The panel was hosted by Naren Patel, CEO, Primesight and featured Asad Arshad (Founder and Company Director, iFavour), Andy Tilley (CSO and Managing Director, Talon), Mel Harvey (Creative Lead, Saatchi Masius), and our very own Creative Director, Ann Wixley.
There were three big topics of conversation discussed by the panel, Content and Context, Stunts vs Campaigns and Agency Collaboration.
Content and Context
The panel agreed that out-of-home (OOH) gave us the chance to make uber contextual advertising – Andy from Talon talked about the recent Google OOH campaign which had a staggering 3,200 different executions at 62 different locations. This was, he declared, a big idea, brilliantly done.
OMD UK’s very own Pepsi Max Unbelievable campaign was also hailed as a best class example, with Ann talking about how even great ideas and campaigns, such as the former, need the support of a wider campaign and media plan behind them.
Stunts vs Campaigns
Pepsi Max brought the panel on to the question of whether OOH was now just seen as a stunt mechanism and was not being used for frequency.
Andy from Talon passionately put forward the undeniable and frankly jaw-dropping statistic that OOH reaches 98% of adults every single week and therefore had an immense scale of opportunity.
Ann agreed that OOH is all about creating frequency as well as innovation.
Agency collaboration
The third and final topic of conversation was that of collaboration. Everyone on the panel agreed that we need to find a neutral territory where all agencies can work together to create great work. Ann put it succinctly when she said ‘to say media leads creative or creative leads media is chicken and egg – ideas can come from anywhere and we need people to work together’.
The Takeouts
Naren was very excited by the idea of an innovation pot where agencies could come together to try something new and experiment on suitable briefs.
The last word of the panel was that the collective ambition was to create brutally simple, big ideas.
Here’s to 2015 and making that happen.
