A lot of the advertising that brands pay agencies good money for ends up being just visual pollution. Something most people ignore while staring at their phones on the bus. You’ve probably scrolled past a dozen ads yourself today and not noticed a single one. The difficulty with marketing is that people actively hate being sold things while they’re just trying to get through their day. They skip the pre-roll video ads the second the tiny timer hits zero, and they click off any irritating pop-ups immediately.
In this day and age, most of us have been exposed to so many ads that we can become blind to them, so marketing needs to be clever. It needs to be relevant but without being pushy or forced, and targeted without being intrusive. It’s a fine line to balance, but experiential marketing is brilliant at this. It stops advertising from being an annoying interruption and becomes an actual physical event instead. Ooh (out-of-home) advertising that people can touch and interact with in their daily lives feels exciting and novel. A pop-up coffee stand handing out free iced lattes wrapped in a brand logo, for example, creates a memory instead of just a fleeting impression you forget seconds later.
Beyond Billboards
Standard outdoor advertising is fine if you’re happy to cast a broad net and pay more. If, for example, you put a huge picture of a cheeseburger on the side of the road, you can hope drivers get hungry on their commute home, and it will work to an extent.
Experiential OOH marketing differs in that it engages the public. Instead of just looking at a flat image, people are walking into an environment designed entirely around a specific brand. It might be a spin-the-wheel type game where participants can win prizes from your shop. As soon as people start recording it on their phones and sharing it, your physical event suddenly spreads across the internet for free. It’s the physical experience that’s fuelling the digital reach.
Brand Ambassadors
This isn’t just about showing up to a location with a booth and some samples. You can’t run these kinds of out-of-home advertising campaigns without the right people to guide the interaction. Brand ambassadors are the absolute backbone of any live activation; they’re the enthusiastic people handing out samples and getting people involved. It doesn’t matter how good your product is if the person handing it out looks completely bored to death. They answer questions and create a human connection that you absolutely can’t replicate with a digital banner ad.
Street Activations
Sometimes you need to liven up a normal day to get noticed by consumers. Street activations are a core part of what outdoor media advertising companies do when a client wants to make an impression in a specific city. You take over a public square or a popular neighborhood park and build a temporary experience. Maybe it’s a full-scale lounge area made out of recycled shipping pallets to promote a sustainable clothing line. It could be an outdoor advertising mobile setup where a customized retro camper van drives around, handing out fresh dog treats at local dog parks. The goal is always to catch people off guard in a pleasant way so they actually want to interact with the brand rather than run away from it.
The Strategy Behind the Chaos
A lot of brands think they can just throw up a cheap branded tent in a parking lot and call it a successful activation. But if it’s not properly thought through and goes wrong, it’s going to make your brand look worse, not better. As one of the top OOH advertising agencies, The OOH Squad knows that the logistics behind these live events aren’t always the easiest to manage. Trying to get a city permit for a giant inflatable obstacle course in a public park is an absolute nightmare if you don’t know what you’re doing. We handle the boring but necessary strategy and execution so you don’t have to worry about the details. We secure the permits and determine exactly where pedestrian traffic is heaviest on a Saturday afternoon. We handle the messy logistics, staging, and staffing so your brand looks flawless on the day of the event.