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Outdoor advertising trends to watch in 2023

Outdoor advertising trends to watch in 2023
Opinion 

From serialised ads to augmented reality and going outside the frame, Global’s Anto Chioccarelli explores what’s hot in out of-home for 2023.

 

As inflation bites and a recession looms, brands will need to work hard to exert their creative influence to connect with and inspire both potential and existing customers.

In my opinion, we must always prioritise creativity to cut through mass messaging and to influence any jaded consumers.

Outdoor provides enormous scope for this as it delivers an opportunity for rich storytelling, if used well.

There are so many opportunities for marketers to utilise — high-quality, high-definition screens, enormous reach, data science for contextual and relevant ad targeting, new measurement tools, industry collaboration and much more.

To complement traditional OOH advertising and as part of a well-thought-out media plan, I believe that digital outdoor advertising (DOOH) will continue to attract the interest of marketers as one of the most effective advertising strategies.

When designing for outdoor, I’d encourage brands to think about impressing the eyes and mind with forms, movements, colours, typography, and unique ways of capturing the human experience.

Create beautiful executions

Offer optical experiences to audiences and create emotional connections to stand out immediately.

I expect we will see a rise in creative partnerships, artist collaborations and digital art to create beautiful executions that make people notice and feel.

Art has long been used in advertising, and advertising has often been the subject of artistic production, but in the next year, I predict that we will see outdoor being used as an additional platform to showcase art even more. I loved WWF’s “Running out of Time Campaign” — a collaboration with Israeli artist Noma Bar.

Think outside the frame

Another thing I’d suggest is for brands to think outside the billboard — outside the frame.

Creating an experience that excites and captivates audiences will make them want to share it with their own personal network, on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok — you name it.

Creating sharable campaigns that are engaging, creative and visually pleasing can expand a brand’s reach and increase talkability — it essentially means audiences will do some additional marketing for them. Samsung’s folding billboard was a great example of this.

Tell captivating stories

I also expect to see more serialised ads that tell captivating stories and feature sequential visuals, that entertain and connect in authentic ways.

It goes without saying that British Airways did exactly that with its “A British Original” campaign that featured over 500 unique outdoor creatives that were live across the UK on billboards, busses, and the London Underground.*

Outdoor advertising can also encourage audience participation by offering unmissable experiences. It can offer a multi-sensory experience that can breathe life into an idea, deliver rich layers of storytelling plus it can help provoke intrigue and social media chatter.

Leverage outdoor’s ‘smart features’

Making outdoor advertising campaigns more visceral and engaging will be more prevalent in 2023.

We’ll see the rise of smart billboards, gamification, QR codes, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and other smart features to enhance the outdoor offering and deliver more personal, immersive and interactive experiences.

3D anamorphic will also become scalable and accessible so audiences can expect to be surprised and wowed with images coming out of screens in unexpected new places.

Create with purpose

Finally, during periods of uncertainty, I think marketers should focus on keeping it human with ads that have a real purpose and ads that can influence positive change in society.

Corona created some incredibly powerful work in partnership with Parley for the Oceans, a non-profit environmental organization that focuses on protection of the oceans. That campaign showcased their combined efforts to tackle plastic waste.

Outdoor allows brands to make confident statements that nobody can skip. It’s the best platform to broadcast what a brand stands for—its why—and what it can do to help people.

To quote Nils Leonard: “ignore advertising for a second — you have 10 seconds of someone’s life, what would you like to do with it? That’s a better question.”

We may be living through tough times, but I see a lot of opportunities for remarkable and memorable work, pioneering new ways of doing things in bold ways.

Anto Chioccarelli is creative solutions director for outdoor at Global.

 

 

 

*Editor’s note: this has been updated with new information since publication.

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