Open Minded & Ready to Learn
The PJX Media Newsletter: Vol. LX
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”
This was the phrase I heard my mother sing every first day of school from elementary school all the way through high school. While she was ready to get me out of the house, I was (almost) ready to go back to school at that point as well! I was looking forward to seeing my friends, using my brand new school supplies and finding out what books or stories we’d be reading during the year.
Each new school year brings a promise of something new to learn, whether it is a new subject, a new favorite book, a new art technique, or even a new sport in gym class. If you or your children are heading back to school this fall, remind them (or yourself!) to enjoy this wonderful time of the year full of new ideas!
Out-of-Home Update
Why is Empathy a Powerful Tool in the Out of Home (OOH) Advertising Practice?
Rick Robinson
Chief Strategy Officer
rick@pjxmedia.com
August 26th, 2022
”By engaging with empathy, the respect you will gain for the “audience” will provide powerful insight into your planning choices and ability to see how the carefully selected individual pieces influence the whole.”
To thrive in the OOH space our campaigns must add to the public realm. We are duty bound to earn our right to inhabit cities by creating utility for our viewers – rewarding regular people for giving us their attention while living their lives out and about. When we take away their sky, or someone’s line of sight, it’s our obligation to replace it with OOH messages delivering brilliant moments that matter, those perfect mergers of content and context. Knowing this we should strive to bring value and get it right every time.
This is where empathy is our secret weapon. When we can better understand and share the genuine sentiment of the brands we advocate for, the people we work with, and the public space we buy our way into, we have a legit shot at delivering effective campaigns everyone talks about!
Why put a finger on empathy? Isn’t media planning all about data, access, process, and testing? Isn’t raising the importance of empathy over-emphasizing a soft skill? Don’t underestimate the ability to feel something for others and put yourself in their position. Every day we reduce our media planning to blunt outcomes that more and more often miss out on the benefit of nuance. By engaging with empathy, the respect you will gain for the “audience” will provide powerful insight into your planning choices and ability to see how the carefully selected individual pieces influence the whole.
This is because empathy is intuitive. Human. The pursuit connects our instincts to a solution. It’s an intellectual discipline that takes practice and becomes more subtle yet sharp over time. It’s a big part of how we uniquely understand and solve problems. It’s reciprocal since the investment of effort and energy always returns the favor with deeper clarity and sense of purpose.
Greg Fischer, Founder/CEO at brand consultancy Force Multiplier Strategy, notes “In a world full of narcissistic marketers, the brands people love most are the ones that care about their communities' needs and give back.” This sentiment extends to specific brand behaviors like channel messaging. Today when brands invest in OOH there’s always the lingering questions. Did we spend well? Did we buy the right locations? Will we reach our target audience? Will our creative play well in public space?
Perhaps the search for the perfect OOH plan starts with empathy. Listening, learning, and absorbing from a genuine, open, mindset allows for OOH campaigns that are true enablers of the creative message. Constructing inspired media plans that find their way beyond the brief, and see the medium organically as a living, breathing entity.
The OOH medium today is a concurrent, timely, interactive public experience on an epic daily scale. At Project X, we believe empathy provides a pathway to campaigns that matter.
Some of Out of Home Advertising’s best and brightest, including our own Justin Symons, Group Media Director at Project X, met in Washington D.C.
Read More
Outfront Media
Outfront Media
We salute our client Hodinkee for choosing to demonstrate the power of simplicity in black & white in their inaugural wall of the 2022 Fall season. What a confident and bold statement! - Breaking past the borders by cropping the product shot and allowing the viewer to finish the image in their mind while owning the position of #allthingswatches.
Campaign Freeze Frame
Herschel
Herschel put themselves out there - An amazing campaign blanketing New York City with upbeat copy and photography that makes you want every look. Link to Video
Thanks for our partners JCDecaux and Outfront Media.
SentinelOne
SentinelOne welcomes Houston to Singularity XDR - One platform. Unprecedented speed. Infinite scale. The future of cybersecurity is autonomous. Singularity XDR secures endpoint, cloud, and identity. Thanks to our partner Clear Channel Outdoor.
Views of the News
Adidas proves brilliant thinking can solve most any business problem as they bring the pool to the people and help women feel more comfortable swimming in public. This launch of their inclusive swimwear collection featured a custom "swimmable billboard" installation amplified by a real time feed to an epic digital screen in Dubai. The campaign created millions of earned impressions and won the Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes this year. Video
The City of West Hollywood's new Arts & Advertising program on The Sunset Strip promises to change the relationship between cities, people and out of home advertising. The notion of shared utility resulting in public benefit is on full display vis-a-vis cutting edge architecture for the Sunset Spectacular Digital Billboard, including a mini park. “Art, architecture and civic space are all intertwined,” said project architect Tom Wiscombe. Article
