Ocean Outdoor’s Tim Bleakley: one to many ways to growth

In his new role as Ocean Outdoor chairman, OOH evangelist Tim Bleakley is on a mission to Make Outdoor Creative Again (MOCA). Having launched his movement at the OAAA conference in Boston, Bleakley’s latest stop off on the MOCA trail was the World Out of Home Congress in Mexico where he revealed how marketing’s biggest challenges are Out of Home’s primary strengths.

Isn’t it ironic. Despite the rise of online – a medium built on outcomes – marketing effectiveness is on a downwards slide.

In a world that’s been hoodwinked by one-to-one activation, some global brands have put efficiency ahead of effectiveness, an over investment in performance marketing impacting negatively on long term brand building effectiveness and business growth.

Having stared down the digital marketing abyss for way too long, we decided the only way to establish what clients really want was to ask them. So, I set about asking marketing leaders from the top 20 global brands across a broad spectrum of categories five specific questions.

What is the biggest challenge in marketing today? 75% said it was attention.

What are the three most important factors you consider when allocating marketing investment? 67% mentioned reach, followed by ROI and CPM.

What is your biggest marketing challenge over the next 24 months? AI was rated the highest by 36% of respondents.

Which media channels do you believe deliver best on your objectives? Turns out there was no “one best channel” reply.

Finally, when considering D/OOH (digital out of home), what are the three most important attributes you look for? 62% replied reach, followed by impact and stand-out.

One more thing. I asked Ocean’s research team to check which word was most frequently used by respondents before the word “Challenge”. The answer was Creative.

Put simply, our customers’ challenges are Out of Home’s primary strengths. Premium DOOH formats deliver higher attention and better memorability.

Meanwhile, investment by Meta, Google and OpenAI in a website-free internet future, whereby agents, not people, scrape the web and deliver results back, undermines online display, eroding trust in digital performance, but also creates a clear pathway for OOH.

So where do we go from here? Well, here’s five One to Many suggestions:

Now’s the time to tell a better story about how our channel cuts through with audiences. OOH demands attention. In terms of brand recall versus attention time, large format full motion sits way above standard OOH, social and online video. Much more to come on this at the London launch of our new Lumen research this week.

Now’s the time to celebrate the raw power of our channel to build brands at scale. One to many I hear you ask? Well, reach in the UK hits 84% of all adults. That’s a pretty unique stat for us to be able to share. However, DOOH delivers what we call super reach because of its social amplification superpowers. In theory, if we took a de minimis level of amplification – say 1% of the 5.3 billion global social users (caveat; this number is a guesstimate) – you could potentially double your UK reach.

Now’s the time to really care about creativity. Could OOH become the last true broadcast medium where you can display genuinely great creative? To grow our medium and play to our strengths, we must nurture creativity and not risk undermining effectiveness and, in turn, investment. And that means not sacrificing quality, or creativity, on the altar of AI.

As Sir John Hegarty tells us, it’s (your) human intelligence that will make a difference. It’s our responsibility to uphold the effectiveness of OOH and uphold standards no matter what tools people use.

Now’s the time to measure what we are best at. Play to our strengths. Measure the amplification effect beyond the physical screen alone.

Premium formats, both large and small, deliver better attention than social. Now’s the time to drive innovation in the products we develop to deliver on that elusive trinity of Stand Out, Cut Through and Reach.

Sixty years on from theorist Marshall McLuhan’s thinking, I think we can say that the medium has finally become the message.

Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise is a case in point. In using the rooftop of London’s mighty BFI IMAX banner as his message, Cruise was the channel.

Now it’s on the rest of us to do the same.

Tim Bleakley is chairman of Ocean Outdoor.