Aaron Poole, marketing executive, PML Group with this week’s Out \ Look on Out of Home
These pages reflect on some of the outdoor campaigns that have captivated audiences and set new benchmarks in creativity and engagement. In 2024, PML Group led the charge with exciting and impactful OOH activations across the medium’s infinite creative canvas.
Special Builds: Creativity at Scale
Special builds in 2024 transformed public spaces into captivating brand experiences, setting new standards for creativity.
Working backwards, An Post returned to bookend 2024 with an illuminated 3D billboard featuring the brand’s now-iconic Send from the Heart creative, captivating audiences and reinforcing the brand’s community-focused ethos. A second activation at The Point features a special build LUAS column with a rotating heart atop it, creating a visually striking landmark adjacent the brand’s HQ at the EXO building.
“An Post is thrilled to continue building on the magic of Christmas through our ‘Send from the Heart’ campaign. This latest collaboration with Core, Boys and Girls, and PML Group has allowed us to create a truly special OOH installation that continues building the beloved Tin Man narrative and visual story with the Send love heart. It’s wonderful to see the heartfelt emotions of sending a card or gift come alive in such a creative and meaningful way,” says Julie Gill, An Post’s commercial marketing director.
Also this Christmas, Three has seized the opportunity to embrace the festive season with a supersize 240 Sheet special build in Ranelagh adorned with lighting elements and a wreath at its centre.
Leah Hughes, Business Director in Zenith comments;
“We’re delighted to have our OOH special in Ranelagh, bringing to life our Three Christmas campaign in an impactful and prominent way, in collaboration with Three and PML.
The scale of this site has allowed us to truly celebrate all that Three has to offer, with incredible savings, in the most festive way. ‘Join Us’ offers customers seasonal deals to help everyone stay connected with their loved ones during this magical time of year.”
Earlier in the year, Guinness celebrated its new summer ‘Lovely Day to Open the Gates’ initiative with a special activation emulating the iconic gates of the Storehouse opening for the brand home’s first concert, headlined by Disclosure.
The National Lottery dazzled during the summer also with a Spangleys special build in August, celebrating the brand’s 1000th millionaire milestone.
Disney+ brought science fiction to life with its 3D alien installation for the platform’s arrival of Alien: Romulus, while Panadol created a refreshingly citrus-flavoured presence with a giant lemon installation at Heuston Station for Acti-Fast.
Life Style Sports “bagged” attention via an eye-catching takeover of a UCD bus shelter complete with vinyl wrapped backings and parallel 6 Sheets. Atop the shelter sat an unmissable, giant Adidas-branded shoebox complete with the brand’s signature blue bag of equal size.
Dynamic Campaigns: Precision and Real-Time Relevance
Crafting contextually relevant, location-specific designs is at the heart of PML Group’s DOOH offering. Delivered via Liveposter platform, Dynamic Digital OOH drove engagement throughout 2024 via real-time data, weather triggers, and tailored scheduling.
Guinness Storehouse leveraged proximity targeting with LIVEPOSTER, delivering location-specific messages such as “precipitation is high, our views are higher,” prompting visiting OOH consumers within a 30-minute radius of the venue. RTÉ Sport added excitement to the OOH environment with dynamic countdowns to the GAA All-Ireland Senior Championship Finals and celebratory messaging during the Olympics.
PTSB, as the title sponsor of Team Ireland, launched a dynamic digital OOH campaign to showcase gold medallists like Kellie Harrington, Rhys McClenaghan, Fintan McCarthy, Paul O’Donovan, and Daniel Wiffen immediately after their victories.
Maxol’s October campaign employed dynamic scheduling to its messaging based around daily routines, shifting from “Brekkie in the Bag” to “Treats in the Bag” as the day progressed.
Rockshore utilised location-based dynamic content in June, engaging consumers with precision messaging relevant to their surroundings and encouraging them to ‘take a bite’ of the brand’s cider variety.
Experiential: Immersive and Interactive Moments
Non-conventional Out of Home advertising formats are fun, innovative, and effective means of generating brand recall. Our Special Effects study previously highlighted the hugely positive impact that innovative formats have in terms of noticeability, brand perception, and activation. Our recent IMPACT Attention study also found 85% of respondents believed innovative OOH formats to effectively capture their attention.
In 2024, OOH turned spaces into interactive playgrounds and monumental canvases.
