One of the best ways to expand your vision of what you can do with new and unexpected OOH ideas is to look at campaigns from other out of home advertisers.
As you’re about to see, attention-grabbing and effective OOH ideas can be big or small, general or targeted, national or local. The goal is getting attention first, and then converting that attention into action that benefits your company or clients.
But it’s the unexpected that gets the most attention — those ads that surprise and delight because they do something different than what people are used to seeing.
So let’s take a look at some creative OOH ideas to inspire you in 2023 and beyond.
1. KitKat puts a hole in their own billboard
In writing, it’s called a turn of phrase when you take a well-worn cliché or saying and do something fresh with it. KitKat has created their own such phrase over the years, beginning with their ‘gimme a break, break me off a piece of that KitKat bar’ jingle from years ago.
With this innovative streetside OOH ad, they put a hole where the word ‘break’ would normally go… and inserted a relaxing hammock. It’s a big odd, or out of place, at first. But then… it’s brilliant.
What a great way to immerse your audience in your product, while reminding them of the familiar phrase you worked so hard to make part of the cultural lexicon.
Is there a way you can take a familiar phrase, apply it to your brand, and do something visually creative and unexpected with it in an OOH ad?
2. Burger King shifts prices with the wind in real time
[ https://theneuron.com/digital-out-of-home-advert-examples/]
This brilliant DOOH ad for Burger King used real time weather reports to change, not just the content of their digital out of home ad, but also the deal they were offering.
As the temperature rose, the prices for their shakes fell. If the temperature went high enough, the shakes would be free!
This is one way you can leverage technology to turn DOOH ads into something more than just motion and graphics. The ad itself responds to real world conditions. But this one takes it to the next level by altering the deal being offered as well. What a way to get attention AND convert it into sales.
3. Customized die-cut door hangers
Another form of OOH advertising is known as front door marketing. These ads reach customers and prospects right on their front porches — away from digital distractions and distinct from the mail.
One of the most popular OOH ideas for 2023 is to customize the shape of a door hanger in a creative way. Here are two examples:
https://powerdirect.net/door-hanger-campaign-examples/
This one advertises a doggie day and overnight camp, and to get attention, the camp customized the shape to look like a dog bone. By also targeting the ad to households known to have dogs, this ultra-focused ad reaches directly to people who might need such a service, bypassing all the people who don’t have pets.
And its creative shape is an instant attention-grabber. You can’t not look at it — especially if you have a dog.
https://powerdirect.net/door-hanger-campaign-examples/
This customized die-cut advertised a new water-saving toilet. And what better way to make people think about their toilet than to put one on their front porch! The toilet-shaped door hanger was an instant hit and broke through all the noise, challenging homeowners to consider replacing their water-guzzling old toilets.
Could you create an attention-grabbing customized die-cut door hanger campaign for your brand? Here are 7 ways to personalize an OOH door hanger campaign.
4. Seeing the light through donuts at Krispy Kreme
Donuts are a wonderful invention. In this creative and interactive OOH ad, Krispy Kreme decided to make donuts even more uplifting and alluring by causing light to shine through the donut holes when someone touches the ad.
[credit https://oohtoday.com/ooh-best-creative-last-week-today-126/]
And as with any location-specific ad, it’s best to place them near at least one of your stores and include the location on the ad. Or, as this ad does, add a QR code to take people from offline to a landing page where they can find the nearest store, and where you can track the response to the ad.
Can you use light, color, or even sound in creative ways on an OOH or DOOH ad?
5. Billboard reimagined for opendoor
For one of the most creative OOH ideas in years, and one of the most smartly targeted, Opendoor transformed a traditional billboard to look like a real estate sign, instantly grabbing the attention of anyone driving by.
Even more smartly, they put this up in Phoenix before the Super Bowl, which ensured that thousands of people coming from all over the country would see their super-creative ad.
In essence, they made a big splash with an audience from around the country, and for a tiny fraction of what it would have cost to pay for a Super Bowl ad.
This blend of visual innovation combined with smart timing to reach a much broader than normal audience makes this one of the most creative OOH ideas in 2023. Read more about the Opendoor campaign.
