Highlights from OUTFRONT at Advertising Week New York 2024

Were you at Advertising Week New York? OUTFRONT was! Clive Punter, our Chief Revenue Officer, moderated a panel entitled "From Billboard to Cart: Fashion Brands Leverage Social OOH to Drive Engagement" with Ashley Schapiro, Vice President, Marketing, Media, Performance at American Eagle and Max Siegelman, Founder, Siegelman Stable. Here’s some of what they said:

Ashley: “We basically put [impact] into three different buckets… three R’s – reach, resonance, and reaction. Reach is, are we reaching the right people, not just a lot of people but the right people. The second piece is how it’s resonating with them. So positive sentiment, brand health, softer metrics… and then the reaction, which is what all of us at the end of the day are responsible for. When you go to your CFO and say, I just did 262 out of home placements, here’s my return on investment.”

Max: “Honestly for us, it’s the validation just as much as it’s how much social content and storytelling and press we can get out of being up there. It’s the validation of, “Oh, they’re a real brand, not just a brand that started on Instagram.” So I think it’s literally like a real-world, cultural blue check for brands like ours or smaller.”

Ashley: “People do not consume things by channels. People don’t walk away and think about where they saw a brand showing up one way or another. They think about it in totality and they think, why do each of those channels have a reason for being? …if you have a popup and then you’ve got an e-commerce store, then you’ve got social commerce on TikTok, an Instagram account, a Facebook account, a Snapchat account, you name it… if you want someone to fully consume your brand, each of those different channels needs a reason for being, for why they’d want to participate in your brand on all of them.”

Max: “When we post to Instagram, unless we’re pushing it through paid, we’re just talking to the same customer over and over. Even if we send an email, we’re still talking to the same community and follower base over and over. So when you put something up on a billboard, in the subway, on a bus stop, you’re talking to a new customer potentially.”

Ashley: “We use an MMM model…we’ll look at incremental revenue as the key factor for most media. But I will say for some of these brand-first activities, you do have to take other metrics into play. Brand health metrics, reach overall, positive sentiment, things like that…I also like to look at the lag in terms of how long it takes for a campaign to really hit. As I often say, performance media is crack; brand media is vitamins. I see out of home as like a super vitamin.”

Liz Rave, OUTFRONT VP of Marketing, joined the AW360 podcast for a live episode recorded at Advertising Week. She talked about social out of home, digital activation, and much more. A few of her insights:

“Out of home plays well with other media, definitely adding efficiency, reach, and frequency across the board. Its strongest partner by far is digital…we like to think of OOH as the best primer for all things digital, including search, social, and mobile. In fact, it’s outperforming every other advertising channel in driving eight forms of digital activation.”

“I think this stat is kind of crazy that one in four Americans have actually posted an out of home ad to Instagram, and that's not just me who works for an out of home company, but actually 25% of the country. And when you first hear that, it's unbelievable, but if you think about Instagram, and you think about stories, and the fact that they're only around for 24 hours, they're not attached to your personal brand, if you see a smart advertisement out there, and you think that you can make your community, your friends laugh for a moment, why not take a picture of it?”

“Out of home definitely ranks the highest in terms of likability and trustworthiness amongst all demos, but especially the younger ones. So if you think about Millennials, digital has been a part of our lives since we got that first email after college to log on to Facebook. And then for Gen Z, it's been a part of their lives since birth.

I think the tangible nature of OOH, the fact that it's a break from digital really does provide that break through the digital noise, first and foremost, but then also provides that extra layer of trust that I think we're all looking for in this crazy climate. I think they perceive out of home as real, and the fact that no one would spend real hard money on an advertisement if it weren't true, if it's in the real world.”

Meanwhile, Valerie Vespa, OUTFRONT VP of Brand Partnerships, joined The Female Quotient in the Equality Lounge @ Advertising Week to contribute her insights on a panel titled “The Power of the Maiden Name in Business and Beyond: To Change or Not to Change.” Here’s what she had to say:
 
“I think about my son, I have a 14-year-old son. He knows I work my butt off. I hate the word 'grind' but I’m a busy bee and I think it aligns with who I am – I think it sets him up to then respect women’s wishes [to be a stay-at-home mom or work]…whatever their decision will be.”

“A lot of times people get married and they don’t realize it’s a financial agreement as much as it’s love…much like that there needs to be equal consideration of the fact that it’s a financial agreement and that changing your name has consequences.”

At OUTFRONT, sharing our wisdom is part of how we help people, places, and businesses grow stronger. For a little more, contact OUTFRONT today.

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