the
Pacific, which brings us back to Australia, and
work that ended up being the world’s most
awarded ever (I think).
Melbourne Metro Trains’ Dumb ways
to die had won everything at Design and Art
Direction (D&AD) and it was busy doing the
same in Cannes. Everyone knows the work
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