Jun
23
Cannes: When Advertising Ain’t Advertising Anymore
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Mobile, Social Networking, digital ooh, twitter | Leave a Comment
USA Today has a nice piece on the Cannes advertising festival. I was invited to this last year but had a hard time justifying the $5000 to investors for a week in Sunny South of France. For some reason they wouldn’t let me pass it off as work 
Whereas advertising awards used to be really easy at Cannes, consisting of…um…just TV creative, today’s advertising doesn’t look quite the same as it did in days of yore. As the article states:
The blurring of lines for what’s an ad is obvious in the competition for Lion awards at the 56th International Advertising Festival this week. Entries in the 11 ad categories range from faux ads and products to marketing that combines a live event, social networking, film and outdoor.
Did you read that right? Yes, that said OUTDOOR and SOCIAL NETWORKING.
Integrated programs that combine the effects of a multiplatform and multi-touchpoint campaign are what’s winning awards these days and what marketers feel is hot and worthy of conversation – NOT TV (well…it depends what agency you work for and how stuck on living in the past they are)
Where awards get won, creatives usually follow and I’ll be looking forward to seeing the Cannes results and entries over the coming years. Maybe I’ll even be allowed to attend
Worth the quickie read and exploring some of the submissions
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Jun
21
Ad Age Takes Note: A New Renaissance for Outdoor?
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Mobile, Social Networking, digital ooh, twitter | Leave a Comment
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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18
Digital OOH and the Mighty Twitter
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Social Networking, digital ooh, twitter | Leave a Comment
Glad to see the fine folks at Leo Burnett in Frankfurt are paying attention to the right ideas in the Digital OOH space. When creative agencies start to notice things that might be cool and call Digital OOH “all the rage”, it’s time to start paying attention (Alex did!).
Thanks to Alexander, Head of Strategy over at Leo in Frankfurt for tipping me to this and glad to see you’re musing on it.
I had to laugh at the reference to Tweets in Newspapers though. That’s like reprinting the comments at a 1985 water cooler conversation in a prestegious medium – my how things have changed!
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