Campaigns

OOH Industry to World: ‘We’re Here, Dammit!’

By Patrick Coffee 

Certain digitally-minded “experts” seem to think that outdoor advertising is not even a real thing anymore.

Most people who own cars or live in cities and occasionally look up understand the value of OOH work. Those who work in agencies or client organizations, however, are probably more interested in Facebook’s new “give us more of your media money” feature.

On that note, today the Outdoor Advertising Association of America launched a new campaign that implores innocent bystanders and industry advocates alike to “Feel the Real.” For evidence of the fact that even the people attending Advertising Week know that outdoor ads can work, they got a Wall Street Journal placement this morning. And it wasn’t even CMO Today!

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The agency behind this sort-of stunt campaign is PNYC, which you may remember for its last-minute effort to “troll” Kanye West and state its public support for his then-nemesis Beck.

President Matt Dowshen lays out his pitch to the WSJ:

“In a world where digital and its ability to deliver what it promises is under significant scrutiny, out-of-home has a unique and compelling point of view that having one foot grounded in the real world matters.”

Here’s another way of putting it.

…and a different view from a literal Man on the Street.

PNYC even got personal, placing an ad outside Ogilvy’s office on the West Side that reads, “Hey Shelly, does this ad feel real to you?” The $2 million spend was “donated by OAAA’s out-of-home media member companies.”

Here’s the pop-up “ad” on the campaign site.

OOH thing

Fuck it, we really like this campaign.

We have no idea whether it will work, but we can say that outdoor advertising is still very much alive. No butts about it.

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