The Role of Creativity in OOH with Jay Young

00:21:24 · Kirsty Carlson, Jay YoungPlay from here

[00:21:24] S2: and you're [00:21:24] S0: like, wow, I either can't read that or it's just not landing in the right way because the context hasn't been considered. And then I think the big one for us and the thing that I love about our studio and the fact that every single person in there just worked in home day in, day out and have always, is thinking about the mindset. The mindset changes so rapidly based on the environment, the time of day, the day of week. So it's thinking about how is someone receiving that creative at the moment because unless you make it super relevant, then again, you're leaving a load of value on the table. And relevancy for me, think is the next big thing from a creative perspective for At Home. And we're quite excited about that.

00:22:10 · Kirsty CarlsonPlay from here

[00:22:10] S2: I think the power that digital out of home brought to out of home for relevancy. And I mean, could have relevancy based on like, you know, that, you know, the simplified version of it back in the day, know, that this road does evening traffic, this side of the road does morning traffic. You can do different messaging based on that. You know, if you're targeting someone who's doing grocery shopping in the evening, or, you know, you could kind of get that type of thinking. Now with digital out of home being able to target based on environments, based on time of day, based on different dynamic triggers, that really brings relevancy to a new level. And I think that's one of the most powerful things about out of home. If being used in that way and creatively, it is being tailored to be used in that way. I think we find still that there's very much here's my fifteen second and let it run for my booking for within that loop for the full day versus actually taking the time to go, I'm investing my money into this medium. Let me make sure that I'm tailoring the messages for the different times of day. And as you say, all the different consumer mindsets of that journey. Because there's a lot of studies around if it's relevant for that consumer at that moment, the fact that the recall will be much higher, the ability to cause an action or to get them search or whatever it is that you're asking them to do will be much higher because it's actually relevant to speaking to them at the right time at that right moment. So I completely agree and I think the job of home for us, you know, globally, but also for us here in South Africa has really been able to deliver on that relevancy piece. I just think as a market, there's definitely room from a creative point of view for clients to start getting more tailored to that. And doing more of that insight work of understanding the consumers in that space, what is their mindset? I love that you raised that. What is that insight? What that... What are they experiencing in the shopping mall or in the space? And what is it different at different times of day? Think that's

00:23:58 · Livia Brown, Kirsty CarlsonPlay from here

[00:23:58] S1: such a strong [00:23:58] S2: strong piece.

00:24:00 · Jay YoungPlay from here

[00:24:00] S0: I think something that I'm quite excited and encouraged by because if this was a few years ago, I'd say that less than 1% of digital out of home has been contextualized in that way and it's disappointing. But what I've seen certainly from UK and The US market, I think probably there are two markets who are very forward on their programmatic adoption. What it has done is it's opened the conversation up because if you start to plan and buy your app home based on a trigger, so I'll I'll buy this and and this will go live if or when, then naturally your brain goes to, well, okay, I'll change the creative to showing this if and this when. And so it's really, we've seen a significant increase in both those markets in the demand for dynamic and DCO, which I think is super encouraging. And I think my final point on the relevancy piece is a lot of people talk about how AI is affecting creativity and in particular, creative production. And my prediction is, and I think we're already starting to see it, but in the next kind of twelve to twenty four months, what AI is doing is it's giving everyone the power to make ads with a high quality look and feel. So it brings everyone up together. Whereas the bigger brands in the past would have had access to the bigger, better creative agency and they'd have spending power. Now, technically a woman band in their bedroom could make an ad that looks just as high quality as someone in a big agency. But so if everyone lifts in that ability, there's then another need to be creative again because you need to think about how do I now cut through? And that's where I think the relevancy piece comes in because that's where the big brands will now focus on rather than kind of planning an out of home campaign and just submitting their creative. I think it's programming a campaign with the creative that programs and blends in and flexes around the way the audience's mindset is changing. And that becomes really, really exciting. Probably a little bit daunting for the creative agencies because that's a whole different way to look at it. But for me, that that is is where out of home needs to be moving to and that's where I think some of the bigger brands that we work with are already starting to play in that space.

00:26:25 · Jay YoungPlay from here

They're looking at laying down their out of home for an entire year and then overlaying dynamic for an entire period. So we're getting close to programming a plan as a system in effect.

00:26:38 · Livia BrownPlay from here

[00:26:38] S1: Jay, I love what you've shared. I think in our market, I don't think we're seeing dynamic enough. And I think this kind of big picture prediction you painted for us, I think is going to give everybody quite a lot to think about, about how they're approaching out of home and they should be doing if this when. I'm not sure that's happening enough from a programmatic perspective. I think people are just excited about automating the buying. And I don't think the dynamic piece and the programmatic piece are happening close enough together often enough in our market. But it's great to hear from your perspective, a market that is further along from a programmatic perspective, how it should actually be doing and what's coming in the future for a market that is more advanced versus our market that although we are doing programmatic, and I do think there's still a lot of gaps that need to be closed. I wanted to switch gears for a second and take us to our closing question for the episode. You know, there's so many amazing pieces of work that you and your team have done. One I specifically want to reference and then I want to ask you a favourite campaign that you have done. And maybe if you can share some behind the scenes with us that we might not have seen once we saw the campaign up. But recently I saw you guys did some amazing work for Argos and Argos is similar to a Takealot in South Africa. It's an online retailer. And what you did is you actually packaged up almost everyday household items like a fridge or a couch or a TV into a huge box that looked like a toy box. So we've all seen those toy boxes that have got a cardboard backing and they're plastic on the front and they hook onto the little hook inside the retailer. And you put everyday items almost outside of the toy category, but made them look like toys and placed them onto billboards. I thought it was executed exceptionally well. The work was beautiful to look at. But it was very, like almost striking to see you looked at the shape of the box and expected to see a toy and the point was it wasn't a toy. Argos can sell any kind of a product, not only toys, which I thought was really creative. So I wanted to ask you if there any of campaigns you guys have done that stand out as your favorites and if you can give us some behind the scenes.