OUT OF HOME OF THE MONTH – DECEMBER

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.

OUT OF HOME OF THE MONTH – DECEMBER

It’s a bumper end of year round-up of System1’s Out Of Home Of The Month testing, with a double-sized selection of six outstanding static and outdoor ads, including the literal biggest ad we’ve featured yet. As usual, we’re looking for out of home ads with the OOH Factor – ones which pack a strong emotional punch (measured by System1’s long-term predictive Star Rating) or are quickly and strongly recognizable (measured by System 1’s Brand Fluency).

As you’d expect, we have a bunch of seasonal ads performing this time, though our top performer of the month isn’t a Christmas or New Year creative. Each of these six ads is a strong example of a particular aspect of Out Of Home advertising, with the top scoring ad standing out for its all-round effectiveness.

Let’s kick off with the other non-festive execution, for Tony’s Chocolonely, the premium chocolate brand whose selling points are high quality and brand purpose – it’s taken a stand against the use of modern slavery in the cocoa industry, regularly calling out other brands for their policies on this. That side of the brand is left out of this witty execution, which instead focuses on the name – a bit of a mouthful and often misspelled. The poster claims Tony’s doesn’t care if people get its name wrong, then ironically undercuts itself, admitting that yes, they do. It’s a fun, self-deprecating take from the brand which scores particularly strongly on emotional response with a 3.5-Star Rating and consumers praising the humor of the ad. The execution doesn’t neglect the basics either with a big pack shot making sure the brand is very visible.

Onto the Christmas creative work, and Vodafone take the opportunity to emphasize its brand heritage, with a poster ad reminding us that it’s been the “nation’s network” for 40 years, dating back to the very earliest days of mobile phones. The ad makes its point creatively with an old school feature-phone text message, instantly recognizable to anyone who was using phones back in the 90s and 00s. With the brand’s logo prominently displayed, the ad performs exceptionally well on Brand Fluency – often a hard metric for Out Of Home ads to hit, as contact with consumers is very fleeting. Vodafone’s 95% score here is our second highest of the month.

Another brand doing well on Fluency with a festive ad is Rightmove, whose amusing ad features a set of sleigh and reindeer prints in the snow and copy suggesting the secret location is Santa’s Workshop. It’s an execution that left a few viewers a bit confused as to the joke, though entertained the ones who did understand it – it’s an ad designed for repeated exposure rather than a one-off encounter. But with a strong 92% Brand Fluency rating even people who couldn’t work out why Rightmove were showing us a wintry landscape were in no doubt of the brand behind it.

Peroni’s festive ad has a beer bottle making a snow angel, and again is a strong performer on Brand Fluency, matching Rightmove’s 92%. It’s a nice visual joke with immediate brand recognition – one interesting thing about it is that Peroni have run this ad for two years running now. As System1’s Compound Creativity report shows, creative consistency is a secret weapon in the battle for effectiveness, and when brands have striking, effective work like this Peroni poster it makes excellent sense to run it over multiple years rather than casting around for novelty.

Our last festive Out Of Home ad is a spectacular execution from Aardman Animations, advertising the Christmas Day return of iconic characters Wallace And Gromit by projecting the pair onto the columns of Battersea Power Station. It’s the biggest Out Of Home ad we’ve ever featured in this column, and it got a good emotional response from audiences with a 3.2-Star Rating. Out Of Home advertising can offer a canvas for some truly special, large-scale work on these lines: Aardman fitted the visuals (Wallace and Gromit decorating Christmas trees) to the unique shape of the power station for beautiful results. With the animated special getting more than 9 million viewers on Christmas Day this ad played its part in a very successful publicity campaign.

But our best performing Out Of Home ad has no particular Christmas content – in fact it’s from a sector that very rarely scores well in any kind of ad testing: pharmaceuticals. Calpol’s poster execution is simple but highly effective – a kid grinning as they press their face against a pane of glass with the tagline “Someone’s feeling better” and a pack shot of the children’s medicine. The ad has the highest score on all of System1’s effectiveness metrics this month – a 4.0-Star Rating, an exceptional 96% Brand Fluency and a strong performance on our Spike Rating, which predicts short-term sales. The simplicity and warmth of the execution and the link between the child’s happiness and the pack make it a stand-out performer. We’ve also had data from our partner JCDecaux showing that both this version and a version without the pack shot perform well on attention metrics.

All our ads this month perform strongly on particular aspects, but Calpol bring it all together and remind us that whatever the season the basics of great Out Of Home advertising don’t change much: a strong visual image, a solid link to the brand, and emotional resonance to take them to the next level. Be they humorous, heartwarming or both, ads with the OOH factor are more than mere brand reminders – they also make us smile.

Toney’s Chocolonely
Head of marketing: Jacqui Grimsey-Jones

Vodaphone
Leo Burnett
CCO: Mark Elwood
Creative Director: Rob Tenconi
Social Creative Director: Beth Manning
Creative: Matt Wood & Tom Loveless

Wallace and Gromit
Aardman
Battersea Power Station

Rightmove

Neverland

Peroni

Unbound

Creative Partner: Paul Hogarth

Calpol

TEN