Last year closed out at over £1. 1 billion revenue in OOH, growing +1 Last year closed out at over £1.1 billion revenue in OOH, growing +1.5% YOY At time of writing, not all revenue results for each medium have been released (e.g. online – which will be up; newsbrands – which will be down), but it was a tougher year than many expected, with TV declining -3.2% YOY – its first revenue decline in 7 years. (FYI this is in contrast to Radio being +5.2% YOY, but it has significantly smaller overall revenue than OOH) OOH growth is clearly being driven by digital, now accounting for 46% of all OOH revenue, a +23% YOY increase. It actually reached 50% of revenues for the first time in Q4. (FYI Classic OOH spend dropped year-on-year, recording a 11.6% fall) Whereas other media channels have been negatively impacted by advances in technology, OOH has actually been strengthened by it and we expect this to continue in 2018, driven by on-going media owner investment and continued client demand. Looking ahead, Magna forecast the whole ad market will be +2.3% in 2018 – so OOH is forecast to outperform the market with growth of +3.5%, with DOOH just nudging past Classic for the first time in terms of share of revenue.

It’s pretty much as you were when comparing the categories present in our list today, to the same period 12 months ago. FMCG spend has been driven by food & drink clients, with these two sectors increasing their spend +22% YOY. For example, Arla Foods, which manufactures Anchor, Lurpak and Cravendale products, tripled its spend from 2016 to total £5.3m. Other notable increases include: Unilever: +£5m Coors Brewing: +£1.8m Quaker Oats: +£1.7m Captain Morgan’s Rum: +£1m This is particularly interesting as Thinkbox reported that the FMCG sector reduced their TV investment last year by -11.4% YOY. Thinkbox are blaming inflation for this.

Sky remains the top spender for 2017, again dominating the medium; and they recently renewed their long-term OOH holding for the 9th consecutive year. Its competitor, BT, remains in the Top 5 as it has for the last two years – despite an 11% drop in YOY spend as having successfully got an initial stranglehold in the TV market with their sports brand, they slowly start to accept their position in the market. Despite FMCG brands reducing their investment in TV, Unilever – the worlds 2nd biggest advertiser – actually increased their OOH investment by a huge 34%. Coca-Cola maintained its spend, while McDonald’s jumps into the Top 5 after recording +41% increase in its outdoor spend.

The next few slides are some of our favourite recent OOH campaigns to inspire you.

Hiscox is using real-time cyber-attacks on “honeypot” servers linked to billboard displays for its latest advertising campaign “CyberLive”, in an effort to cement its place in the cyber-risk marketplace and raising awareness of the threat that cybercrime poses to small businesses. Each time a cyber-attack occurs, a pulsing red light will appear on the poster. The creative appears more and more vivid, as more and more attacks occur throughout the day. The number of daily attempted attacks is around 23,000, meaning the proxy servers are expected to be the target of around 148,000 attempted attacks over the course of the campaign. The campaign will run across Out-of-Home sites from Canary Wharf and Euston station, to key roadside locations in Glasgow.

Netflix are arguably the best brand nailing creativity in OOH at the moment. They use the channel to provoke an emotional reaction – creating buzz, both in social and through word-of-mouth, and they’re a great example of how to use OOH to generate earned media. Cryptic OOH adverts for the latest series of the Netflix show Black Mirror which include the slogan “the worst is yet to come” were plastered across Old Street station at the start of 2018. Messages were posted across every single advertising board in the station, located under Old Street roundabout. The creative hinted at storylines from the long-awaited new series, which was released in the UK on December 29th.

And it’s not just in the UK that Netflix are creating waves in OOH. Netflix is a client for Rapport in the US – and this next campaign, created by Rapport Los Angeles, to promote the Altered Carbon show – achieved a huge amount of news coverage in the States, including from the TV stations.

This is a quick summary of what’s been going in the world of Rapport.

Q1 saw the release of our new study, in partnership with Peter Field and the IPA, into the effectiveness of OOH.

The research aimed to understand how OOH influences people, quantify its effectiveness against hard business metrics, and explore how it works with other media, with some interesting insights into how OOH complements search and social in particular. After the initial launch event in January, the research was picked up by Campaign and a number of other titles. To date it’s been presented to over 100 of our partner agency and client planners, strategists and researchers; and the report has been downloaded online by a further 250 people across 18 countries around the world. We’ve also been invited to present it at two international media conferences. (APMF in Asia, and FEPE in Italy) Feedback has been universally positive so if you’ve not seen the research yet, please let us know and we’ll arrange a session.

Campaign has announced the list of shortlisted entries for this year’s Campaign Media Awards, with Rapport work making the list FIVE times. The most prominent is Rapport’s bespoke Digital OOH web-based software platform, Rapportal, made the ‘Product Innovation’ category shortlist. Rapportal has been designed to streamline the content delivery workflow and provide campaign-specific, real-time playout accountability.

Our campaigns also featured in wider media mix entries, with four Rapport-planned OOH campaigns including Sky Atlantic’s Game of Thrones (Mediacom & TPF) in the ‘Experiential’ category, The Economist (UM) and Amazon Echo (Initiative) in the ‘Media & Entertainment’ category, and finally Amazon Black Friday (Initiative & Cadreon) in the ‘Retail – Online & Offline’ category. All winners will be announced on Thursday 12th April.

A leading children’s medicine brand were looking to run a seasonal campaign to support an existing non-medicinal product that soothes and helps children to breath clearly. Rapport were tasked with finding a cost-effective and efficient way of reaching parents, in a context where the information could be effectively communicated and absorbed, with the aim of increasing awareness and consideration of the product.   We tapped into moments where the desired target audience of parents not only had the time to engage with the advertising, but where their children were front-of-mind. Play centres were chosen during school holidays, constituting an environment made up almost exclusively of parents, therefore reducing wastage. Table Talkers, Leaflets and traditional 6 Sheets stationed inside the play centres were chosen, taking advantage of the long dwell times. Whilst the 6 Sheets would act as the awareness driver, the informative formats, deployed in this befitting environment and context, allowed for the effective communication of the product’s benefits.

Already the market leader, Fitbit were looking to build on their current awareness and success by launching a brand-new product, the Fitbit Alta HR. To successfully differentiate the Alta HR from the rest of the Fitbit range by communicating its unique Heart Rate and Sleep Tracking features. Rapport were tasked with finding an innovative solution to do this using OOH, whilst also aiming to increase awareness, consideration, and ultimately drive sales of the new product.    The Alta HR positioned itself as the technological companion to daily life, with each of the product’s main features and benefits rooted heavily in particular contexts. Rapport needed to find a way to communicate these unique features across the daily grind, essentially getting to the very ‘heart’ of these moments. Digital 6 Sheets proved to be the ideal format, offering the flexibility to serve a range of creative messages, but also in the moments that mattered most, for example Sleep Tracking during the morning commute or Calorie Tracking just before an evening meal. Additionally, the diverse environments offered by the format enabled different roles to be assumed, with commuter sites driving consideration and awareness, and proximity to retailers influencing purchases. This allowed us to marry the right message with the right contexts in order to create a truly tactical, efficient and effective outdoor campaign.