Beyond The Billboard
00:04:45 · Jay Young
[00:04:45] S0: Ever since I started Grand Visual, I think it was always important to consider the different outputs of the work that we did. It it was never can we create this amazing experience or this special execution and leave it in place and hope that it does its job. We kind of look at multiple audiences across every idea. And it's the first is who's gonna interact with all of those. Was that a great experience and they interact on the day? You've then got the passive audience, which I think we often forget is the people that might be across the street and they don't directly interact or engage if it is something interactive, but actually they still look at it and go, that's cool. I'm not gonna give it a huge amount of time, but it's really interesting. And that's landing in their brains. Third, it's then what happens with that when it goes into other channels? And as you said, it's thinking from the very start, what do we need to do with this idea to make it perfect for a social film or a film in another channel? Two, how do we make sure that we get best PR coverage of this activity too? And then how do we make sure that social is covering it in advance and after? So whereas we kind of we are a kind of day in day out of home company, actually we're now regularly calling on the social teams and the PR teams to come into the the brainstorm room with us and go, let's draw you guys in because ultimately without them, they're doing their jobs. You're leaving a whole lot of value on the table. It's not to say there isn't already a value, but it's about making it work even harder. I think when you're working with big production budgets and you're being kind of pushed on ROI always then that's absolutely imperative. And I think the brands that let us in and give us access to their wider teams, they're the ones that see exponentially far greater, impact.
00:06:44 · Livia Brown
[00:06:44] S1: You've touched on so much that I wanna build on. I love that you have highlighted how, you know, often out of home is looked at a piece within the media mix, right? You're doing TV, radio and out of home. But within out of home, there's so many layers in there that I often don't think we're seeing enough work where they're discussing the out of home but then they're saying, okay, with relation to, like, the social out of home, how's that gonna be managed? The filming and the PR around the out of home, how does that fit within the bigger mix? You need to manage, like, almost like a mini micro ecosystem around the out of home to make sure that are amplifying what you're doing in relation to the full campaign picture too. Because often the full campaign is amplified through social and on digital, not a zoom in on out of home unless you've done something very specific. You know, you've done something in the faux out of home space, for example, then often you see the socials been built around that. But even just your general out of home campaign should be well supported by the other media channels to get the most impact. That was the one thing I wanted to mention. You touched on ROI and I think it's such an important piece especially when you're discussing innovation. And you you guys have executed some amazing work and we all know that these conversations around budgets for OHO are sometimes tricky when you are discussing mixed media modeling and ROI and what is the measurement. Those conversations are becoming more difficult to motivate for standard OHO campaigns, let alone when you're looking at doing some bold innovation or asking the client, We want to put all the budget into out of home to do this. Those conversations can be really hard. A recent campaign that Grand Visual executed was for the Traitors TV show. And I absolutely love that campaign because you had set up the different people or the contestants. And then as they were eliminated, you were able to kind of interact or update the billboard to show that that person was no longer on.
00:08:38 · Livia Brown
Part of the launch was that you had an actual choir singing at the event and it just there were so many elements that came into this one kind of event and it made me think imagine the budget that had to get approved imagine the work the team had to do to get the budget to approve something like this And I wanted to ask you, when you and your team are executing these exceptional campaigns, what advice do you have for anyone who's trying to motivate for these budgets? Because sometimes you can't measure, like, what is the impact of the campaign going to be? Well, the stunt that you're doing in out of home, how are we going to put that into the mixed modeling machine and get an answer for it? So how can agencies and media owners navigate that conversation when it comes to motivating for budgets from clients?
00:09:24 · Jay Young
[00:09:24] S0: It's incredibly tough. Think, we, you first off have to be really clear on the objective. I think a lot of the time when it comes to a big creative out of home idea, clients want to do so much with it that we have to go, okay, what's the primary objective? What's the secondary? And then I think at a very base level, we have to be very honest with ourselves. Marketers are increasingly scrutinized. They're having to justify spend into CFOs, budgets being cut left, right, and center. And you've got this challenge where you haven't to justify a creative idea based on numbers. So we will always assist clients with that. So it's how many people are likely to see this? How many people are likely to engage with with the activation? How many people or how long will the average person engage with the activation for? Those kind of like basic metrics that will get you to a place where you can at least compare that versus the spend versus either other creative ideas in the outcome space or versus other ways to spend that money in other channels. That's the base layer. But the thing that I'm increasingly working with our teams to help our clients with is then talking about the next layer and it's you cannot disregard the impact that have an emotional kind of response and or driving emotional response from can make. And that's the bit that we've got to really make sure is being delivered in that sell in. And the sad truth is you can't preempt what that emotional impact is. So we're very lucky Grand Visual is a part of the talent group. So our effectiveness team have huge number of prior case studies that we can at least kind of pile in and say, look, in similar situations, this is how people felt. This is how we direct the response from feeling, oh, that was fun to wow, that was exciting. And is how they thought about the brand afterwards. And then really encouraging the clients early doors to invest in creative effectiveness and to test it and ask the questions. And that's not easy again because if you're already spending production money on the activation and then you just find them effective. But if you've got a client client that has a real desire to do this on the regular, then that has to be a part of the process. You can't just assume that it's delivering the work that it needs to.
00:11:47 · Jay Young, Kirsty Carlson
You've gotta constantly test, constantly prove and build that confidence. And all of the clients that do invest, that confidence builds and builds and builds and you see more and more and more work come out of them. And when it comes to it's just really tricky because realistically trying to isolate one particular experience in that whole model, it is very hard. And it's about, I think if the results come out and it's not quite what you're expecting, it's being able to go in that room and actively defend and discuss the challenges because you can't just take the results on face value. [00:12:24] S2: Yeah.
00:12:24 · Kirsty Carlson, Livia Brown
[00:12:24] S2: Yeah. [00:12:25] S1: Yeah. I think that's a great answer that covers quite a lot of different aspects. Think at times, you know, even getting a client to agree to do an extension or a mold or some LED lights, some very simple basic innovation can be tricky. Like you say, it's over and above the media cost, but I love how you've outlined the very different ways to look at that. I think another piece that really stood out for me was around whether you are the production partner or the media owner or the agency, make sure that you're documenting the innovation that's being done properly so that if there is a time to create case studies, you know, Grand Visual work on so many different brands. You guys do some amazing work for Pepsi. Specsavers is one of your clients. You've done work with Tesco and Uber Eats for their recent campaign that you're able to almost go into the archive and put out like, look, all of these brands are doing exceptionally well. And these case studies can show you that they are results, but you have to have documented those campaigns properly to actually be able to show that.