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On the basis of this year’s Outdoor Media Awards, the out-of-home industry is in rude health.
The Outdoor Planning Awards – as they were then known – were one of the first events I attended as an editorial assistant at Media Week. It’s amazing how the awards and the outdoor industry have developed over the last 18 years.
This is even more notable if you take into account how the pandemic hit the sector. Once everything opened up again, it was as though advertisers were as excited about getting out of home as the public was. And that’s not a coincidence; there’s causation as well as correlation there.
Out-of-home media provides brands with reach, flexibility and a great creative canvas. Advertisers and their agencies are also increasingly aware of their work's impact on the world and the fact that over 40% of out-of-home revenues are returned to communities across the UK makes it a responsible choice too.
In recent years, major brands such as McDonald’s and British Airways (and their ad agencies Leo Burnett and Uncommon Creative Studio) seem to be at least as proud of their out-of-home campaigns as they are of their film ads. Campaign seems to cover a new 3D special build every week. Outdoor is also one of the most popular categories, and at the Campaign Big Awards, entries rose a third in 2023. And all this enthusiasm is reflected in outdoor revenues: last year the sector’s ad haul reached £1.3bn, up 10% year on year.
The Outdoor Media Awards, which Clear Channel runs in partnership with Campaign, received a whopping 268 entries in 2024, up 13% compared with 2023, a record. Seventy-four brands made the shortlist. Luckily, the 30 senior leader judges from across the industry made my job as chair very easy. Their extensive preparation made for thoughtful deliberation and collaborative decision-making.
The standard of entries was excellent and we ended up with a fab and diverse set of winners including Uber, Hiscox, Channel 4 and Tower Hamlets Council. We judged the golds against four criteria to find a Grand Prix: did they push the boundaries of the OOH medium, smash business objectives, demonstrate outstanding creativity, planning, and effectiveness - and make you feel something?
So, a high bar. But one a number of entries got close to. The ultimate winner was Transport for London’s “The World’s Smallest Global Campaign” for the Elizabeth Line by GroupM OOH, Wavemaker, DOOH.com and VCCP. Judges described the campaign, which deployed ads in the language of arriving planes at luggage reclaim, as a “very clever use of outdoor” and “really smart”. Crucially, it also delivered powerful results.