OOH, what an ad !

Out Of Home (OOH) advertising caught my attention always, and with companies using it innovatively these days its even more fun to watch ! A description to start off - OOH is marketing in forms that you see can out-of-your-home (!), e.g. hoardings in the simplest form. But then, the best part lies in either capturing attention with a clutter-breaking hoarding (like the red Economist's Interpret the world hoardings that you see these days) or by the use of the media beyond the billboards. I have uploaded some of those from the latter category that I really feel deserve an applause for their creativity. (Click on images to enlarge)

Starting with some international ones. AXE, as usual, starts the pack. Here you see the ad being placed over a women's dorm in the form of a calendar, with each window being a day of the month. The concept being obvious - a girl for each day. I am sure it would have caught attention of every guy who had walked past this one in Seoul.

Scotch Brite had another brilliant concept to go with their USP of 'absorbs everything'. They had simply replaced the basins below taps in public places (I think in Australia) with a sponge. And just the brand name and tagline on the sides. Caught the attention & conveyed the message - clear and concise !


Coming to some Indian examples of conveying the USP- recently read about this Pantene's OOH campaign. Had a sticker on doors of common places like salons, etc with hair being stuck to it. They actually replaced the door handles, and whenever anyone pulls them to open the door, he/she was actually experiencing the brand message. And the text - Pantene:Strong Hair. It needn't say anything more, does it?

Closer home, before the elections, UTV Bindass had these hand signs over public places with the inked index finger pointing out (Ungli utha bindass campaign). The messages differed, urging them to vote if they needed development to happen. Have a look at this one - 'Desh khadde mein hain? Vote kar' with the finger pointing to a dug road. Other messages included 'Desh ki batti jala' on a lamp post; 'Batvara nahi, divider chahiye' pointing to a divider on the road.


Though I said that companies should look beyond hoardings, Orient Fans proved that even hoardings can be used innovatively. This ad simply had a large image of the fan and the brand message 'More air everywhere'. Just beside the hoarding on both sides were two hoardings which were almost torn down and looks as if it is due to the fan(I believe they had bought these spaces :) ) depicting exactly what the tagline says.

Pidilite industries - known for their TV ads for Fevicol - also had some excellent concepts for their starch Ranipal. Human-like figures at high footfall areas, but with no heads, legs, hands. There's no message written, but isn't it clear enough that the clothes are standing on their own? And their pose is also natural so that they won't mistaken for mannequins (the one here is climbing the stairs, others include a woman shopping at a store and a guy on a bike in the parking lot). Excellent, though the brand name would be visible when seen closely, which I doubt how many people would have done.

(Thanks afaqs for the pics!)

Talking of OOH, one thumb rule I read somewhere that people have an average 3-4 seconds to interpret the message on a hoarding. Still I saw these four hoardings stacked side-by-side at Bandra (wanted to get the sealink in the background, which I couldn't unfortunately). Why would anyone buy space here, if the audience can spare 4 seconds for the entire spot i.e. 1 second per hoarding. Surely atleast 2 of the hoardings would always be missed out by the viewer. (Unless everything is for the same brand, e.g. Sony TV has recently bought 2 of them and have a big ad for Dus Ka Dum)