Who Really has the OOH? —Merchant Gourmet, Apple and Lloyds

JANUARY 2026

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 have been predicting advertising effectiveness for 15 years. And we also look at Fast Fluency – how much of the audience recognizes the advertised brand.

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 JANUARY 2026

Branding. From the hungriest start-up to the biggest businesses in the world, they all have to answer the same question – how best to convey your brand in the few seconds of attention an Out Of Home advert gets? This month, we’re looking at three solutions to that problem, each with its own advantages and drawbacks.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to the question of how best to use a brand on an Out of Home ad. The key metrics we have at System1 are Brand Fluency – a measure of speed and accuracy of brand identification – and Fast Fluency, a tougher measure which looks only at the opening seconds of brand exposure. Low scores on both are common, which is why repeated exposure to Out Of Home ads is so important. But when a brand can create strong Fluency in its outdoor ads, it certainly has the OOH Factor we’re looking for.

We’ll start with a UK brand, Merchant Gourmet. It has a 30-year history as a niche premium ready-meal brand and was bought last year by Premier Foods, which is looking to capitalize on the healthy premium trend and drive up brand awareness. That translates into a poster titled “YES CHEF!”, featuring a young woman squeezing lime over a rice dish she’s made based on Merchant Gourmet 3 Bean Chili.

It’s bright, colorful, and mouthwatering with the brand front and center and a very straightforward message. Fluency isn’t high because the brand is not very well known, but the ad performs well on our other core metric, Star Rating, which uses emotional response to predict long-term brand growth. In other words, the campaign succeeds as an introduction to a brand, planting positive associations in the audience’s mind. Fluency will come with time.

The next ad under the spotlight is from Apple, as part of their campaign for the new iPhone 17 Pro. The iPhone 17 has enjoyed Apple’s best reviews in years, partly because of its exceptional camera performance, and the ad showcases this as a reason to buy. It shows a dynamic, action photo of an athlete in action with the message “shot on iPhone 17 Pro”.

Apple is in a privileged position when it comes to branding. It’s one of the best-known brands in the world, and the iPhone brand created the smartphone category. So it can afford to dial down the strong branding in its campaign and compete where it needs to, on features. The “shot on” campaign crosses media and is strong and distinctive, so even when an individual ad doesn’t score well on Fluency, the overall campaign helps convey the message. Pushing specific product information in an Out Of Home campaign is difficult, as OOH advertising is based around rapid, low-attention engagement. Apple’s steady, distinctive campaign is one of the better ways to approach the problem.

The best branded ad we tested this month, though, comes from UK bank Lloyds. Like Apple’s ad, it has a message to convey: the bank is the top lender for first-time British homebuyers. And like Merchant Gourmet, it has strong, clear branding with bright colors. But the ad also includes an element neither of the others does – an extra distinctive asset, in the form of the bank’s famous black horse symbol. The horse appears on a mobile phone screen in the center of the ad, as part of a lampshade in one of those new homes Lloyds has helped fund.

Distinctive assets like the black horse are extremely valuable for Out Of Home advertising – we see brands like McDonald’s use colors and shapes all the time, as they can trigger brand memories and impressions even more quickly than text. Lloyds’ black horse is probably the best-known asset in UK banking and regularly stars in their TV ads, allowing them to be more emotional and creative than most high street banks.

In this ad, the benefit comes from strong Fluency and Fast Fluency. Over 90% of the Test Your Ad audience identified the ad as for Lloyds, and over 70% did so within 2 seconds. Both these scores are well above the UK average for outdoor ads.

Three ads, three different approaches to branding, from introducing the brand to stepping back in favor of a product message. But of the three, it’s Lloyds’ use of distinctive assets that is most successful at triggering recognition and creating the OOH Factor.

Merchant Gourmet
Insiders
Lloyds
Publicis Go
Apple
TBWA\Media Arts Lab

- Advertisement -