Pepsi MAX transformed Grand Canal Square into a 2v2 football arena ahead of the UEFA Europa League final, with state-of-the-art laser projections lighting up the docklands and a star appearance by Megan Campbell.
Virgin Media added an element of gamification to commutes at Heuston Station with the “Hueston Play Station,” offering interactive quizzes and mobile-synced games via QR codes. The same campaign featured two special, interactive wrapped bus shelters pulling in commuters to beat the best time in a slider-style game.
Sony Pictures wrapped the Convention Centre in an action-packed montage for Venom 3, immersing audiences in the film’s high-stakes narrative. Pepsi MAX did the same for the brand’s relaunch earlier in the year, complemented by motion-activated audio effects in its lenticular bus shelters, enhancing the sensory appeal of its Sound Tunnel activation.
Celebrating the launch of the brand’s new chocolate variety, seasonal favourite Baileys added a hint of indulgence to high-traffic shopping areas with chocolate-scented digital panels, creating a festive, multi-sensory experience for holiday shoppers.
Guerrilla Campaigns: Bold and Unexpected
Guerrilla campaigns surprised and delighted audiences with a daring sense of creativity around high-profile events.
EPIC Museum capitalised on Taylor Swift’s July Eras Tour arrival in Dublin by celebrating her Irish ancestry with prominent banners and Digivans across the capital, creating a viral stunt that extended beyond traditional OOH audiences and drove the conversation online, highlighting the complementary relationship between OOH and other media.
Smirnoff created a haunting yet playful atmosphere with Halloween UV murals in Stoneybatter, while the Very transformed city walls and sidewalks into vibrant tributes for breast cancer awareness in Dublin ahead of the annual Very Pink Run.
Paddy Power injected humour into the streets with its witty takeover of Camden Corner during the Comedy Festival, featuring neon-pants-clad Luas stops near the Iveagh Gardens and a takeover of Camden Corner for a second year running.
Retail OOH: Vibrancy in Shopping Spaces
Retail OOH campaigns capitalised on high-traffic environments to engage audiences.
Disney captivated families at Dundrum Shopping Centre with escalator wraps for Inside Out 2, aligning with the film’s release. In the same cycle, the brand celebrated the Disney+ release of Star Wars: The Acolyte with a frame-breaking Lightsabre special that caught attention atop the centre’s atrium.
Oreo gamified the same venue with a Pac-Man-themed lift activation, adding interactivity and fun to the shopping experience. Weetabix brought innovation to Charlestown Shopping Centre with a wrapped Adshel Live Mall format, hitting consumers head-on as they entered the central Dunnes Stores location.
Sustainability: OOH for a Better Future
Brands used OOH to highlight environmental awareness and drive positive change.
Citroën reinforced its eco-friendly ethos at the Bloom Festival with nature-inspired designs that resonated with environmentally conscious audiences. Vodafone used the medium to promote e-waste awareness, showcasing the importance of sustainability in everyday consumer choices.
Big Brand Campaigns: Major Launches
Major brands once again used OOH to deliver impactful campaigns that resonated with audiences across the medium, sustaining attention and generating recall in a big way.
McDonald’s revamped its classic burger recipes with mouthwatering visuals across OOH formats, driving consumer interest and boosting sales. Guinness engaged football fans to highlight the brand’s newly minted partnership with the Premier League via a dynamic real-time countdown to the tournament’s launch.
Back in January, Vodafone connected with audiences through bold, high-impact creative that showed off the brand’s new Vodafone TV Play product features and design while ensuring that people saw Vodafone as a credible , cutting edge, TV provider.
As we close the book on 2024, it’s evident that this was a year where creativity, sustainability, and innovation were common threads when it came to harnessing the power of Outdoor. 2025 is poised to see OOH become an even more pivotal medium as we continue to leverage our expertise in creating engaging, sustainable, and technologically advanced campaigns.
In the year to come we expect OOH growth will be fuelled by our commitment to measuring consumer attention – a factor that will ultimately be underpinned by innovation, technology, and data-driven insights. Our focus remains steadfast on delivering OOH campaigns that foster genuine connections between brands and consumers.
Looking ahead, we are excited to explore new frontiers by combining creativity and innovation with sophisticated marketing strategies to ensure our clients’ brands not only get noticed but also leave a lasting impression.
For more information contact info@pmlgroup.ie.
