By Melanie Blood, Head of Ocean Labs, Ocean Outdoor UK.
You’ve probably noticed the market shift over the past few years. Brand experience and creative Out of Home have become even more intertwined as brands have chosen events, pop-ups, special builds and murals for their marquee moments alongside a wider DOOH campaign. Without a doubt, people are craving the physical and tactile, and marketers have adapted beautifully.
Screen fatigue is real, but it primarily belongs to the phone in your pocket and the laptop on your desk – the devices that demand attention all day. It’s clear that audiences are not rejecting interaction with brands; they are rejecting interaction that’s about the technology itself rather than an emotive connection.
Advertisers do not need to choose between a tactile, personalised brand moment and the scale of a broadcast screen. In our experience at Ocean Labs, you can have both, in the same place, at the same time. The best brand experiences draw the consumer into their world for a moment. They see themselves in it, they shape it, and they leave with something that feels made for them. We return to these themes again and again: participation, personalisation, presence.
An interactive DOOH experience, done properly, can deliver that same feeling, and then go further: broadcast it. A crowd gathers not because a QR code asks them to, but because something is visibly, unmistakably happening, at a scale only premium OOH commands. One person’s moment becomes a memory for hundreds – and the millions more who may be reached via earned media afterwards.
Ocean Portal exemplifies this same instinct: a freestanding LED half-cube that can appear in iconic locations and at cultural moments. It is quite literally a portal into a brand’s creative world, inviting participation by stepping onto an LED floor where stunning moving images suddenly fill your peripheral vision, and even react to where you are standing or how you are moving. It’s the touch-and-feel of a branded pop-up, elevated with all the best features of playful DOOH technology.
On the Portal and an array of permanent Ocean screens, mixed reality turns the screen into a mirror or window to another world. Fantastical creative effects turn city streets into film sets; participants into performers reflected live for others around them to see. Ocean Play lets people join a game with nothing more than a controller to hold, a button to press, or their own body moving through space.
None of these need to announce themselves as clever technology to the consumer. Done well, it just feels like something extraordinary happening before your eyes.
This is the kind of brief that excites us most. DOOH is not only a delivery mechanism for brand content. It can also be the stage for experiences that are truly worth being present for.
That’s the spirit behind our annual Digital Creative Competition: all you need is an idea. It’s an open invitation to brands, creatives and planners to put forward the best concepts in DOOH that haven’t happened yet, weaving interactive technology into the brand moment in a way that elevates the idea without overpowering it.
OOH has always been the medium brands can’t help but love and audiences can’t scroll past. Our job is to ensure that what people encounter when they do stop is worth their time and attention. In rare cases, the address is enough. Most often it’s the idea and that real life feeling it creates.
The 2026 Digital Creative Competition winners are announced on 8th October in London. To find out more email [email protected].
Melanie Blood is Head of Ocean Labs, Ocean Outdoor UK.
