Outdoor advertising is a timeless and classic art, but it’s also one that is ever-changing. There are a variety of tried-and-true methods of advertising, like massive billboards, dynamic airport displays, and even messages on the side of trucks. Once in a while, something needs to disrupt the classic approach to outdoor advertising through unconventional means.
Augmented Reality in the OOH Advertising Space
Augmented and virtual reality have often been used interchangeably, but there’s a distinct difference: Augmented reality (AR) adds to digital experiences, while VR creates immersive digital environments.
Racing Towards Success: Gymbox Uses OOH to Create Interactive Ad Campaign
A popular London fitness center, Gymbox, unveiled its newest marketing campaign on the 17th of September, 2024, showing just how innovative out-of-home (OOH) advertising can be.
Known for its creative and culturally in-tune marketing strategies, such as creating a New Year ad campaign with contrasting humorous details of what Londoners are up to at certain times of day, it’s not the gym’s first time doing something creative with OOH.
Gymbox has especially taken it to a new level these past weeks. Outside of the Arsenal Emirates Stadium in North London were two blacked-out billboards set next to one another, one displaying a start line and the other a finish line. Through this, Gymbox has elevated experiential advertising displays and given Londoners an exciting experience with which to associate their brand.
Passersby were encouraged to race others to find out who was the fastest in a 10-meter dash. Gym staff equipped with velocity radars announced the winners and compared the results to Olympic 100-meter sprinters.
Rory McEntee, Gymbox’s director of marketing, has created a valuable marketing opportunity as Marketing-Beat.co.uk noted that race results were to be shared across TikTok and Instagram, allowing the fitness center to provoke social media virality from this advertising initiative.
The fitness community is Gymbox’s home demographic, but this campaign allows them to tap into it far beyond that. Through incentives, this London gym enables the general public to connect with their facilities by gifting a racer with a free 12-month membership for the fastest time. Gymbox is accessing untapped markets and attracting the public to use these services through this campaign, taking advantage of its creativity to increase its return on investment (ROI).
Creating a physical advertising experience such as this allows users to interact with brands more emotionally. Experiential advertising forms positive feelings of joy and trust between the user and the brand, ultimately instilling a lasting impression on potential consumers.
Gymbox performed this advertising initiative so that not only were they left with long-term positive feelings, but they were also more likely to use their services. Gamifying ads, such as the billboard racing campaign, promotes a sense of enjoyable competition with a chance to win something beneficial. Psychologically, this may associate future connections between the brand and the racing participants with feelings of positive results when using the gym services.
When formulating innovative campaigns such as this one, Gymbox carefully considers the metrics of the most likely demographics to enroll in their gym’s services. With past campaigns, according to BMB Agency, they collected various data points through surveys of gym members and crafted ads all around London that were clever and witty, encouraging a considerable amount of Londoners to take up their services.
It looks like Gymbox did something similar with this campaign. By placing a competitive experience outside a sports arena, they were likely to reach sporty people who typically enjoy competition and physical activity. Giving them a chance to flex these interests outside of a prevalent sports arena only made it exponentially more likely that they would participate in the campaign, increasing the chance of using Gymbox’s services afterward—winning the competition or not.
Constructing experiential campaigns such as this requires thorough collection and analysis of demographic data to yield positive results. Gymbox did just that and has been through numerous campaigns.
Innovative, clever, eye-catching, and enjoyable, Gymbox knows its target audience and ensures that they are spoken to in a way that undoubtedly creates cheeky positivity. This method of marketing and advertising is precisely what innovation is about. It’s sharp, and targets potential customers directly on the bulls-eye so that they feel a connection without even realizing that was the entire plan. Masters of London marketing and advertising, Gymbox did a job well done.
Market Overview: Houston, TX
With over 2.3 million residents, Houston, Texas is the most populous city in the state and brings in millions of visitors each year, making it one of the top markets for the out-of-home industry in the United States.
Major metropolitan areas such as the Theater District and the Historic District provide ample space for prime inventory locations and advertising target areas to reach a wide range of people in the city. Plus, Houston is home to the Space Center Houston, the official visitor’s center of NASA’s Jordan Space Center. Other notable locations include the Houston Zoo, Minute Maid Park, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
Houston also has its fair share of walkable areas, malls, and other outdoor clusters that provide excellent locations for OOH ad formats like kiosks and posters, which are perfect for reaching pedestrians, as well as major highways such as US-59, which connects Houston and Austin, and US-290, providing excellent billboard ad locations for reaching a large number of travelers.
Major outdoor advertising companies in the area such as OUTFRONT Media and Clear Channel Outdoor have plenty of inventory in the area, as well as others such as SignAd.
Houston also has a fairly large public transportation system, METRO, which has over 1,200 buses that attract plenty of commuters who are looking to avoid traffic, providing an excellent space for transit advertising, as well as benches and taxi ads.
How OOH Has Changed Over the Last 10 Years
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has been a major advertising method for lifetimes—it provides a wide range of viewers, it’s an effective way to increase brand awareness, and, well, it’s a classic. Like almost anything that’s been around for so long, the industry has seen a variety of changes, making it both a different and a more accessible space.
For example, the industry has seen a noticeable increase in digital ads. Not only are more and more digital billboards popping up around the globe, but other digital formats such as retail TV screens, digital kiosks, digital walls, and airport ads are becoming more prevalent in the industry.
There are a few reasons for the increase in digital advertisements, one of the big ones being that there’s a quicker turnaround time, making it possible to get ads posted quicker. As opposed to “traditional” ad formats, like static billboards, digital ads can be uploaded to display almost instantly, which is great for any last-minute ad campaigns.
Also, advertisers often lean towards digital ads when working towards different advertising goals. Digital ads have a more “modern” appeal—rooted in technology, they can be preferred for advertisers in industries such as technology, media and entertainment, and even just younger companies. Plus, more can be done with them in terms of eye-catching ads—3D digital ads or any sort of moving image or video are popular these days.
Other changes in the industry include internal improvements and changes regarding processes. In the past few years, technological advancements to internal day-to-day tasks have been popping up everywhere, with features helping both media buyers and sellers, such as being able to pull inventory across platforms (like from Apparatix to DOmedia) and improvements to submitting and responding to RFPs.
Another recent change is that professionals are using data more than ever to plan, execute, and analyze their outdoor advertising campaign, helping to maximize effectiveness and turn plans into strategies.
OAAA wrote that in the future, advertisers are going to buy OOH for not only locations and audience, but also for intelligence provided about their customers, such as where they go and other products and services they purchase.
Advertisers using OOH have been using their ads to better connect with their audiences, as well. While this is something that’s happened with formats such as TV commercials in the past, using billboards to make personal connections is a more recent development, and by using methods such as making geographical or brand-specific references and appealing to the company’s demographic through use of language and imagery.
