OOH of the Month: Summer 2026
A sweltering summer sends people outside, which means summer out of home (OOH) campaigns are some of the most important creative touchpoints for brands. Summer work is often about sensory pleasure and capturing a vibe rather than getting across information or even jokes – when it’s simply too hot to impose much cognitive load on your customers, the direct approach works best!
In this month’s look at the best outdoor and static advertising, we’re exploring three ads from Summer 2026 which take different but successful approaches to summertime effectiveness, harnessing the sunshine to build brands and spike sales.
Lovely Day For Football
First up its Guinness and “Lovely Day For Football,” their summer campaign from the UK. Guinness has often run campaigns with strong sporting ties – they’re a big sponsor of the rugby Six Nations, for instance – and it’s a tried-and-true way of making their brand relevant to an occasion. Play, or cheer, your heart out and then get back to the bar for a nice smooth pint of Guinness. In this ad we’re seeing two people in football shirts holding a pint under a beautiful summer sky, with the famous Harp logo forming the “V” in the word “Lovely”.
It’s an ad which asks only one thing of its viewers – recognize Guinness from the pint and the distinctive logo. A powerful use of brand distinctive assets, which the Test Your Ad Outdoor report shows is a success. 53% of viewers name the logo as a distinctive asset and “Guinness” is by far the top association the audience has.
Even more importantly, the ad is also a brand-building success, with a strong 4.1-Star Rating (the UK Outdoor Ad average is 2.5-Stars). As Guinness is a year-round seller, that means the summer campaign will carry effectiveness over into the winter months.
McShadows
In the Netherlands, a summer ad from McDonald’s also makes striking and creative use of distinctive assets. The ad shows a photo taken of two shadows, crisply outlined on a pavement on a hot summer’s day. An adult is handing a child a McDonald’s Happy Meal, immediately recognizable by the packaging shape.
It’s a minimal ad with no specific message except what’s revealed in the image and the brand logo at the bottom, but the ad’s Brand Fluency (rapid recognition) metrics are extremely strong, well above the Western Europe norm. Particularly impressive is an exceptional (88%) Fast Fluency score, showing that the vast majority of people recognize that it’s a McDonald’s ad with only 2 seconds exposure. Of course, it helps that they also like the ad too, with long-term Star Rating and short-term Spike Rating also firmly beating the regional norms.
Going Slow is a Piece of Cheesecake
Finally, in the US Haagen-Dazs ice cream takes a more direct route with its summer ad, opting for a product shot overlaid on a hazy picture of a city street with the tagline “Going Slow Is A Piece Of Cheesecake”. Unlike Guinness or McDonalds, ice cream is a strongly seasonal product so it makes sense for Haagen-Dazs to aim for sensory appeal, which – alongside Excitement – the ad hits on our Types of Happiness report.
What’s startling about this ad though is how well it performs on long-term Star Rating, with a 4.8-Star score against the US Outdoor average of only 1.8-Stars. This puts it up with the best outdoor ads we’ve ever tested in the US, testament to how an appealing picture and copy can work summer magic on viewers. The right product, advertised in the right way, at the right time.
It also underlines why summer ads are so important. The sales boosts for summer outdoor campaigns will fade but the brand-building effects linger on, and people delighted by this Haagen-Dazs ad will carry positive mental impressions away for future purposes. Sunny weather ends eventually, but for brands the benefits of a great summer ad remain.
Credits:
Guinness (UK): AMV BBDO, photography from Dan Burn-Forti and Peter Franklyn Banks
McDonald’s (NL): TBWA\NEBOKO
Haagen-Dazs (US): nice&frank