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.

Today’s consumers privilege experiences over things, while brands seek to capture audiences’ attention in unique and innovative ways. A natural trend in response to both is the brand activation: moments or events that reinvent the space around them or make the impossible, possible.

Experiential events may range from offline installations to comprehensive, larger-than-life livestreams that compress time and space to deliver wild experiences to far-flung audiences. Experiential and brand activations typically build buzz around a brand or product, but most importantly they should celebrate what makes those things unique through creative, inventive spectacles.

At the 2019 SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, for example, on-demand food delivery service DoorDash celebrated the festival’s love for tacos and its own penchant for fast, dependable delivery by inviting attendees to a tiny home installation, where hungry participants could experience at-home delivery away from home. By ordering through a custom app and even answering a door to get their meal, the activation made for a fun twist on the experience of dining out—or in.

While this style of experience is rewarding for those who are able to attend, why not share the fun with a wider audience? Bolstered by streaming platforms, live activations add a new layer to the experience through audience interaction. “Live experiential is all about building innovative and interactive experiences while amplifying their online reach through livestream opportunities,” says Ciaran Woods, Producer at MediaMonks São Paolo. Through live experiential, brands can scale up the experience and go beyond simply building buzz.

Tiers of Amplification

Every experience has an air of FOMO (fear of missing out) about it, making them great for prompting user-generated content and social buzz whether online or off. For simpler experiences that aren’t broadcast to live platforms, this can manifest in providing Instagram-ready spaces or share-worthy moments. When influencers are added to the mix, you can take the conversation even further. For example, laundry detergent brand Skip invited influencers to try on outfits in front of a smart mirror that measured their excitement about them, allowing them to take home anything that scored high on the excitement meter. The event resulted in footage and UGC that drove conversation online about the brand.

But social only goes so far, and is often one-sided in terms of audiences living vicariously through the fewer in-person attendees. Live experiential can offer all the social amplification discussed above, while also providing a more level playing field on the amount of influence and enjoyment that distant audiences can have with the experience. And that interactivity is key: according to Woods, “Viewer interaction must be ingrained in the experience. The viewer has a say.” In other words, live experiential should not only ask viewers to watch, but to act.

Portraying the Brand Value

The best experiential activations reflect their brands’ offerings in a fun, unique way. Take Xfinity’s “Project Dead Zone” for example, in which paranormal investigators broadcasted their exploration of the Winchester Mystery House—the largest haunted house in the US—to an audience of over 3 million live viewers, who offered the investigators words of encouragement via Periscope and Twitter.

In this case, the tech behind the broadcast itself highlighted the brand’s value. In order to broadcast all throughout the spooky house, the crew made use of Xfinity’s xFi Pod series of WiFi extenders. As viewers watched in horror while investigators disappeared one after another, one thing that never went missing over the course of the stream was a stable connection.

Finding this value and creatively building upon it is among the most fun parts of designing an experience. It can also be the most challenging, especially when it comes to making such ideas a reality. For organizations that don’t know where to start their idea (or how to execute loftier goals), a creative and production partnership can help to lend shape to the experience—all by keeping viewers’ experience in mind. “What makes these experiences cool is having a commentator booth you can cut to, or a reporter on the ground,” says Woods. “Basically, treat it like the Super Bowl.” Because a key aspect of live experiential is how it will be broadcast to far-away audiences, it’s important that brands don’t lose sight of production needs.

Supporting User Interactions

Because viewer interaction is essential to live experiential, brands interested in hosting such activations must familiarize themselves with interactions and features unique to the livestreaming platforms available. While live experiential can be platform agnostic, designing your experience with specific interaction triggers in mind helps to make it the best it can be.

Perhaps the most feature-rich of the major livestreaming platforms is Twitch, which supports open-source, custom “Twitch Extensions” that prompt viewers to interact with a stream in unique ways. These can include minigames that relate in some way to what users are watching, heatmaps tracking viewer cursors, scoreboards, voting and more—because the technology is open-source, the possibilities are endless.

The fact that Twitch has such robust viewer interactions supported lends to the fact that it’s purely a livestreaming platform. It also has a more niche audience, though alternatives such as YouTube and Facebook offer massive userbases and reach. Facebook’s major interaction outside of chat is its emoji-style reactions: viewers can select an emoji that represents how they feel about what they’re watching in that specific moment. And don’t forget more mobile-focused broadcast platforms like Periscope and Instagram, which are lighter in terms of features but lend a unique level of authenticity.

No matter the platform (or platforms) you choose, “the trick is to build a system that can translate those interactions into real-world effects,” says Woods. This requires a mature technical understanding and a flair for innovation—and is an area in which working with a creative partner from the earliest stage of the project makes the most sense. In addition to making these interactions possible, a partner may also develop an entire content package for how the experience can enjoy a life beyond the initial broadcast—like through film.

No matter the type of experiential you seek to support, the key is to highlight what makes your brand unique in a fun, innovative way—then reward your audience for their enthusiasm to engage with it. Integrating online platforms through social sharing or livestreaming helps to spread that sense of fun far and wide, providing brands with the opportunity to lead the conversation that surrounds them. It’s time to go big or go home—but no matter where you go, ensure your audience is provided with opportunities to engage.