With outdoor there’s nowhere for bad ads to hide
These days I seem to spend a lot of time hanging around Kings Cross with nothing better to do than look at the outdoor executions as I shelter from the rain. It’s the life I lead.
And when the person you’re meeting is late, you get to spend a long time looking at the posters. Which were dreadful, as it happens.
And that’s the thing about outdoor. Uniquely as a medium, the advertising has nowhere to hide, as there’s no other content to weave it into.
Expect to hear a lot about outdoor in the coming days, by the way. The industry finally launches its new currency/ metric MOVE next week. Hence the sudden interest from the printed trade press (and lucrative cover wraps they’ve been enjoying).
But before talking about the negatives of bad outdoor ads, it’s worth acknowledging the power of the medium. I spotted this on Broadway in Sydney yesterday.
Despite the low quality of the image (I snapped it with my mobile phone – I was low down and it was high up), it demonstrates great creativity, which will have involved the ad agency, the media agency and the outdoor company to make it happen.
But onto the ugly. It still surprises me how often I see posters that feel like nobody ever considered how consumers will actually see them – long copy on scrolling billboards is a classic example. (I remember some NRMA work about a year back that fell at that hurdle. Even the world speed reading champion wouldn’t have been able to get through it before it scrolled.) Another issue are posters which are effectively stills from TV ads that are baffling on their own.
But let’s go back to the dingy entrance to Kings Cross station.
The media planning was good, considering the target was young binge drinkers.
But both the creative idea and the art direction were woeful. I’d been standing there for about ten minutes before the penny dropped on what the creative even meant for one of them.
Again, I drop in my cameraphone images rather than trying to find a nice jpg of the original artwork, to give a better impression of what the actual consumer sees in a gloomy corridor.
So first, let’s try to translate the first execution.
Perhaps I’m unusually dopey, but my first response was to wonder why the drunk girl was helping her sober self get ready for a night out while a cheerful looking bloke hovered in the background.
It took a long time to realise she was being undressed, and the chap in the background was actually dodgy Mr Rapey. Presumably because of his bad taste in shirts.
So the central idea is that when you get drunk and trouble follows, you do it to yourself.
But it wasn’t just the idea that failed to communicate – the copy was so small. Standing directly opposite the poster, I couldn’t read it from about three metres away.
The same went for a second execution, featuring a lad being taken away by the cops while his doppelganger punched someone in the head.
Again, the art direction seemed to anticipate that the poster would be viewed much as one might a picture in a gallery – up close and after much consideration. That’s the only way the text would ever be read. Not as a boozy teen striding past.
Of course, we walk past posters like this every day without even seeing them. Getting noticed in outdoor is a different discipline to other media.
Bad outdoor is easy. Good outdoor is harder than it looks.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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It strikes me that the open-topped car, while creative, is up during an unfortunately rainy period. Kinda gives the impression of getting rained on while you drive…
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You think you’re dopey, Tim. My first thought was ‘why are those two girls out wearing the same dress’. I am glad you wrote about this though. Those binge drinking ads were inside a bus I was on last week. And I stared at them for ages before I understood.
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I’m usually fairly thick, but I got the binge drinking ads straight away. Been there etc. I agree the typography is poor but I have seen these ads many times in the past few weeks so given the repitition an element of intrigue is probably a good thing.
Re the Nissan ad, I know media planners are clever but presumably predicting the weather remains beyond their grasp. A simpler solution may have been to book TV and then they could have shown the car in a sunny situation every day.
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At first I thought those girls were twins and were ‘waking up’ after a threesome with that ugly brute!
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@ Gezza
Considering the nissan ad would have been booked a few months ago i thinkit is a bit harsh to blame the weather on the media planner. they did book it for summer but unfortunately sydney has had stupid rainfall recently!! I dont think the outdoor company would have been impressed if they tried to cancel it the week before because the weatherman said “the rains are here”
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hmm.
1) Rain in summer: Sydney is subtropical and has a mini monsoon season. I’m painfully aware because several family birthdays fall in Feb and March and I’ve long learnt not to plan birthday parties outside! So in summer in Sydney, it rains. We actually had record LACK of rainfall in January, which Feb made up for. But perhaps the booking was national.
2) Binge drinking ad: got the execution straight away and winced. I see it on an underground railway platform, standing waiting longer than I like for the train. So no problem reading any size copy in it or puzzling out the execution. Remember too on railway platform billboards, some lucky souls actually *in* the train get to read the copy from less than a foot away through the carriage window. Plenty of opportunity to study smaller copy!
