Clean & BeamCLEAN AND BEAM
Look around any street & you’ll find space that lends itself to guerrilla marketing tactics such as beaming projections. It may sound a little strange but ever since my first Guerrilla projection in 1996 I find myself hyper analysing the urban landscape for sneaky opportunities. Opportunities that cut through the clutter of traditional Out of Home (OOH) posters and fixed location media - the traditional 'same old' simply isn’t my style.
Last year, I had the pleasure of visiting Sao Paulo a number of times, for a city of over 20 million you would expect a huge media landscape at every corner.. this is not the case! Like many highly populated cities, Sao Paulo have a ‘Clean City’ approach to outdoor media (Lei Cidade Limpa). This more or less means there is a complete blanket ban on poster sites for both digital and traditional methods of advertising. The powers that be worked out pretty quickly that people were tired of the overload by advertisers and now it’s free from out of home pollution - as they see it!
Seeing this got me thinking, Are they onto something with clean advertising? Have they realised that no matter how much you attempt to justify the modern world value of Out of Home (OOH) the industry falls way short on the facts detailing effectiveness and measurement. We all understand that the ‘connected’ and ‘always on’ phenomena with people is still relatively new. In the scale of consumer behaviour, say over the last 60-70 years since TV advertising kicked off it continues to evolve at warp speed. People walk, talk and click their mobile phones while the world around them becomes a blur, background noise filtered only by the need for the brain to keep us safe.
Cognitively speaking, most people can walk past advertising and road signs and not bat an eyelid, other than to take in what’s necessary or essential for immediate decision making. Our unconscious mind will in most cases bring us to a stop or slow us down around road junctions and alien invasions whilst prioritising the storage of information to prevent our tiny little minds exploding (not literally).
It’s my opinion that the majority of us, and more so the millennial generations brain is evolving to have deeper pre-set hardwired cognitive filters. These enable us to simply function in a world where much more information is hitting us faster and more decisions have to be made in less time. Our unconscious minds are developing selective measures to assimilate information that we actually need from a survival point of view and what we seek from a luxury and lifestyle perspective. Look at a 16 year olds online and mobile behaviour and their ability to find and digest content is remarkable. At the same time their lack of tolerance for irrelevant information such as adverts over the likes of YouTube and On Demand is tangible, often adverts are skipped and mute buttons engaged before passing time on social media until the adverts pass. There’s simply less tolerance for repetition with faster processing in todays’ brain.
Putting this into context; you unconsciously react to warnings and threats but very little else unless it’s let’s say “emotionally arousing.”
WHAT IS THE LAST OUTDOOR ADVERT YOU REMEMBER READING?
We simply haven’t innovated OOO media at the pace of shifting human behaviour, and when you throw the psychology of selective blindness into the mix you have more questions than answers. Looking at it this way, we should remember that peoples behaviour changes over short periods of time & react accordingly. The evidence points clearly to a growing trend of "experience economy consumers" who are more mobile centered in their shopping and buying mindset. They are driven by experiences that are primed and worthy to share and store. Brand messages that get people talking and thinking in positive ways tend to be disruptive so they get noticed above the white-noise. If you’re not offering captivating content using innovative media where the content is relevant at say ‘point of purchase’, then your message is going to be ignored.
It's only a matter of time before more cities adopt a cleaner approach to outdoor media advertising and there are tools that suit this approach and match the behaviour of the modern consumer.
Wearable technology such as iProjector® captures attention while simultaneously unpacking digital content that drives awareness. iProjector informs and connects in a targeted relevant and powerful way. More so, it ticks all the boxes of “Clean Media” whilst providing robust and accurate audience measurement to apportion a realistic value.
Maybe it’s time to consider how we actually value out of home media from results and the value it adds between brands and consumers. If you are interested in a clean and environmentally friendly way to disrupt and stand out from the crowd, contact us!
