A dragon on the loose in Sydney not only set fire to a billboard, but set tongues wagging as the latest example of a faux out-of-home (FOOH) stunt using the power of CGI.
POLY, the creative and innovation hub of oOh!media, came up with the concept to promote the season two premiere of House of the Dragon, with the activation also featuring a number of local landmarks unfurling banners (also digitally created) to pledge their allegiance to the duelling factions in the series.
POLY head Josh Gurgiel said that the innovation hub briefing agencies on ideas, instead of the other way around, is “very common” as any time clients come to oOh! with a creative opportunity, that brief typically comes into POLY, which then works hand in hand with clients.
“We have an hour blocked out every day in our diaries that is strictly brainstorm time where we address the briefs that are on the table and get the entire team together, including sales and strategy, to work out creative ideas and solutions. It's exactly in those sorts of forums that ideas like House of the Dragon come from,” he said.
“When we go about trying to get these ideas that we believe in or that we've conceived of brought to life, it's about bringing all the stakeholders on the journey to bring a great creative concept to life, irrespective of where it came from whether it was us or the agency.”
Working closely with media agency Mindshare and the BINGE marketing team, bringing the idea to life was no easy feat, however – Gurgiel said that when you're dealing with major studios such as HBO, there is “huge protectiveness” over their creative and brand assets to overcome.
“Any time we're venturing into the territory of content creation when it's purely an OOH execution, we still have to make sure all brand codes are being recognised and adhered to, but with the introduction of CGI here, we were talking about what the minutiae of the dragon looked like,” he told AdNews.
“What I think was so powerful about this execution, however, is we're not the ones producing the CGI video, because that's not within our skill set and we don't own that IP. What we saw as the opportunity here was the fusion of the real-world OOH assets and conversion of a regular billboard to a ‘burnt’ billboard following the release of this video.”
The Taylor Square site before the release of the video
The Taylor Square site after the release of the video
Gurgiel said that utilising pre-existing relationships with local councils and production partners helped to get the idea across the line from a physical standpoint, allowing the billboard to be quickly converted from a standard OOH advertisement to one that reflected what happened in the video upon launch.
Behind-the-scenes video provided to AdNews showed that following the billboard change, amplification of the content across oOh!’s own digital network came via ‘breaking news’ stories showing footage of the dragon, along with influencer content being created to appear as if people were filming the dragon burning the Taylor Square site in real time.
Gurgiel told AdNews that POLY have been tracking the rise of FOOH “for a while now” and thinking about how it could work for their clients, but the impetus to pull the trigger on entering into the space came from strategists Alex Rog and Rob Delaney.
The pair came across comments on YouTube videos and online articles that featured FOOH, with viewers asking where they could see these activations (such as the giant mascara wand swiping ‘eyelashes’ on the front of London public transport) in real life, with many not catching on as to the fake nature of the advertisements.
“We started to think is there an opportunity to build more of an episodic creative iteration that actually links multiple creative executions as a narrative?” he said.
Despite FOOH being a relatively recent phenomenon, Gurgiel said that he doesn’t see it as replacing traditional OOH any yimr soon nor just being a passing fad, but a way for the online and offline worlds to finally come together, especially as more clients are asking POLY how they can utilise FOOH for their own marketing objectives.
“What's really interesting in this space as well is how do OOH companies actually digitise their OOH footprint in a way that can be not just sold in the real world, but actually sold in the digital world as well?” he said.
“Is there a way to catalogue physical assets that can then be traded in the virtual world as well to create additional revenue streams for OOH suppliers?”
“We've seen a rise in FOOH and our job now is about how we navigate that I think - it's got to be right for the objectives of the campaign and the advert.”
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