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“the art direction seemed to anticipate that the poster would be viewed much as one might a picture in a gallery – up close and after much consideration”
such a common error in many channels!
Most outdoor creative could be improved significantly – a view that I think would be shared with most outdoor media companies. Too much information, too little branding, and subsequently too little take-out is a far too common denominator.
Keeping outdoor simple (and it is often easier said than done) significantly increases the effectiveness of the medium.
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Good read on this topic:
http://mistercicada.blogspot.c.....hieve.html
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This is a very frustrating issue facing a lot of agencies.
More and more creative agencies are briefed without any clue of how the media agency has been briefed. Next thing you know – your print campaign has to be urgently resized as a bus side.
No doubt the Binge drinking work was originally designed as print and it works very well as print – where you have the time to intrigue and involve.
It’s up to the client to be far more collaborative and the media and creative agencies to work together from the start. Sounds easy…so then why is this still happening????
Tim, maybe your article will get a few people listening.
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If you do say so yourself, Mr Cicada…
Magazine ads on outdoor media……. I can’t believe it still happens. My lordy though it does!
Media are great at educating the Media Agencies……. perhaps it’s time the Media hold hands with the Creative Agencies for a bit? Get a nice little circle of communication happening for a brief time so that the client reaps the benefits in the end. I’m sure that’s why we do this.
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Agreed Kate R, I thought threesome!
@mrcicada shameless self promtion! But you do have a great blog, with interesting things to say.
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Some good points – outdoor is somewhere where less really is more. Not sure that it’s intended to stop boozy teens who are striding past (how much outdoor stops anyone who’s not in media and marketing?), but it almost certainly doesn’t pass the ‘did I get it in two seconds?’ test.
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No problem reading in a magazine or on a train platform.
The idea’s pretty simple – if you binge drink, you’re harming yourself.
The idea may in fact be that simple that the posters don’t require any copy.
And taking it off certain outdoor media may or may not improve the communication.
Can’t imagine that these posters are designed to talk to boozed up youngsters – after all, that would be futile… no matter how big the copy. Probably more targeted at lucent young people walking, catching the bus/train (in which case plenty of time and proximity to read).
It is a shame, though, that when you have a media buy that spreads itself across such a wide array of outdoor, generally agencies and clients don’t have the time/resources to tailor each and every piece in the suite – of course the approval processes alone make this a very difficult thing to do.
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“You must be able to read it as you’re driving past it!” A hackneyed phrase, usually delivered with great authority by folks intent on letting everyone in the room know they understand outdoor. It usually precedes an overt display of counting the words on the page, to ensure the count does not exceed the magic seven words!
I often wonder which dusty rule book they’ve got their hands on…Ogilvy on Ads?
The fact is, outdoor has changed. It’s on train platforms, at bus stops, in shopping centers. Places where the public has more than enough time to read some copy or…God forbid…have to think a little about an ad. Surely you’ve read this one too – ‘Too many ads that try not to go over the reader’s head end up beneath his notice’. Cheers to Leo Burnett for that one…
The notion that people are only driving or running past outdoor ads is a myth, pulled out when convenient.
Of more urgent attention is the evident the lack of fresh debate in this business.
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@bouncy: If you don’t design for worst case scenario – distractions, speed, movement etc, you’re not maximising the clients dollar nor the opportunity.
Busy detailed scenes and print ads DO NOT WORK! Neither does branding in the bottom right hand corner in size 20 font. For bus shelters, the top half is at eyelevel with your audience so keep the information there.
There’s more people more often passing roadside signage in cars than waiting for buses and trains therefore brevity is key
As I am only one expert, please refer to marketingmags media survival guide 2010. 5 experts from OOH are in agreeance.
Hats off to the recent speeding in your sights campaign – RTA – can’t miss it. Although a big fail to the myrta outdoor.
A big fail to energy australia and to realestate.com.au – billboard too busy can’t get beyond the first line let alone to the digital type below.
Footlocker your sneakers look great but how many people in cars can read your brand? Another fail.
Tim – let’s campaign against the government for wasting tax payers money when they use creative agencies who FAIL on outdoor. The most common offender is NSW Government. Look out for an image with black balloons, I think they were yellow in the last campaign.
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There’s a couple of good car ads on the way to Sydney airport, anyone got any pics or know who did them?
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If they’re at the airport they may be on APN billboards… anyone able to help?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella