With the increased amount of time people have been spending at home—as well as the digitalization of most brands and services—it’s easy to think that the role of out of home (OOH) marketing has been irreversibly displaced. Yet a few of the world’s biggest brands are still investing their efforts in it, and these are certainly not short-sighted companies.

The reasons why brands have found effectiveness in OOH throughout the years are many, but there’s a clear explanation of why it’s still relevant today: OOH is evolving with technology, not giving way to it. What we traditionally pictured when we thought of OOH is no longer an accurate representation of the potential waiting to be found in the streets.

Netflix, in collaboration with Circus Marketing, who merged with Media.Monks in 2019, gave us a great example of how to do OOH right with the promotion of the Netflix original series, “Someone Has to Die.” After the first part of the campaign, in which more traditional assets were created to promote the show, these were remixed in the development of a big stunt in Mexico City: a gigantic golden cage surrounding a mansion in Polanco, one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, which serves as a literal representation of the show’s central drama of a rich family that feels trapped by their own privilege.

The concept of the stunt was a strong representation of the show’s theme—which takes place in Francoist Spain—and an interactive way of giving the audience information about both the genre and the time period. Of course, such a sizable stunt doesn’t simply happen without taking plenty of factors into account—here’s what to expect when considering a local OOH installation of this magnitude.

Innovation Seals The Deal

In most cases, we see how both digital and traditional campaigns leave behind a trail of assets that were not fully exploited. Rethinking the OOH experience presents a new opportunity to give existing assets a whole new life by asking audiences to interact with them in a new context. For the team, this is where things got interesting.

Promotion for “Someone Has to Die” launched with traditional display ads in Spain, but as the team tried to replicate those in Mexico, it quickly became evident that a different way of fully immersing the Mexican audience in the story was needed to build relevance for the local audience.

“The main question we asked ourselves was how to take the assets that we had for Spain and adapt them to be used in Mexico. So after a few rounds of more traditional OOH and screens in the city, we decided to tell the story in a caged house,” explains Pato Kodalle, Creative Director for Netflix at Circus.

To complement the installation of the golden cage, built by Archipiélago, Circus set up screens behind the windows of the house, which displayed reworked assets that introduced audiences to the characters and their lives. “It was this voyeuristic thing of looking from outside the house into the lives of these fictional characters,” says Israel Rojas, Project Manager at Circus. The videos were flawlessly choreographed to tell a story, and it helped the audience gain a better understanding of the show’s historical context, which is also connected to the history of many Mexican families that immigrated during the Francoist regime.

Engaging the audience with a story they can identify with is key to striking that local connection. And when done right, its resonance and impact can spread to new audiences far and wide. In addition to the installation’s listing on Google Maps—which gave the stunt a digital presence and helped the audience tag their photos on social media—the sight of such a tangible production to promote their work made the actors of the show excited to share pictures of the stunt with their millions of followers.

“When you build something as big as this, you make the actors, creators, and dancers want to share it. They were so amazed by the caged house that they posted about it in their Instagram stories and feed. It was great to have their support too,” says Rojas. 

While appealing to a local audience is key for OOH effectiveness, transitioning to a new market doesn’t mean starting back at square one. Sometimes it’s as simple as adapting and recontextualizing your content in a way that resonates with the people there.

Just Like Choosing a House, Location Is Everything

Location is at the top of our minds when it comes to planning an OOH campaign. It’s obviously one of the most important pieces of the puzzle, too, especially when trying to communicate a societal message while social distancing measures are still in place.

Building a giant cage was a challenge in itself as they had to take into account street permits, height, and noise limits, but when executed during a global pandemic, the stakes are higher. For this project, the team ensured key requirements for the onsite construction such as permits, health care measures and buy-in by the neighborhood council. 

Safety is the Foundation of Today’s OOH Experiences

Safety was the main concern—both construction and with the pandemic—so an explanation about the materials and weather resistance was vital, as well as the corresponding security protocols for COVID during the construction and once the installation was done.

“We were surprised by the results because [Polanco] has a strong community that protects the neighborhood and they’re strict with their rules. But we managed to make everything work and keep them safe and happy,” says Fortes. “The installation was specifically designed so that people wouldn’t gather in the same place, and we had security at all times controlling the social distancing.”

As the pandemic continues, brands may similarly rethink where and how they show up to meet audiences. Building experiences closer to home and in more residential environments, rather than commercial spaces that have since emptied out, can present new challenges. But OOH is about meeting your audience where it is, after all, and safety and transparency are key to delivering impact within the new normal. So while it may be a challenge, brands won’t go unrewarded: “In a time like this, it’s hard to take risks, but Netflix, Archipiélago, and Circus worked really well together,” Rojas concludes.

Even with the vast array of advertising solutions available, digital-first brands like Netflix are going above and beyond to bring OOH ideas like this to life—and there’s something to be learned from that. OOH has evolved, and it can be an effective way of showing up creatively and strike that connection with your audience even—or more so—in the virtualization era. Yet to live up to the expectation it must be accompanied by a rethinking and clear understanding of where the audience can be found today and how to build safe, mindful in-person experiences. Pursuing stunts like this may feel like the opposite of playing safe, but one thing is certain: audiences value brands that take risks and trust their creativity.

One of the key challenges brands have faced this year is the need to rethink the role of out-of-home (OOH) advertising experiences within a customer journey that’s become overwhelmingly digital. But for digital-native audiences that gravitate toward experiences, OOH still has plenty of value to offer–especially when amplifying local stories for audiences far and wide.

This was an approach we took with More Than 7, an outdoor exhibit that strove to provide visitors to Chicago’s Grant Park with a historical understanding of the protests that happened there during the 1968 Democratic National Convention–an event that instigated the real-world trial depicted in Netflix’s recently released film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, directed by Aaron Sorkin.

By recontextualizing archival images of the protests and placing them directly where they were captured, the exhibit offered a profound space for reflection–and offers insight on how brands can build impactful OOH experiences that prompt digital engagement.

Focus Digital Placemaking on Your Activation’s Key Goals

In building an OOH experience that speaks to the modern consumer, adopt a mindset of digital placemaking. Placemaking is the process of creating quality places that people want to live and work in, and these efforts can become amplified through digital elements that aid in the experience and increase the value of the space itself–a process referred to as digital placemaking.

Placemaking must align with your goal for the experience you want to provide your audience in the place. With More Than 7, we wanted to create a space that was contemplative, inviting viewers to linger and reminisce on what had happened there, building their own understanding of the events rather than have us prescribe our own political stance.

This goal comes to life in the way the exhibit prompted viewers to literally observe the photos from different vantage points. When viewed from the right angle, the images blend in with their surroundings, joining together past and present. While we didn’t overtly call for visitors to share their experience on social, the fun of lining up the images with their surroundings created a natural photo-op, allowing people to share their views digitally as they learned more about the history of the community. This point of interaction shows how OOH experiences can elegantly prompt earned media that starts a cultural conversation and builds relevance to viewers.

Build Value for Audiences Near and Far

Since the pandemic, we’ve all learned how important it is that events and activations reach fans at home. But at-home audiences have always been important to reach–even for OOH activations, and especially ones that have a limited throughput. Even when an experience is closely tied to a local narrative and location like ours, digital elements offer an opportunity to open up that experience to people afar, increasing reach and relevance in the process.

Experience the movement of 1968.

Each stop across our outdoor exhibit prompted viewers to scan a QR code to access an audio track about that location. But the audio guide, collected as a Spotify podcast, wasn’t just for those listening at the park: listeners online could also immerse themselves in the space and feel transported there through the commentary. This touchpoint also helped in building outreach online, with previews of episodes shared through the film’s official Twitter account. As brands consider building location-based spaces, they shouldn’t forget faraway audiences–or their relationship with the brand through social media.

Be Aware of Local Nuances

Finally, when creating an experience within a public space like a park, ensure it lends value to the surrounding community. One of Netflix’s key goals with More Than 7 was to give something back to the city of Chicago by offering an experience that its citizens would enjoy. While The Trial of the Chicago 7 film represents a unique moment in the city’s history, the protests aren’t often talked about, and younger generations in particular may not relate to the impact the events have made.

To ensure such a hyper-local story could be told authentically, we partnered with teams who had close connections to the city, including the production team working on the ground, who were natives to Chicago. The historian who wrote the audio guides also had a tie to the protests: their parents were present as they happened. Through these teams’ participation and input, we could offer a more localized, personal and nuanced take on the project overall.

Essentially, these points are about being authentic to your audience and creating a space for them to reflect, relate and share that experience with others. By infusing digital elements into these spaces, brands can increase the value of a public space and facilitate conversation–driving impact well beyond the borders of a park, much like the protesters of 1968 achieved.

Museums have long existed to make culture more accessible to their audiences, giving patrons access to artifacts and works of art that teach them about both past and present, as well as celebrate differences in culture across time and space.

But what appeals to audiences of one generation doesn’t necessarily translate to another, prompting museums to rethink and evolve their approach to outreach. Digital further helps museums inject new relevance into their collections, allowing patrons to engage with exhibits outside of visitor hours or across borders.

