By E.B. Moss
DPAA’s CEO, Barry Frey, describes the Digital Out Of Home trade association as being the “three Cs” for their members: Connector, Consigliere, and Community. In a full day of inspiration at their recent Global Summit, leading brands from Mastercard to McDonalds shared examples of how they engage consumers in an “omnivideo” world, including DOOH, with a focus on their own Cs: Culture, Content and Context.
Three of those brands explained how to navigate another “C”: “Challenges” — in evolving their marketing over the decades in an increasingly fragmented media environment: the 125 years of Pepsi; a reimagining of Esprit’s 80s DNA with a 2023 US rebrand; a new “top of funnel” focus for Brooks Running, reflecting their 1990s product shift. Hint: all are highly bullish on including out of home within their solutions.
The Current Pepsi Generation of Consumers
Pepsi CMO Todd Kaplan presented what Frey praised as “marketing 101 through 505 in 15 minutes.” After all, it illustrated how Pepsi has often led the way with innovative messaging throughout world changes – from wisely promoting value pricing during the Great Depression to being the first brand to have a radio jingle. Kaplan explained how their choices today are still led by culture and context, but through the lens of marketing’s new tools and technologies, and media channels that have evolved from AM radio to anamorphic billboards. However, he explained, “we don’t chase trends. We chase consumers.”
Influencing purchase and adoption starts by first “understanding where consumers are, what their motivation is, what’s happening, and where they’re going,” Kaplan said. Whether it’s becoming a part of youth culture in the 60s or the Pepsi generation of the 80s with Michael Jackson music videos, Kaplan said, “it’s always about listening” — and he highlighted several additional core strategies they use to circumnavigate today’s consumer ad fatigue and distraction.
First, it’s very “old school,” he said, to “tell consumers to buy our product because our product is better…. The thing that’s missing from that formula is that today you need to really understand and embrace context more than anything… When I’m consuming an ad, I might be sitting with somebody sleeping on my shoulder, with the sound off. I might be watching on TV but browsing on my phone. So, when you do buy media and creative — and this is where out of home is so powerful — it’s the idea of making something contextually creative to really generate discussion.”
Out of Home as the Ultimate Contextual Medium
Kaplan’s endorsement of out of home’s advantage for creative storytelling resonated with the audience. “It’s interesting to me that some marketers would skip it…” Many agencies “intellectually get it,” he chided, but often relegate DOOH to a later stage in media planning discussions, based on leftover impressions of “dusty roadside signs” versus its modernized opportunities. “This is a misstep,” said Kaplan, as it actually offers powerful capabilities and flexibility. “It should be at the beginning of planning, rather than ‘hey let’s just resize some crap and put it in this area’. …I would say there’s no other media like it: by its nature it’s local and contextual.”
He referenced other examples of ads that leverage DOOH’s responsiveness, like those triggered to offer free ice cream when the temperature goes up. And, their own “Better With” campaign featured in-your-face images of the Pepsi logo “hidden” within other brands’ logos, including of some restaurants pouring rival Coca-Cola, placed strategically near their locations triggering industry awards!
Retail media and DOOH can be “the definition of creative being anchored in context,” he said, adding: “It’s usually more transaction-oriented and more of a lower funnel push. For example, if I’m pumping gas and see Gas Station TV, I know I can get a drink right here in the concession store. So maybe I’ll run an ad that’s less about building equity or Pepsi’s music experiences, and show more of the fizz and the refreshment cues.”
Finally, citing how the new Sphere in Las Vegas has quickly become part of the social media zeitgeist, Kaplan believes it shows how a localized DOOH campaign can gain national resonance — especially with the now “endless possibilities” with emerging 3-D, or anamorphic technologies.
Paid Media… and Beyond
In addition, Pepsi, goes “really deep” on opt-in local engagement experiences to complement mass reach advertising (supported, of course with DOOH in those strategic locations). A proof point of Pepsi passion is an upcoming pop-up celebrating their 125-year anniversary which has 17,000 fans on the waitlist for the 90-seat capacity retro-style Pepsi diner coming to Times Square. “Guess we’ll have to figure that out,” said the cool-headed Kaplan.
ESPIRT de Content
Figuring out how to leverage the passion of consumer nostalgia has been James Denman’s goal as he aims to revamp and relaunch the Esprit brand in North America, after its fame here cooled 20 years ago. The Senior Vice President of Global Brand Marketing explained how they have been refocusing what had been a phenomenal brand to meet the newer consumer with “playful, modern and cool” as its refreshed principles.
While the brand retained a significant retail footprint in Europe, the US requires a full relaunch. They began in September, positioning Esprit “not as a fashion and retail brand, as much as almost an IP — so you can translate Esprit into different contexts, cultural ideas, and lifestyles, with the same spirit and the same energy” of its 80s and 90s heyday.
