I call it PR-able advertising, and it’s a way of achieving additional and credible reach for an ad, even with a small media buy.
In a world where it is estimated that nine out of 10 brand interactions from millennials are now through their smartphone (Chloe Gottlieb, R/GA NY’s talk at Cannes), and where free-to-air television ratings are tumbling, crucial additional reach can be achieved through earned media coverage and social shares – if the advertising idea is newsworthy enough.
So what’s a newsworthy ad? Well ultimately it’s an ad that is a world first. That sounds a tough brief. But actually new technology is opening up the doors to world firsts all the time. Especially in outdoor – and what’s interesting is how the reach of outdoor is actually increasing in Australia (Outdoor Media Association).
Take the arrival of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). It's leading to a number of interesting new innovations in billboards. Facial recognition technology has already been used to great effect. These ideas are primarily an advertising concept, but what drives the reach and effectiveness is the social and earned media buzz and shares.
We’ve seen billboard content that is pushed to you based on your gender from girls’ education charity Plan. Cameras in the billboard recognised if you were a man or woman and only played the ad to you if you were a women, and if you were a man you received a message saying that you had your choice denied, just like so many women in the developing world have their choice of education denied.
The ad actually only ever appeared on five billboards (which would never achieve an effective reach), but total reach was a staggering 669 million thanks to the earned media coverage and social shares (there were over 2.4m views of the story of the ad on YouTube alone). Interestingly the ad was developed by a PR agency.
A fantastic campaign from UK charity Women’s Aid (see below) saw a billboard change its image based on the number people looking at it. The ad showed the bruised face of a woman (the charity campaigns to stop domestic violence), but the more people stared at the ad, the more the bruises and cuts went away.
In the future, the arrival of emotion analytics will potentially transform the billboard experience even further. Emotion analytics will be able to recognise how you are feeling through tiny flickers of facial expression and serve up content to you on a screen, based on how you are feeling.
The technology, coming soon via companies such as Fujitsu and Emotient is fitted into cameras connected to smart digital screens, and as you approach the screen, the content will change based on how you are feeling.
Technology really is allowing the advertising fightback.
Richard Brett
Group managing director, consumer
Ogilvy PR Australia