Welcome to System1 and JCDecaux UK’s OOH Of The Month!
Each month we’ll look at Out Of Home advertising and bring you some of the most effective work we’ve found – Out Of Home ads that really do have that “Ooh!” factor.
We share three of the best ads we’ve seen over the past month. OOH Of The Month is a collaboration between System1 and JCDecaux UK, so as well as the metrics you might be familiar with from System1, we’re bringing in JCDecaux UK’s Attention Score, which predicts the elements of each ad that will attract audience focus. On the System1 side of things, our reports include our short-term Spike Rating and long-term Star Rating, which has been predicting advertising effectiveness for 15 years. And we also look at Fast Fluency – how much of the audience recognize the brand being advertised.
System1’s Test Your Ad isn’t just about video. They also predict the long- and short-term impact of Out Of Home ads, both static images and digital billboards, and each month System1 and JCDecaux UK put the top three under the spotlight to see who really has the OOH Factor.
OOH OF THE MONTH NOVEMBER 2025
Outdoor and print advertising gives brands a canvas to experiment, but not all experiments pay off right away. When you’re looking for the OOH Factor, it’s important to celebrate the brands taking creative risks with outdoor work, and System1’s Test Your Ad Pro platform lets us zoom in on what’s working even in ads with low scores. So this month we’ve got three risk-takers, some of which hit the target right away, while some perform in more subtle ways.
First up is Heinz in the UK, with a clever poster ad for its cream of tomato soup. The poster shows a bowl of scrumptious looking soup, and painted on the inside is a woman relaxing, her lower body warming itself as she uses the soup as a kind of hot tub! “Fancy a dip? It has to be Heinz” runs the copy, using Heinz’ current brand tagline as well as making a pun on dipping into soup and going for a dip in a pool or tub.
Heinz gets our top scores of the month with this ad. There’s an Exceptional Brand Fluency and Fast Fluency score – people instantly get that the ad is for Heinz. There’s also strong scores on long-term Star Rating (4.6-Stars) and short-term Spike, both firmly above the UK outdoor average. In other words, it’s an ad which reminds people of the brand, of what they like about the brand and we predict it’ll create a strong sales spike too.
What makes it risky, though? The idea of a human swimming in soup is the kind of image that might create negative emotions or concerns around hygiene. But by making it obviously a fun painting on the side of a bowl, Heinz get to make their visual joke without triggering any of these negative impressions.
Ikea in Germany also only show part of a person in their print ad, with a baby toddling towards the camera and the tagline “Wherever life goes”. The ad is actually for their UNDVIKA line of child safety products, like corner bumpers, but the double-page magazine spread doesn’t show those. Instead it focuses on who the range protects, babies taking their first steps and exploring the world.
There are two bold risks taken here. The first is detaching the image from the products it’s selling. Some of the Neutral verbatim comments in our Test Your Ad Pro report do suggest a bit of confusion around this subject – “don’t know what it is about” for instance. The second is that in only showing the lower half of the baby, IKEA may get lower emotional response. But here we can see that the Test Your Ad Pro scores suggest that isn’t a problem. At 2.8-Stars, this scores above the emotional norm for Europe print ads, and it also gets a Strong score on Emotional Intensity. So while this isn’t a perfect ad, the report shows its weakness is in branding clarity not the overall design.
Finally we have US skincare brand The Ordinary, with the riskiest ad of all this month. A set of 3 posters, designed to look like boxes in the Periodic Table, spell out the word “Fluff”, and the text on the posters talks about how The Ordinary is a brand which promotes “Facts, not Fiction” and a scientific approach to skincare rather than the vague or wild claims of its rivals.
Seen in this light, you can appreciate the cleverness of the posters – they have an image associated with science, and they’re promoting a brand that takes science seriously. They’re also extremely consistent with the brand’s own packaging, which uses the same stark black on white labelling and descriptions.
Of course this is very risky, and goes against most of the things we’d recommend in outdoor advertising – there’s a deliberate avoidance of emotional content, and if you’re not familiar with the brand its identity will be obscure. Lo and behold, the headline Test Your Ad Pro scores are low, as we’d expect. But The Ordinary are a niche brand and this ad should be seen as a way of establishing consistency, designed to pay off as more people become familiar with it. The positive verbatims we received – “I love the idea” and praising the “bold graphic design” show that the consistency is making an impact.
Will The Ordinary’s austere, design-first approach pay off? That’s a matter for future ads in the campaign. The unified, principled approach to design and advertising is the biggest risk of all this month. But in the verbatims in the Test Your Ad Pro report we see signs that there is an audience for it, even if it’s currently a minority. And outdoor advertising, with its high potential for repeat exposure, is a perfect canvas for establishing a strong brand identity. Even Heinz had to start somewhere.
Outdoor ads offer the biggest canvas in advertising to creative brands. It’s hard to always use well – as that low average US score proves. But with imagination and a strong sense of branding, any marketer can take advantage of poster space and even step beyond it to bring an extra dimension that creates the OOH Factor.
IKEA Germany
Åkestam Holst NoA
Heinz
Wieden+Kennedy London
The Ordinary
Uncommon