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.

The results are in! Four of our experiential projects have been shortlisted for the Campaign Experience Awards 2021. The Uncensored Library, the Air Jordan XXXV unveil, Super Saturday Night and BRIC’s Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival.

While these four experiences span six award categories—capturing a breadth of digital experiences and what they can accomplish—they perhaps more interestingly trace the evolution of experiential throughout 2020, from before the pandemic touched down in the Western world to today’s lived reality. But despite these changes, one through line has remained clear in our approach to experiential: leveraging digital technology to enable brand new experiences that were never possible before, which bring people together in unexpected ways. Here’s how that core aim has translated throughout a year of ingenuity.

A Digital-First Mindset Made the Pivot Easier

While in-person events that draw large crowds still aren’t possible in the present moment, experiences like Super Saturday Night, a Lady Gaga concert on the eve of last year’s Super Bowl, can offer a peek into what experiential might look like in coming years by reimagining and modernizing the concert-going experience for a digital age. Through a series of activations, the experience used cutting-edge 5G connectivity to power to connect with fans—for example, transforming the standard “step and repeat” into a screen that reflected attendees’ every action through a monster-themed digital double. These moments not only encouraged social sharing, but helped Gaga fans get into the “little monster” mindset before the show.

And while challenges in the past year have largely migrated experiences online around the world, our Experiential team has long advocated for activations that combine broadcasting and in-person events to meet faraway audiences, an approach we call live experiential. “For us, experiential has always been focused on online amplification, regardless of whether the experience is physical or virtual,” says Ciaran Woods, Executive Producer of Experiential and Virtual Events. Woods notes that this digital-first mentality primed the team well for its quick pivot to virtualization. “The transition, albeit at lightspeed, has felt very natural and evolutionary,” he says.

Online or Off, Interactivity Remained Key

Virtual events exist to connect people—and a big part of that means giving the audience just as strong of a voice as the performers. In setting out to redefine live events for a new, digital-first era, the north star of the Virtual Solutions team has been to enable true, two-way interaction between both sides of the screen.

Think about the buzz a musician gets by seeing and hearing the crowd in front of a stage. A desire to capture that same sense of energy gave way to the development and release of LiveXP, our internal live storytelling tool enabling visually rich elements shaped in real time by the interaction of the crowd. “We realized virtual events needed a deeper level of interaction where users can experience live, personalized experiences and one-on-one interactions,” says Travis Craw, Executive Producer of Experiential.

Among the first major events that LiveXP brought to life was BRIC’s Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, a long-running outdoor music festival enjoyed by New Yorkers every summer. With people unable to gather in large crowds because of the pandemic, we brought music fans together through a two-day livestreamed event on YouTube. Performances were augmented by trivia, live Q&As, Spotify integration (allowing fans to save songs to a playlist with a snap of their mobile camera) and more. Each of these elements showcased how drawing together myriad digital interactions feed into a memorable moment and opened the hyper-local festival to a global stage.

Virtualization Brought New Experiences to New Audiences

Last year, brands didn’t have much time to thoughtfully pivot from experiential to digital. Some missed the mark by trying to translate in-person experiences to digital ones—an impossible task that sets oneself up for failure. The brands that truly delivered, meanwhile, aimed to build experiences that weren’t ever possible before, leveraging digital tools like immersive virtual venues.

The Uncensored Library that MediaMonks built in collaboration with Reporters Without Borders is an excellent example of how virtual venues may be used to overcome traditional experiential constraints. We transformed a library of forbidden knowledge—news articles written by journalists who are censored or were killed in their home countries—into a literal library that could be accessed by readers everywhere via Minecraft.

Nick Fuller, SVP of Growth, notes that digital environments also have the potential to deliver more relevant experiences to audiences. “Personalized experiences are easier to deliver at scale through digital platforms, in a way that is trackable and measurable, not only for engagement purposes but for tracking ROI and lead generation.”

But there’s another key benefit to overcoming physical constraints through digital platforms: accessibility. By eliminating a need for travel, doing away with physical constraints (like seats available in a theater) and lowering the cost to access, virtualization opens up experiential activations to entire populations of people who would never have been able to take part in them before.

 Digital’s Influence will Remain

While virtual experiential is a must-have for brands to continue showing up for online audiences today, what might they look like when the pandemic subsides and in-person experiences become commonplace again? One possibility is that they will feature a more persistent digital layer. “Extended reality will play a stronger role, with experiences like the use of Oculus Venues during Facebook Connect,” says Woods.

But extended reality can enhance in-person experiences, too. When Jordan Brand unveiled its new Air Jordan XXXV shoe via livestream to industry insiders, the Monks showed up with a digital drop using AR that gave viewers the chance to check out the shoe up-close—a “had to be there” moment that was a foot above a standard reveal. One could easily see how such a feature could build on showrooms by giving all attendees a chance to inspect a product—or extend that experience to audiences from afar.

On that note, we may also see hybrid experiences that are spread across several locations. “I believe a hybrid approach will become a standard offering for live events like trade shows and conferences, mostly to survive,” says Marcel van Overveld, Business Director of Virtual Events. “Brands will have to develop other income streams, looking at data gathering and adding a digital layer on live physical events to benefit from that opportunity and maintain or extend their reach, thus staying relevant for their target audience.” For example, his team is looking for ways to use data to virtually emulate the serendipity of bumping into someone with a shared interest.

No matter the form digital takes in the near or distant future, one thing is clear: it will enable experiences that can’t be found anywhere else. For those reasons, digital’s key role in experiential will remain well into the future. “We’ve seen the benefits first-hand,” says Woods. “Bigger reach, better ROI, more accessibility, more user-centric and more sustainable—virtual events are here to stay.”