Colum Harmon, marketing director, PML Group with this week’s Out \ Look on Out of Home.
Celebrating 4T Years
2022 is a special year for PML Group, as we mark forty years of bringing great brands to life through brilliant Out of Home advertising. To celebrate this milestone, we recently ran our very own national Outdoor ad campaign, across multiple formats and environments.
The 4T initiative was conceptualised and designed using PML Group’s full suite of tools and services, including Mind, campaign planning and audience optimisation, and Maps, our inventory and audience visualisation tool. The campaign was created in-house by our Create design team, while our Innovate team built the 4T mobile platform and game. Liveposter allowed us to dynamically adserve and verify content across multiple digital networks. Finally, Review measured results via post-campaign attribution analysis and independent research through Ipsos.
The aim of 4T is to celebrate our forty years in business by celebrating the power of OOH media in 2022. The campaign speaks to the scale and impact of classic OOH, its ability to create awareness, pique interest and drive response. We embraced the flexibility and relevance of dynamic digital OOH and we set out to show how OOH is the original and ultimate brand builder that is intrinsically linked with mobile and behavioural change. OOH perfectly bridges physical to digital which is of course reflective of real-world human behaviour – what we like to call, sophisticated mass marketing.
The response to the initiative has been overwhelmingly positive and in the coming weeks we will share the outcomes of the campaign, measured via online engagement analytics and post-campaign survey data. More on that to come.
It’s said that life begins at forty, and OOH media has an exciting path ahead but in marking this time for our business we must acknowledge and thank every one of our clients for their incredible support over the past forty years. Our thanks also to the OOH media owners, media agencies, creative agencies, printers, research partners and so many friends and colleagues we have met along the way. And of course, to our own team, past and present, who have dedicated themselves every day to creating great Outdoor advertising. PML Group is relentless in its pursuit of excellence for our clients. This focus is grounded in the enduring impact of Jimmy Cashen and Gerry O’Donoghue, the architects of our business forty years ago and we are proud to carry the baton into the very exciting future for Out of Home.
OOH fuelling Bank Holiday Weekend Events
Marking the midway point of cycle 22 is the October bank holiday weekend, presenting a great opportunity for event organisers to leverage OOH for promotion and awareness.
The Dublin Marathon makes its post-pandemic return on October 30th. Thousands of patient runners will have their two-year wait ended as they gather at Fitzwilliam Square to sprint, jog, or casually walk the city-spanning 42km route.
Commenting on the first year of their three-year title sponsorship Danielle Mc Kenna, Sponsorship Manager at Irish Life, said: “We are really excited for the Irish Life Dublin Marathon and to see the event back on the streets of Dublin for the first time since 2019. With 25,000 runners set to toe the line and 350,000 supporters coming out in full force to cheer them on, there’s no doubt it will be a really special occasion.”
Many participants run to fundraise for a partnered charity of their choice, with an average of over €9 million raised each year. To help spur on participants, the marathon route will be decorated by Irish Life’s OOH ‘We all run on support’ campaign, planned by Zenith with Source out of home.
‘We know that nobody can run a marathon alone, and whether it’s support from loved ones at home, your colleagues in work or your running gang, we all run on support”, added Mc Kenna, “In a recent survey we completed with runners signed up to do the Irish Life Dublin Marathon, 70% of them told us they wouldn’t have made it to the start line without support from others. Through our sponsorship of the Irish Life Dublin Marathon we want to positively impact thousands of people to have healthier lives and build better futures.”
The multi-format campaign conforms to the marathon path, which was mapped on our MAPS platform, spanning Bus Shelters, Digipanels, Digishelters, Digipoles, Adshel Live Roadside close to and on the route. A Commuter dPod in Lansdowne Road is running across the 28th & 29th to target those attending the Marathon expo that’s on in the RDS the two days before race day. On the day itself a Digivan playing curated music will also be parked close to the final ‘purple mile’ of the race, displaying encouraging messages for participants as they near the finish line.
For those participating, Senior Client Manager and former Dublin Marathon competitor Keith Farrell has some sage advice: “Don’t forget you are taking part in something that only approximately 0.01% of the entire Global population has actually ever done, so remember to soak up the beautiful atmosphere and of course don’t forget to smile!”
We wish the best of luck to everyone involved.
Further South, the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival is set to light up the annals of Grand Parade as Corkonians jump, jive and wail to a host of new acts, venues and experiences that have earned the rebel county its New Orleans chops. Now in its 44th year, the festival garners some of the biggest names in jazz, featuring popular Irish acts LYRA and Toshín as well as established international acts Mas Exodus and New Power Generation.
To promote the event locally, the streets of Cork have been laden with the iconic Guinness harp as the countdown to ‘Jazz Time’ has gotten underway. Planned by PHD and Source out of home, you’d be hard pressed to miss the multi-format, trumpet-bearing campaign across 48 Sheets, Adshel and Bus Shelter 6 Sheets, Bus T-Sides along with screens in stations and bars. A 48 Sheet Admobile will also be circulating the city throughout the weekend. If you’re there, be sure to look out for TBL8 Brass featuring our new recruit, Aaron Poole!
October OOH Mobility Update
In their latest transport bulletin, the Central Statistics Office have reported that the last week of September saw car journeys increase by +5% on both Dublin and regional roads. The figures for Dublin also came in at just 4% lower than the same period in 2019.
In terms of public transport, weekly Dublin Bus journeys were more than 3 million, with Luas journeys encroaching on 1 million – a 41% and 75% increase YoY respectively.
And, finally….
DOOH screens make their debut in Formula One cockpits
This week, McLaren Racing have signed off on a deal with US agency Seamless Digital to bring DOOH screens into the cockpits of their Formula One race cars.
The wafer-thin digital panels, fitted in sections along either side of the cockpit, will allow McLaren to run with several different sponsors during a given race weekend. The panel’s innovative design has been developed so they’re clearly visible during TV broadcasts from the drivers’ helmet cameras.
With the facility to enact changes in an instant, even when the cars are on the track, advertisers can provide contextual content and information that is specific to location, time and audience.
