B&T Awards The Work: Look Out, It’s The OOH Finalists

Apart from telling your mate at the pub about what you just bought, out of home has to be the oldest form of advertising. But don’t think any of these entries are showing the format’s age.

The jury will be looking for a strong creative idea specific to out of home: Demonstrate a strong creative insight. Demonstrate suitability of strategy, solution and execution against the original brief. Show your outcomes: Primarily, delivered effective business results (ROI, brand lift, sales revenue) and secondary, delivered audience engagement (reach, watch time & view duration, sentiment). This category covers all out of home channels.

Of course, now that you’re invested in shortlisted entries, why not come along and see who will be crowned the winners at the Hordern Pavilion on Friday 24 November 2023? Early bird tickets are limited so don’t run the risk of paying full price later.

And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out the entire short lists for the 2023 B&T Awards here and here.

Secure your table now!

Catch up on the other shortlisted work by clicking on the links below:

• B&T Award For Bravery
• B&T Award for Diversity
• Best Content Marketing Strategy
• Best CTV Campaign
• Best Data-Driven Marketing Campaign
• Best Digital Campaign, sponsored by Twitch
• Best Direct Response Campaign
• Best Integrated Campaign
• Best Media Campaign
• Best OOH Campaign
• Best PR Campaign
• Best TV Campaign
• Best Use of Sponsorship

Here’s the finalists’ work in their own words, the headings below show the name of the agency entering the award, the campaign name and the client putting their trust in them.

ARN, ARN Marketing, GOLD104.3 Content, Initiative & JCDecaux, ARN

Background

Christian O’Connell has become a Melbourne radio icon. His unique brand of heroing his listeners, encouraging authentic community engagement and delivering light-hearted, infectiously funny banter has seen his show amass an enviable, loyal, and engaged listener base. However, in the second half of 2022, FM listenership had declined and a rival station shaking up their breakfast line-up guaranteed disruption and listener churn.

Objectives

Unable to compete with the deep pockets of our rivals, our goal was to maintain the show’s leadership position with a cut through campaign that won the hearts, minds and ears of Melburnians; with ambitious targets to attract and retain new listeners.

Insight & Strategy

Few categories in marketing are as aggressive as breakfast radio. Yet, while the shows that win ears are unpredictable, communal and original, the marketing that surrounds them is anything but. To avoid this, we leant into a core truth; that it’s Christian’s interactions with his listeners that unlocks the most memorable moments.

• Insight: The true heroes of the Christian O’Connell Show are the people of Melbourne.
• Strategy: Take listener stories to the streets.
• Idea: Win a Billboard!

We gave control of our marketing to our listeners by offering them the chance to ‘win a billboard’ and share their messages across Melbourne.

Execution

More than a stunt, or a tactical special build, GOLD104.3’s Win a Billboard was an innovative, scalable and most-importantly a market-first and highly complex digital outdoor campaign.

The campaign launched through an OESP blitz. Starting with on-air live reads (naturally), talent social, PR, and of course billboards inviting all of Melbourne to get their messages shared.

Results

By inviting Melburnians to ‘Win a Billboard’, The Christian O’Connell Show won the breakfast radio battle; delivering GOLD104.3’s highest ever breakfast share and dominated all campaign objectives…all for a very small budget.

 

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Coles Liquor, Liquorland’s 50 Days of Deals, Coles Liquor

This campaign, developed and executed by our Trade, Brand, Loyalty, Insights and Media teams, was born from Liquorland’s 50th birthday.

Liquorland launched in 1971 and in 2021, Liquorland celebrated the milestone by rewarding customers with 50 days of deals on key liquor brands leading up to Christmas. The campaign continued into 2022, inviting customers to bring the cheers during Christmas and revolutionised the way we engaged our audience during the festive season.

Through the power of Digital Out of Home, the 50 Days of Deals campaign offered a unique and dynamic experience to consumers, resulting in exceptional business outcomes and increased audience engagement.

The data-driven approach of 50 Days Of Deals along with a strong product selection & best in market pricing yielded remarkable outcomes. By tailoring product recommendations each day, we saw a substantial increase in conversions and sales, resulting in a positive impact on ROAS. The combination of dynamic and limited time offers enticed consumers to make purchases, driving revenue growth.

Strong product offering at market leading prices led to improved in-store experience and Christmas week was the biggest week of sales in Coles Liquor history.

A record-breaking Christmas and NYE period, Christmas week biggest week of sales in CLG history with NYE week biggest on record.

2nd highest monthly sales ever recorded in Coles Liquor, with 2nd highest market share ever at 18.1%
Record eComm sales week including record sales in OnDemand and LL Web.

