OOH, advertising is otherwise known as Out Of Home advertising. If you’ve seen a billboard, or cling on a telephone box, or an ad on the side of a bus, then you’ve seen OOH advertising.
If you haven’t, you’ve probably not been outside in a while. Or you might want to consider looking up from your phone from time to time before you bump into that phone box. And look out for that bus.
OOH, advertising is huge – it surpassed $6.9 billion in the US in 2021. However, it’s not just about massive campaigns inviting you to reconsider your footwear choice. There are less obvious uses to which it can be put.
- Topping-up the Traffic
- Boosting the Brand
- Starting Small
- Interactive Ingenuity
- Public Pronouncements
- Out of Home – Out of the Box
Topping-up the Traffic
Sometimes it’s not about pushing a particular product. A company might instead want to increase its web footfall, in order to boost its SERP ranking, sell ad space, or any one of a host of possible reasons.
OOH advertising can do this. With the use of a simple QR code, somebody idly waiting for a train can become a very valuable website visitor.
Boosting the Brand
Again, when selling isn’t the immediate priority, it might be the case that a company just wants to see their brand recognition improve. To have a logo appear in a multitude of unexpected places can be an enormously powerful means of enhancing brand recognition.
It doesn’t have to be blimp-sized to gain traction. Just a simple message on the back of a receipt can serve to keep a brand high in the customer’s register. Talking of size…
Starting Small
The nice thing about OOH is that it’s eminently scalable. Say you’re wanting to test out a product or marketing concept before going huge with it across TV and social media. Try it on a few carefully chosen geographical locations and test the results.
Similarly, with a company looking to launch their presence, they can use a package such as Clear Start, which assists start-ups by matching investment and applying state of the art research to ensure the best possible reach.
Interactive Ingenuity
One of the truly fabulous things about digital OOH (DOOH) is the way it can interact with the public in surprising and memorable ways.
Here’s a great one. Coffee company Douwe Egberts installed in an airport departure lounge a coffee machine that was really a promotional device. How so? It automatically dispensed a free coffee when the person standing in front of it yawned. Result: hugely memorable marketing that secured mass engagement.
Public Pronouncements
When the government or other public body needs to get information out, such as a pandemic public health measure, OOH can be enormously effective. It has reach and, importantly, DOOH can be readily updated to cope with any rising developments.
When screen fatigue hits (75% of consumers often tune out ads on their digital devices), it’s important that there are other ways to reach the public.
Out of Home – Out of the Box
So, now you know some overlooked uses of OOH advertising, see what you can come up with. Let your imagination run riot. If you’re struggling, maybe have a coffee first.
