Beyond The Billboard
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.
00:13:19 · Jay Young
[00:13:19] S0: You do. And I think also as a business, sometimes you've got to invest in that yourself. You've got to believe in the process and you've got to say, you know what, we're going to take a hit on some margin here. We're gonna make sure that we show this client just how impactful this was. So we we do regularly try to do that at Grand Visual. The other thing for me I think as well, particularly with outdoor is making sure that you bring the client to see it in person. There's a huge difference between them seeing the video and the photo in the show reel afterwards and being in there and go, oh, wow. The scale, like you can just see the look on their face suddenly it's all pride and that goes some way to at least showing the emotion that we're driving in the audience too. And you can't replicate that really through a video.
00:14:03 · Kirsty Carlson
[00:14:03] S2: Yeah. There's something that you said early on as well, Jay, that really stuck with me and reminded me of an episode where we had the head of media from Beiersdorf, South Africa, Tenille with us. And she spoke about coming from a digital background. So social media, digital media now into across media above the line. And she spoke about how test and learn is being done so much more in the digital media landscape than it's done in the above the line media landscape and the likes of out of home etc. And what you were saying, Ulan, is that there needs to be that test and learn when it comes from a creative point of view. And I don't think it's done enough in the out of home space, particularly locally. And I think that's a big call out is that, you know, test and learn what creatives in messaging is resonating with your audience in the different environments, the different contexts, in the different locations, and actually finding what is the right fit. And I know that can be a cost outlay in the beginning, but ultimately, you know, you can reap the rewards if you learn from those and be able to, you know, course change or change the creative approach based on those learnings. I think that's the first thing. And I think the second thing that you and Liv were talking about around research around out of home and local case studies and you know, local brand lift studies after a big event or a big out of home campaign and actually investing in that. I think the biggest thing for us locally is we it's not done often enough. A lot of the time there's references to a lot of the global work, which is amazing. But I think locally from a South African and Africa point of view, there's definitely a need or drive, hopefully we'll see that come forward in 2027 for a lot more of those campaign based studies, creative effectiveness studies, etcetera, for out of home for clients specifically.
00:15:41 · Jay Young, Kirsty Carlson, S3
[00:15:41] S0: I think the other thing that we are spending a lot of time this year doing is actually pulling in people that you'd perhaps consider our competitors and saying, don't we do these studies together? Because realistically, we're not all competing with each other in outdoor. We're actually competing with other channels. So it's it's coming together and saying, actually, let's work on proving that this kind of activation in this kind of environment works really well because that go, that sings for all of us as opposed to seeing that as kind of like a competitive challenge. [00:16:18] S2: I love that, that co funded research, right? Like a rising tide lifts all ships and co funded research that can motivate and underscore the power of the medium. And ultimately that can help move the needle of moving spends from other mediums to out of home if everybody works together for the common good of the medium. The piece here that you've also hit the nail on the head on is that we need to be focusing on this co funded research locally for out of home and to showcase its true power. [00:16:45] S3: Provantage, digital innovators at scale. With a national network of over 4,000 screens, we reach more than 50,000,000 people on the move in the most high value environments across South Africa. Flexible, impactful, contextually relevant. Our real time audience measurement ensures precise targeting and transparent results. As we build a programmatically enabled digital network, we're shaping a more connected future for brands. Redefining out of home.
00:17:15 · Kirsty Carlson
[00:17:15] S2: Grand Visual has done work from the BBC Dracula, renowned, iconic, like absolutely incredible. I can't tell you in my out of home career the amount of times that that has come up. Absolutely amazing. You know, to some of the work you've done on Specsavers, just tapping into that human truth and playing on it in such a humorous way in the executions for Specsavers, to some of the more recent work that you guys have done with regards to Tesco's and Uber Eats, you really are pushing the envelope when it comes to this. And you've been doing great work for a number of years. So what I wanted to ask you, Jay, for ourselves and our listeners, can you just share perhaps there's a human behavioral truth that you have identified over the years, doing some of this experiential out the box work. How do you make the consumer stop and engage? What is that? Is there a nugget of gold that you can share with us and our listeners? And I think secondary to that is, do you have any creative, like best practice principles when it comes to out of home? What you feel is like needs to be known when you're working with out of home? What are those key creative best practice principles that you can share?
00:18:20 · Jay Young
[00:18:20] S0: Sure. So to answer the first question, I don't know if you've heard of the, there's a psychological concept called schema incongruity, but it's very, it's a lot more simple than it sounds. Ultimately, if you're on your morning commute, you're driving to work the same way every day, your brain, if it processed that information as it did the first time every single day, it would just be processing too much. So what it does, it creates schemas and it means that you're not actively processing all the information when you're on that journey. So our job first and foremost, and everyone talks about attention at the moment is the big kind of media hit word is to surprise the audience and the brain to the point where you interrupt that process. So step one, how can I make them see something, make the brain see something that it doesn't normally see? And I think that's where kind of your classic build out special build is such a beautiful example because it just breaks the the edge of the perimeter of the billboard and that's enough to go, there's something different here. And once you've got that attention, that's just the start. And I think that's where I get kind of frustrated with the industry just constantly talking about attention because you can grab attention and not deliver any message. You need to grab attention. You then need to make sure that you're hitting that audience with an emotion, that they're feeling something to make sure that kind of the... Whatever the messages you're landing is hitting the brain with a real impact. And the third is making sure we deliver the message. Like the number of times I see something that from a craft perspective looks beautiful, but actually how many times did someone go past that and go, oh, wow, that's cool. I like it. And then not realize which brand it was from or didn't story didn't land. So it's kind of attention, emotion, and then delivery and making sure that you deliver that message. So I suppose that's the process that we go on. Then I