6. British Airways child points to the planes in the air
This slightly older ad remains one of the most groundbreaking and creative DOOH ads ever made.
https://theneuron.com/digital-out-of-home-advert-examples/
First, the ad captures the imagination and wonder of children, using the image of a boy pointing up in the air. But look closer.
The boy is pointing to a real plane in the real sky. And even more amazing, the text on the ad changes with each passing plane — revealing the flight information of that specific plane.
They achieved this by linking the ad technology to real-time flight information so the ad would ‘know’ which plane was currently over the child’s hand.
This sort of wildly creative OOH idea doesn’t have to be limited to airplane flight data. You can use the same approach with data for traffic, sports, stock markets, pollen count, money raised for a fundraising campaign, number of products remaining in a limited campaign, and weather, which you saw with the Burger King ad.
7. Speaking of pollen count — Beconase DOOH ad
As you just read, DOOH ads can connect with real-time data to update their ad content as conditions change.
This Beconase ad for their hay fever relief product includes a report on the real-time pollen count, and the ad itself is programmed only to show up when the pollen count reaches a certain level. That way, the ad only appears when it is most relevant.
This creative OOH idea uses technology to target people when they need the product, and uses ad dollars more efficiently at the same time.
8. Interactive door hanger drives traffic to a MetroPCS store
Scratch-offs are an terrific way to get prospects to engage with your ad. But in this interactive door hanger campaign, MetroPCS took it one step further.
Link to: https://powerdirect.net/door-hanger-campaign-examples/
Here, they included a scratch off that lets the recipient possibly win a new phone. But, the customer had to come into the store and scratch it off in front of a sales associate.
This brilliant approach will bring in that much needed-foot traffic, and no matter what’s under the scratch off, because the person has already traveled to the store, they will be more likely to buy something.
How could you use interactive door hanger distribution to increase response to your ad? Here’s a 7-step blueprint to creating big-ROI door hanger campaigns
9. Johnny drinks podcast hits the road
Getting people to listen to your podcast isn’t easy. These days, it seems like everyone and their dog has a podcast (especially if the dog is at the doggie day camp because of the die-cut bone).
https://oohtoday.com/ooh-best-creative-last-week-today-129/
The Johnny Drinks podcast decided to take their campaign to grab more listeners on the road using this truck-side ad that comes with a QR code to make it easy for people to subscribe and listen.
A truck-side ad is perfect for this for many reasons — not the least of which is that it catches people during their commute when podcasts are perhaps most commonly listened to.
10. Carwow takes the train
Here’s another creative OOH ad taking advantage of the extended dwell time people spent on buses and trains.
Insert ad #6 from https://oohtoday.com/ooh-best-creative-last-week-today-129/
Even more than the captive audience in this setting, Carwow’s ad is also relevant to them because it asks them to find out the trade-in value of their car. Carwow reasoned that people traveling by bus or train are probably more likely than average to have a car they may not use as much.
Plus, its brilliant CTA hammers-home the idea that the process is quick while also capitalizing on the boredom of riders and tempting them with a challenge of completing the task before time runs out. All-around great stuff.
Thus, this ad blends a target audience with placement and environment and includes a clear call to action and an easy way to act on it with the QR code. There’s a lot to like about this one.
Are your OOH ads taking advantage of a particular environment or context that relates to your product and to the audience in that location? And are you making it easy for them to act on your message?
11. Time-based DOOH breakfast ad from hungry horse
Hungry Horse used real-time data for the time of day to create this ad for their breakfast.
Because they stop serving breakfast at 12pm, the ad only shows in the mornings, hoping to catch commuters looking for an impulse buy. But also, since morning commuters will see the tantalizing breakfast imagery every morning, they’ll get more interested in trying that breakfast, even if not the same day.
Try running a door hanger OOH campaign
Want to increase dwell time and engagement while targeting a specific set of prospects right on their front porches? Nothing has more potential for this than a door hanger distribution campaign.
Visit Power Direct or fill out this form to get done-for-you project recommendations, including budget, targeting, creative, and more.
AllOver Media does a great job at executing door hanger campaigns like the above as well. Another great option to have in your wheel house!