Effective Stair Wrap Design Strategies for OOH Advertising
The Project X Newsletter: Vol L.
February is here and there is so much to celebrate. Valentine's Day is approaching, the Winter Olympics are starting, and it is Black History Month!
It is a great month to START learning and teaching about Black history with your kids, your family, your significant other, and your friends. We say “start” because learning about Black history, and all of the amazing Black male and female leaders, is a learning process that should take place all year long. Not one month, not two, but all twelve.
Some outdoor advertising companies, such as Lamar, have used digital out-of-home ads to honor and acknowledge the many incredible Black men and women who have made history. What a great way to celebrate and educate this month by displaying Black leaders such as John Baxter Taylor Jr. and Gwendolyn Brooks throughout many digital ads across Los Angeles.
That being said, it is up to us to continue supporting Black-owned businesses, lifting and amplifying Black voices, watching movies by Black directors, reading books by Black authors, and holding ourselves and others accountable when it comes to cultural appropriation.
Let’s show support this month of love!
Out Of Home Spotlight: Stair-Wrap Artwork
Some tips when designing Stair-Wrap Artwork:
• Minimize the use of white or light colored backgrounds since these colors show more wear, dirt and scuff marks.
• Keep text and graphics within the minimum amount of risers possible to increase readability. Keep the breaks within text and graphics to a minimum.
• Keep text and graphics running over multiple risers off bottom risers. Your audience is looking down when they approach the staircase and see more tread than riser.
• Any breaks in the middle of the artwork template are staircase landings. Do your best not to carry text or graphics over any stair landings, since these areas are wide and cause a visual break in the text or image.
Out Of Home Update: QR Codes + OOH
We touched on QRC in our forecasted trends for 2022, but it continues to be a hot topic of conversation amongst marketers, and how these integrations can be best activated across different platforms. As a “part 1” on QR Codes, we dive into a bit of the history, and their meteoric rise in popularity since the start of the pandemic.
Short for Quick Response Code, the QR Code offers a similar service as a barcode, but with one major difference - it can store substantially more data. QR codes first came about in Japan as an evolution of the barcode, which initially was a solution to relieve supermarket cashiers from having to manually enter each item purchased by consumers. But as we all know, QR Codes did not take off as most originally hoped, when marketers started putting them on just about everything (products, packaging, advertisements, posters, etc.) as a quick way to direct people to a website or other online destination. The problem was that the technology available to most consumers provided a disappointing customer experience.
Fast forward to April 2020, and QR codes started making a comeback, both in advertising campaigns and everyday life. They are highly useful as a touch-free, socially-distanced way of accepting payments and limiting physical interaction with customers; and with technology finally catching up, you can now simply scan a QR Code with your smartphone camera. COVID-19 has seemingly given QR codes a second life with everyone from local restaurants to major retailers using QR codes for touch-free dining and shopping. In OOH, we've seen QR codes make their way into the latest advertising campaigns for brands ranging from high-end fashion to consumer packaged goods (CPG). QR codes can allow advertisers to have a 1:1 conversation with consumers, provide access to exclusive content, help track performance, and more.
The QR Code renaissance helps demonstrate that existing technology can prove incredibly useful in helping to solve today’s challenges. While it’s highly unlikely that anyone could have predicted just how important QR Codes would have become in this new world, it’s nice to see something most had written off come back and provide such a useful solution to advertising, commerce, and health.
Campaign Freeze Frame
Check out this amazing wallscape for Voodoo Ranger in Denver!
Walk past this big and beautiful Studs poster in Miami!
OOH News & Views
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2022/02/02/dive-five-the-most-awarded-ooh-campaigns-the-last-12-months - Via The Drum Hannah Bowler describes the five of the most creative ads, brands, and agencies in the year 2021.
https://www.digitalsignagetoday.com/news/lamar-honors-black-history-month-with-billboards/ - Via Digital Signage Today In Celebration of Black History Month, Lamar Advertising company is presenting it’s digital billboards throughout LA to honor the inspiring black men and women that have shaped history.
