Really Have That ‘OOH Factor’ —OOH OF THE MONTH
beer, beans and bars— 3.6-Stars —System1 —FEBRUARY 2025
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 recognizes 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 FEBRUARY 2025
This month’s Out of Home high performers include three outdoor ads with very different approaches to their brand logos and assets but one thing in common. They all score in the highest, Exceptional bracket on System1’s recognition metric for static and outdoor ads, Fast Fluency.
What exactly is Fast Fluency, and why does it matter? In System1’s standard Test Your Ad effectiveness model, Brand Fluency is important to every ad in any medium – it’s the measure of people who can recognize your brand accurately and quickly. Fast Fluency takes that to the next level: it’s the proportion of people who recognize the brand during their first two seconds of exposure to an ad.
This kind of near-instant recognition is particularly important for out of home ads. When people are driving past a poster, for instance, a high Fast Fluency score gives the ad a chance to work even if people don’t take in the full details of the message. An ad with exceptional Fast Fluency truly has the OOH Factor we’re looking for each month.
You might think that maximizing Fast Fluency is simple – go big and bold with your branding, so it’s impossible to miss. That can definitely work. It’s the route Coors Light took in the US last month, tying into its Super Bowl “Case of The Mondays” commercial with an out of home ad that’s an exceptionally straightforward execution. The poster has no complex message, just an ice cold can of beer on a cool blue background with the logo and the slogan “MOUNTAIN COLD REFERSHMENT”
Yes, “REFERSHMENT”. The intentional misspelling is what links the poster ad back to the Super Bowl work. It should be said that none of our viewers who commented on the Coors poster picked up on the mistake, so it’s hard to say whether the joke helped make the ad more effective. But even with the mistake the ad works as a big, bold display of brand assets which scored a powerful 85% Fast Fluency, firmly in the Exceptional bracket.
But you don’t have to be so obvious to get a high Fast Fluency score. Over in the UK, Cadbury’s scored an 80% Fast Fluency with the latest in their “Made to Share” campaign, advertising cheeky new limited-edition packs for their market-leading Dairy Milk chocolate. The packs have fun with the idea of sharing out the chocolate bar fairly, with big chunks going to family members who did some actual housework, and a much slimmer share going to “who ate” the chocolate.
The pack, and the ad, does contain a Dairy Milk logo, but most of the branding and fluency work is being done by less tangible assets – the “glass and a half” visual, the font, and most of all the royal purple which Dairy Milk had made its signature color. In the UK, it’s as powerful a brand color signifier as Coke Red is around the world. It’s enough to give Dairy Milk an Exceptional Fast Fluency score but also leave it with a strong 4.0-Star Rating for emotional impact, meaning these limited-edition packs could have a long-term brand growth effect.
The most daring of our three ads this month comes from Heinz Baked Beans, with their “It Has to Be Toast” campaign. Heinz is a brand whose confidence about its assets and brand strength is so great that it’s felt able to leave off its logo and pack entirely. Instead, the poster simply shows the product – baked beans – and the “It Has to Be Toast” slogan. But there is one tell-tale sign that its Heinz viewers are seeing – the font on the poster is from the pack, and the word “TOAST” is curved in an identical fashion to the Heinz logo on each tin of beans.
It’s as subtle a brand cue as we’ve ever seen on a poster. It shouldn’t work, you might think. And yet the power of Heinz as a brand and a distinctive asset is such that it still manages to get an Exceptional 81% Fast Fluency. Heinz is so dominant in the bean market that the lightest branding touch can win instant recognition. It’s quite a flex, and the ad also gets well above average on emotional response, with a strong 3.6-Stars.
What these three ads show is that you don’t have to go the direct route to hit a high Fast Fluency score. If you do, as Coors Light shows, it can work just fine even if viewers don’t notice more subtle elements in the ad. But you can get the same exceptional scores with a more playful branding approach. If your assets are strong enough, almost any visual cue can give your ad the OOH factor.
Credits
Coors Light: Marcelo Pascoa
Mischief @ No Fixed Address
Heinz
Wieden+Kennedy London: CCO Hermeti Balarin
Cadbury
VCCP
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