Outdoor advertising. You're beginning to notice it everywhere, right?
Two perfect boobs in a push-up bra above the car park entry to Westfield get noticed. For a month they titillated men and taunted women. They made women want what she had moments before they hit the shops. The headline was something about increasing your bust size overnight. Its wry humour was really, really clever, but its ad placement was, without question, a masterstroke.
Outdoor advertising is surging. And it's becoming ingenious. It's a really gregarious medium and it hangs out with the new kids on the block...it's great mates with digital and has a bit of a crush on experiential. It makes physical look smart. You've seen the IBM outdoor ad-cum-street furniture that won at Cannes and the Push to Add Drama campaign that scored the Yellow Pencil at D&AD this year?
Did I mention that outdoor is surging.
In Cannes Lions 60th year it received a record 35,765 entries from 92 countries.
5,562 of those entries were for Outdoor. Compare that with 3,125 entries in Film and 1,061 in Mobile to get a hint of how big a player outdoor advertising is right now.
In Australia, outdoor advertising grew 5.2% in the second quarter of 2013. That's an increase in sales revenue to $126.5 million, up from $120.3 million for the same period in 2012.
So Australia's inaugural Locus Awards are a big deal. They stand to be a showcase of everything great advertising should be now and could be in the future - arresting, engaging, clever and compelling. More importantly, your winning an inaugural Locus Award is a big deal - assuming that you want your creative to be seen as everything great advertising should be. There's only one way to make your outdoor winning creative. It's all explained here: http://www.adnews.com.au/awards/the-locus-awards.
Keep watching this space.
Cheers
Candide ( editor@australiancreative.com.au)