An outstanding example of this is the newly launched “The Queen and the Crown” digital exhibit by Netflix and the Brooklyn Museum, made in collaboration with MediaMonks. The exhibit highlights costumes featured in both Netflix-original series The Queen’s Gambit (a new limited series that premiered on October 23) and season four of The Crown, which returns on November 15.

Vogue calls the exhibit “the kind of immersive concept that could only happen with the help of the internet,” noting the ability to get a closer look at the costumes’ dazzling  details than would be possible in-person, as well as the brightly-lit virtual venue that would have damaged the costumes if they stood there in reality–a rare scene that must be experienced to be believed. W Magazine also covered the work, including additional insight and commentary from Brooklyn Museum curator Matthew Yokobosky, who paired some of the outfits on display with art pieces from the museum’s collection.

The concept resonates strongly with viewers, as costume design is integral to both series. In The Queen’s Gambit, protagonist Beth Harmon’s outfits reflect her rise in the ranks of competitive chess. The Crown meanwhile focuses on different eras of Queen Elizabeth II’s life in each season, featuring a new cast and wardrobe in each to reflect the historical context. The digital exhibit leverages the power of the period dramas and the fidelity of Netflix’s sartorial vision to make history a little more relatable.

Enter the Virtual Museum

The Queen and the Crown exhibit is not just a simple carousel of images; to provide a truly immersive digital experience, MediaMonks helped build and model the museum’s interior and exterior, paying tribute to its beautiful architecture and drumming up the sense of anticipation felt when entering into a museum lobby. “The intricate detail we were able to achieve in rendering the museum’s exterior façade is especially impressive,” says Celeste Acosta, Global Head of Client for Netflix at MediaMonks.

Step into the virtual museum yourself.

Once users click through, they enter a fully 3D, immersive rendering of the Brooklyn Museum’s iconic Beaux-Arts Court. This is where viewers can inspect the exhibit at every angle–just as they’d do in-person. The experience of entering the virtual hall is striking; in addition to the attention to detail the team took to recreate the space visually, music and the sound of footsteps reverberating off its walls add to the atmosphere as if you were really there. As viewers inspect each outfit in detail, written commentary from the shows’ costume designers, show clips, sketches, fabric swatches and detail photos add greater context to each.

Everything is artfully arranged on the digital exhibit floor–Acosta noted that arranging the virtual exhibit required carefully building a floorplan, much like how Brooklyn Museum would plan out a physical exhibit. Due to the challenging amount of outfits in one single space, one of the greatest challenges was combining the 360 photographs within the 3D space, then blending this together with the UI to create a seamless experience. The result is a digital destination that fans of either show and fashion enthusiasts alike can enjoy, demonstrating how brands can inject new relevance through original content that drive new ways for consumers to interact with culture.

Production Innovation Brought Costumes to Life

The experience of viewing the exhibit wasn’t the only innovation: the team employed cutting-edge production behind the scenes to bring the work to life for audiences far and wide. We used two shoots: one in LA for costumes from The Queen’s Gambit, and one in the UK for those from The Crown. Using a turntable, we captured each outfit from every angle, stitching the images together to mimic 3D.

Due to safety measures imposed by the pandemic, the brand team oversaw production remotely in both locations to ensure a COVID-safe production that captured a staggering volume of images. “The exhibit is a combination of 1,512 photographs: 72 images of each dress,” says Robert Burdsall, Film Producer at MediaMonks. “To capture this remotely was a true collaboration between teams in Los Angeles and London. By working closely with health and safety professionals, we were able to uphold our high safety standards ensuring our teams on set were protected from Covid-19.”

Activating New Audiences Through Partnership

Exhibitions like The Queen and the Crown can help make museum collections more relevant to digital-native audiences. As cultural centers evolve to become more relevant with their audiences, they’ll also need to rethink how they contextualize their collections: in the Wall Street Journal, Museum of Modern Art Director Glenn Lowry notes that museums have become “content providers,” signaling a growing change in mindset in how they serve artifacts and the histories that surround them.

As museums begin to see themselves as content platforms in their own right, serving not only local communities but patrons from afar as well, they’ll need to focus on creating digital destinations that engage with the cultural zeitgeist–whether that means repackaging exhibits for popular social platforms, collaborating with brands and influencers or even virtualizing the experience of visiting the museum.