Like Pepsi, they’ve promoted eye-catching customer engagement pop ups and content series in key cities, from New York to The Grove in Los Angeles, “which we were told is the most Ubered-to destination in the world with a million trips there every year.” [Note: Given that, Esprit might consider taking advantage of the DOOH video entertainment provided in Uber and Lyft vehicles by DPAA member, Octopus!] The dual presence of local marketing plus community gathering space “is a great way to experience the brand through the nostalgia … but also through this new refreshed lens.”
Denman was joined on stage by Alejandro Claiborne, EVP, Executive Director of their agency, Mediahub Worldwide, who sees curated spaces as similar to out of home’s engaging, of the moment and location content. Denman agreed, adding: “I have a real belief in and love for what OOH does. It’s a beautiful, exquisite media that can be used not just as a message driver but a content driver as well.”
“Think of Paris,” he offered. “There’s a reason why high fashion brands keep coming back to out of home: [with] that bold image, if you’re telling that story, there’s nothing better,” and described Tiffany’s takeover and wrapping of the Paris Opera as the “epitome of using it for brand elevation,” using their trademark methodology of “buying big and buying expansive.” He described it as “a stunning piece of work. It genuinely stopped me in my tracks. I was ‘oh man, what if I had that budget?’” Claiborne could only agree and sigh.
Another fashion brand outdoor icon for Denman, though he mourns its loss, was the towering DKNY-branded mural of New York, which shouted from a corner in SoHo for more than 15 years. Even if the Donna Karan brand has dissipated, “I think it’s a gross misjudgment that that wall doesn’t exist anymore. … It said something about New York, and it said it in four letters.” And that, he said, “is fundamentally the power of what OOH can do.”
So, working with Mediahub they’re aiming to offer their own high impact moments, ensuring the brand has a voice but also feels community-driven, experimenting with using DOOH as “breadcrumbs” in an engaging narrative, and “bringing that consumer along, from that one particular teaser moment – a little Easter egg — that draws you into the next part of the story.”
In a post-presentation aside, Denman applauded the DPAA conference, saying, “I think it’s incredible to see the smart thinking of people in this marketplace, really pushing the boundaries of it and, and from a marketer’s perspective and from a client’s perspective, it feels comforting, but it also feels inspiring as well.”
Brooks Bridging Brand And Performance Media
Just ten years younger than Pepsi, Brooks went from making ballet slippers in 1914, to baseball cleats, to ultimately running shoes during the 1970s running boom. The brand found its footing in the late 90s, shifting to solely performance run products. However, their modern marketing only recently shifted to include brand awareness campaigns. Jillian Zech, who leads the Brooks Running in-house paid media team, chatted with their agency CEO, Valerie Davis of Assembly, about how they are evolving their media tactics to keep pace with their performance goals. Pun intended.
“We’ve historically prioritized more conversion based media channels and just launched our first brand campaign a little over a year ago,” Zech shared candidly. To maintain a pandemic-era growth spurt the brand transitioned to a more into an audience first approach, “deploying more heavily into some upper funnel channels, like out of home,” she explained, adding, “Our first programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) was only two years ago; our first large format buy was literally just this past March.”
They, too, have found success tapping into local market pop-ups, and, like Esprit, chose LA as a priority market. They have been using DOOH to drive consumers to an outpost themed with “Find Your Run,” designed to help serious runners find their optimum shoe. Interestingly, Brooks Running only has two brick and mortar stores, relying instead on retail partners. With the help of one such partner, Fleet Feet, Brooks opened what was supposed to be a three-week storefront. “But,” Zech said, “it actually snowballed and is being extended into the end of December,” thrilled with the success of first foray.
“For our paid media, we leaned in very heavily with DOOH advertising, making sure that we could drive traffic on the August 5th launch day. Leading up to that we had invested in other large format billboards across the city.” Then they went “guerilla,” adding “big painted murals on the Venice boardwalk, wild postings, street teams, some petty cabs helping people get to and from the store, even sidewalk chalk directing people in and around the pop-up. So it was just a very big experiential moment to help drive conversation.”
Now the outdoor newbie is hoping for “more digital boards to make our lives easier: since we in-house all of our creative it becomes tricky to turn creative around quickly for static large format boards that take weeks for production and installation.”
The net net? “If they’re running, we want to be on their path.” And that, Zech said, will drive OOH as a core channel in selective markets going forward.
Lesson learned.
E.B. Moss is a content strategist, podcaster, and expert in business-to-business “explanatory journalism” who frequently writes about marketing and digital out of home. E.B. has served as Editor of trade publications “MediaVillage” and “The Continuum” and regularly contributes to “Cynopsis” and “TheCustomer”. She has also interviewed more than 150 media executives across five different podcasts, including her highly regarded “Insider Interviews with E.B. Moss”.