This resulted in liquor audiences recognising the value Liquorland offered and ensured the brand was top of mind when thinking about gifting and entertaining during the festive season.

Howatson+Company, Bed-verts, 10:PM

This entry highlights an unconventional use of OOH with impressive results, despite having no media budget to support the idea.

We transformed abandoned mattresses into attention-grabbing billboards, using bold copy to reveal the hidden bacterial terrors lurking within and simultaneously highlight the need for 10:PM’s locally made, microbe-neutralizing, ultra-hygienic products.

Our innovative new OOH made waves on social media, generating +5 million impressions in one week and reaching 75% of Metropolitan Sydney. Additionally, Bed-verts received PR coverage in 130+ news and radio spots.

The unconventional approach not only drove fame for 10:PM but also sparked larger discussions on mattress hygiene. Bed-verts showcases the transformative power of a strong insight and creativity, which paved the path to success for 10:PM’s launch to market.

iProspect, Polestar, Polestar

While out of home has been a channel staple for Polestar Australia since day one, we sought to evolve the role it plays in our broader marketing strategy by taking a different approach to planning.

By leveraging a customer-centric, data-first approach to our channel strategy we were able to better understand the relationships between people, places, and our product, resulting in an encompassing approach that used creative cut-through and contextual smarts to deliver for our client, whilst laying a foundation for future evolution and innovation within the channel.

It’s Friday, Unleash Your Second Half, Colonial First State

It’s Friday created a new insight-driven brand platform for Colonial First State called ‘Unleash Your Second Half’. It depicted the category in an entirely new way that was more relevant, attitudinal, and aspirational. It spoke to how pre-retirees felt and desired. CFS reframed what retirement and retirement finances are about, showing people how, with the right financial support, they can thrive in their Second Half.

In a frequently passive category that features images such as retirees taking long walks on beaches, we boldly challenged Australians to think more boldly about the potential that lies in the freedom of retirement.

M&C Saatchi Group / Collider Studios, The Plastic Forecast, Minderoo

Introducing The Plastic Forecast

A daily reminder of the weight of our plastic problem.

Plastic has damaged our planet in unimaginable ways.

It’s now being found in our rain.

Together, Minderoo Foundation and M&C Saatchi created a world first weather metric informing the public how much plastic will fall from the sky on any given day. It was launched in Paris during the UN’s Plastic Treaty discussions at UNESCO headquarters.

The new forecast was launched at the ChangeNow climate summit in Paris by the French Minister for Ecology, and showed up with both roaming and hyper-targeted outdoor surrounding the UNESCO building where discussions took place.

These outdoor sites provided reactive daily forecasts, for Parisians and delegates to see as conditions changed.

These sites earned coverage on major weather broadcasts across the world – including LCI, Aljazeera, CNEWS, France 2, France 24, WION, and BFMTV. A week-long feature on France 3, presented by Sebastien Thomas, kept the public informed of the daily Plastic Forecast throughout the INC-2 meeting.

In just two weeks, The Plastic Forecast gained international coverage and reached over 1.3 billion people.

The Plastic Forecast is coming to more major cities soon, with a very simple message. Despite being impossible to avoid, The Plastic Forecast is possible to change.

Mindshare, House of the Dragon, BINGE

In August 2022, BINGE launched one of the world’s most anticipated new shows – the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. To accelerate BINGE’s subscriber growth in a highly cluttered and competitive category, we had to seize this opportunity and convert the masses. But we were up against some big competition.

Just two weeks after the House of the Dragon premiere, Prime Video released Rings of Power – their Lord of the Rings prequel. We were also up against the spending power of SVOD juggernauts Paramount+ and Stan – both of which favoured OOH as their primary media channel. With this in mind, we knew we had to make the most of our first mover advantage and win on the OOH battleground. We had to do something special to help us stand out and supercharge the conversation at launch.

Knowing that the fandom were critical in encouraging the masses, we chose to lead with our strongest and most-loved HotD assets – House Targaryen’s fire breathing dragons and the iconic Iron Throne. Our OOH strategy centred around these two distinctive assets, with a dragon invasion in Melbourne and a Iron Throne takeover in Sydney. This included flying dragon light projections in Melbourne CBD, a 3D fire-breathing dragon billboard at Melbourne’s Bourke Street, and three high impact special builds with glowing dragon eyes. BINGE was also the first SVOD to advertise on the iconic City of Sydney flags, driving traffic to our mediaeval-looking Iron throne activations.

Overall, our campaign delivered a new viewing record for Foxtel and BINGE, smashed all brand benchmarks, and received the highest ad recall rate in Pigeon project history! We were also the top trending Google search term on launch day and received twice as many searches as Amazon’s Rings of Power!