Brands like Netflix who are adept in creating original content can prove essential to translating audience insights into impactful experiences that resonate with both broad and niche audiences. “At the end of the day, we’re all trying to tell stories to connect with audiences—whether through a museum exhibition, a drama series or both,” says MediaMonks CMO Kate Richling. “It’s cool to watch history unfold in new and entertaining formats, ultimately becoming more accessible to people around the world.” In this respect, the exhibit serves as an example of how brands can fuel creativity in making culture more relevant and accessible for audiences through digital.

Two years ago, Netflix launched one of its most popular international TV series to date: La Casa de las Flores. Teaming up with Manolo Caro, one of Mexico’s hottest directors, the series has not only become one of the country’s most talked-about shows because of its star-studded cast – including legendary soap opera actress Verónica Castro – but also because of its huge cultural and social relevance due to its open and positive portrayal of LGBT topics. The series’ third and final season made its debut last week on April 23rd.

The pandemic has significantly shifted the way audiences are spending their time, with a 57% increase in usage of streaming services and a 47% increase in time spent on social media, according to DataReportal. With more people at home using streaming services, brands can no longer rely on OOH and other flashy stunts to promote their content with relevance and fuel social chatter.

With our attention spread across many channels, and even more competing entertainment options, it’s important to understand how content performs differently on each with a fit-for-format approach. By tailoring social content to user behaviors that are unique to a given platform, brands can maximize effectiveness. Despite linear TV being a more traditional format, Netflix – in partnership with Circus Marketing, who merged with MediaMonks earlier this year – demonstrated how brands can extend the value of content to digital audiences with a fit-for-format strategy, just as it did by creating an ode to the classic TV special by celebrating La Casa de las Flores before its final season premiere. 

Extending the Experience

La Casa de las Flores rapidly became a phenomenon thanks to its careful portrayal of social topics and willingness to tell stories that viewers may not commonly see in the media, depending on where they live. Given its popularity and propensity to get people talking, Netflix decided to give fans a space to reflect on the series and create a dialogue through a TV special that extended into social platforms as well. Circus Marketing worked on the ideation, scripting and creative direction for the special, and executed in partnership with Plataforma who led remote filming and small crew shoots to work within recommended safety guidelines.

Hosted by the series creator, the special aimed to generate buzz for the upcoming season by connecting fans, turning them into active participants by voting on the best and most shocking moments from previous seasons. The very same digital channels that viewers use every day became the stage for the special, with cast members chatting in video calls (both in and out of character), fans contributing through polls, WhatsApp audio and other social content. Taking this digital format over a traditional production approach enabled us to create the program within local safety guidelines. “What is really exciting is not just the project itself, but the timing and how we approached the strategy to reach these goals,” says Bruno Lambertini, Founder of Circus Marketing. 

“We used animations, audio, polls, fan art, tweets and other types of social assets to connect with users on different platforms and in different ways,” says Israel Rojas, Content Lead at Circus Marketing, noting the importance of using an omnichannel strategy to reach such a wide and varied audience. The special itself took different forms based on where viewers saw it: without standard television ratings and regulations, for example, the YouTube version was uncensored, clocking at 40 minutes in its entirety. From there, we were able to develop dozens of smaller, snackable assets distributed across social channels.

Not All Platforms Were Created Equal

What makes La Casa de las Flores really special is that while it may fit in the classic format of a telenovela, it’s widely viewed as a millennial soap opera. Given this reaction, we knew the special couldn’t live on TV only – it would have to meet its audience in the very space where they meet and discuss the show itself: online.

To prepare fans for this event weeks in advance, Netflix shared hundreds of snippets for social media, each one adapted to different platforms. This content was shared on the series’ official social media channels on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but also through influencer activations. “Not only did we create a 40 minute long video format, but we also took that to different platforms and levels from a single production – with fit-for-format,” says Yaneth Velázquez, Global Head of Client at Circus.

“Social content is really important when creating fandom,” says Velázquez. “We’re creating clusters of people looking for a show – spaces where you can consume content and extend the experience of watching it.” During the first 72 hours after launching, the special program registered over 2 million views on online platforms.

People go to various platforms for different reasons. What works on Instagram won’t work on TikTok, even for the same user, because the way one engages with content on each differs. By building upon the way that viewers discuss cultures and shows across different platforms, the La Casa de las Flores special successfully built impact in the leadup to the series’ third, final season. It serves as a great example of how a fit-for-format mindset is important to maintain relevance when casting such a wide net on digital audiences – especially when people are looking to connect with others and engage with them sharing their love for the show.

With the La Casa de las Flores TV special, Netflix delivered a piece of content that adjusted to the current times, pivoting OOH and other experience-led social campaigns into the means available today – cleverly rethinking the creative process to create buzz, connect with viewers and give these shows and social movements the interaction, engagement and recognition they deserve.