Jun
21
Ad Age Takes Note: A New Renaissance for Outdoor?
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Mobile, Social Networking, digital ooh, twitter
Andrew Hampp released his Art of Outdoor last week for those who didn’t see it. Great pub on his part (well done Andrew)
Andrew’s/Ad Age’s Art of Outdoor can be found here.
While the focus is in no way really digital for the Art of Outdoor, Jonah Bloom did a follow up piece and made some great observations, many of which (ahem) have been covered in these pages over the last year or so (cmon…it’s good for the ego every once in a while 
).
While it’s nice to see people start to take notice of things in our space, it always has a heck of a lot more impact when it shows up in a respected rag like Ad Age.
Some of the comments I like (although you should read the whole thing:
Yet, for all this change, outdoor’s biggest asset today may be that as audiences on every other channel are split into ever decreasing fragments, it can still operate on a mass, broadcast level.
so today’s out-of-home efforts are increasingly often integral parts of bigger digital campaigns. Indeed, it might seem somewhat odd to an industry outsider who was unfamiliar with the latest phenomena — such as brands emblazoning billboards with just their Twitter addresses — to note that outdoor is enjoying a renaissance right now, driven, at least in part, by digital shops. Creatives are clearly enjoying the ability to link the mass-market power of a poster to the personal power of the internet.
Even with this digitization and integration of the medium, simplicity remains the essence of great outdoor — which is why it is often cited as such a pure test of a creative’s skill. Can you distill the essence of the sales or brand message into a single, instantly understandable, affecting image? (The answer, in the case of so many of the campaigns within these pages, was “yes.” What could be simpler than TBWA’s “The world’s thinnest notebook,” for the Macbook Air, which was accompanied by a side-on shot of the product, or BBDO’s “Get a world view. Read The Economist,” accompanied by an ostrich’s head emerging from the sand?)
While it’s great to see folks take notice of social and mobile in Outdoor applications, it’s even nicer to see someone talk about the renaissance of outdoor as a medium, especially as they pull in Digital into the mix and credit creativity and challenge coming to the creatives who so often pooh-pooh Outdoor and especially Digital OOH in their efforts.
As I said a while ago, Digital OOH let’s creatives be creative again and I look forward to more folks in that arena taking a closer look at the space and what they can do with it.
Great article Jonah! And thanks for noticing!
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