Can you ever tune out from ads? Not with the barrage of Out-of-Home Advertising. It's one of the fastest growing form of marketing and advertising and here's more on how advertisers are jumping into it to be seen.
It's not on TV, radio or the newspapers and magazines. But it's everything outdoors and everywhere imaginable. It's the biggest hype in advertising and there are some reasons why advertisers are clamouring for the best piece of outdoor space to get noticed.
The next time you step out of your house, take a good look around. You'll see it on the billboard along the highway, on the facet of a building, on a poster by the bus-stop, on the side of the bus, along the sides of the escalator in the mall, while you're waiting for the lift and even on the toilet door! Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has come out of the clutter of the traditional media into the ever other conceivable space ... outdoors.
So how does OOH work? Advertisers buy the space according to the potential traffic of target audience during a particular period time. It is known as "showings". Say if you're targeting young working women executives for your new brand of cosmetics, you might want to place your ads on the exterior of the transit vehicles, such as buses and cabs, that run along the business district route for a one month period during your launch. The chances of your ad being seen by your target audience are higher.
But how do you make OOH advertising work for you when there's so much noise in the outdoors shouting for attention? Well, it calls for creativity if you want to stand out from the visual clutter. Adidas, for example, created lots of attention when it created a large billboard ad for the Adidas Football challenge in Japan. The ad was a drawing the outline of a soccer field. Two live football players and a soccer ball were suspended from the top of the billboard and they literally played a game of vertical soccer. It was an ad that came alive.
At the end of the day, it's about getting spotted and getting talked about that will eventually create the most buzz for your brand. With ad clutter already crowding the traditional and new media, OOH advertising is the next best platform to get noticed. The more ingenious the ad, the more eyeballs you'll get.