Mindshare, The Aperol Spritz Summer Wave, Aperol

Special, Plastic Pile of Sh!t, Better Packaging Co.

UN reports estimate that approximately a garbage truck sized pile of plastic is dumped into our oceans EVERY 30 SECONDS. Statistics like this are often hard for the average person to comprehend – which makes them easy to dismiss. So, to visualise the observation that the world treats plastic like sh!t, we distilled it into one unmissable installation – the Plastic Pile of Sh!t. Inspired by the widely popular poop emoji we set out to craft and create a giant 4m high poo filled with plastic waste. A simple and iconic a symbol that transcends languages and borders.

This provocative idea drew attention to the amount of plastic that is dumped into our oceans every year and show how POLLASTICTM is part of the solution. For maximum impact and coverage, we launched it on World Environment Day (June 5th) whereby the United Nations challenged the world to find solutions to #BeatPlasticPollution.

The Plastic Pile of Sh!t has been crucial in bringing awareness to a huge problem we all face.

The campaign was hugely successful, generating over 200+ pieces of coverage with an EAV of $2.2million+ and has reached over 47m+ worldwide. This achieved an ROI $9.4 for every dollar spent.

The global publications in which it featured were top tier, noteable titles included The Guardian, The Atlantic, Indy 100, The Irish Times, NOW THIS, Lad bible and the Daily Mail.

In Australia it was broadcast on Channel 10, Channel 7 News, SBS and various other notable media channels.
In NZ, the campaign was picked up by all major news outlets, including 1 & 3 News, Stuff and NZ Herald.
It was shared widely across social media including iconic Bondi photographer Aquabumps, Members of parliament, government departments, local mayor, Paula Masselos, the UN and not to mention the copious ‘squatting’ shots.

Special, Get Almost Almost* Anything, Uber Eats

Uber Eats is in a period of business growth, continuing to expand their delivery offering beyond takeaway food, to groceries, alcohol, convenience products and beyond.

So despite several years of successful ‘Tonight. I’ll be eating ..’ campaigns that had skyrocketed the brand from fourth to the market front runner, the business needed the brand marketing to pivot to reflect this new ambition.

This case is the story of how the brand’s new positioning ‘Get Almost, Almost Anything’ launched, and the success the self-deprecating brand admission has had after mere months in market.

The Royals, Hyper-Local Beerboards, Coopers

Coopers has been Australian-born and brewed since 1862, but in a time when small, local craft breweries were winning the hearts of Aussies, it was becoming increasingly more difficult for a national beer brand to be seen as a local favourite.

The Royals’ strategy was to make Coopers – a national beer brand – feel local again through a hyperlocalised out-of-home campaign.

So, in a roll-out across the whole of Australia, we unveiled a series of OOH executions with messages the locals could relate to. Each execution spoke to the location, time, format context (including the weather) – letting beer drinkers know that Coopers was the true, original local independent craft beer.

With 423 individual pieces of artwork, 26 headlines and executions across multiple locations in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA and SA, we delivered relevant messages to a receptive audience in a cheerful tone.

Universal Pictures Australia, Barbie, Universal Pictures Australia

Our ambition with BARBIE was to have the #1 opening of all time for a female driven film in Australia.

We knew Barbie had high brand awareness, but our challenge was converting awareness to interest in the film and ticket sales. We also needed to overcome the perception this was a kid’s film, and firmly establish Barbie as a must-see blockbuster for all audiences.

Our creative insight was to engage and excite audiences by bringing Barbie Land into the real world for the first time ever. We leveraged brand nostalgia and distinct brand cues to showcase the iconic aesthetic of Barbie with a modern twist. From here, we developed a bold out of home campaign, designed to disrupt Australian winter and paint Australia PINK!

With outdoor as our leading channel and biggest reach driver, our ‘Paint Australia Pink’ creative strategy was executed with a real sense of joy, and firmly positioned Barbie as an entertaining theatrical event worth celebrating.

We utilized unique, iconic and showstopping formats with customized artwork to create a memorable Barbiefied experience for audiences across Australia.

Our surprise and delight outdoor strategy attracted a lot of attention and ignited social platforms, as audiences became eager to engage in the Barbie spectacle. Our customized OOH formats were highly shareable, with film hype exploding off the back of our Barbie At Bondi activation, not only in Australia but around the world.

Barbie is undoubtedly a global phenomenon, but our ‘Paint Australia Pink’ outdoor campaign helped us achieve our objective of a #1 opening of all time for a female film and the biggest box office opening of 2023 by 50%!