A lesson for outdoor advertising

Picture credit: Led By Donkeys

Led By Donkeys’ outdoor campaign has shown the professionals a thing or two about reach and effectiveness, writes Ray Snoddy – which Global must be pleased to see

Come out of the 2000-year-old underground tombs in Paphos, Cyprus, and the first thing you see on the horizon is the biggest advertisement for Colonel Saunders and Kentucky Fried Chicken you have ever seen.

It’s impossible to say how many extra buckets of chicken are being sold as a result of the huge poster, but the indisputable fact is that it is a commercial communication which cannot be ignored, stitched-off or disabled.

It’s there in your brain whether you like it or not.

That’s local and personal, but then last year outdoor got a nice positive, universal boost from Hollywood in the Oscar-winning film where posters were the silent stars of the show – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

A single film and billboards in the Deep South of America is not going to transform the outlook for a sector, although it counts as a positive mention – that such a traditional medium, when cleverly used, can change ideas and outcomes in a fictional portrayal.

In retrospect, that message is also reflected in the story of Led By Donkeys – the hilarious and influential poster campaign launched by four friends who had a good idea in The Birdcage pub in Stoke Newington.
[advert position=”left”]
In fact, the film was not the inspiration for their campaign to hold politicians to account for daft utterances or saying one thing and doing almost the exact opposite not so very long after. Only one of them had actually seen the film. But their poster campaign has gone viral and universal.

One of their most telling posters featured a comment by pro-brexit MP Jacob Rees-Mogg before the calling of the EU referendum.

“We could have two referendums. As it happens, it might make more sense to have the second referendum after the renegotiation is completed,” Rees-Mogg said.

The five started off with paste buckets putting up essentially illegal posters on other people’s sites in the middle of the night, before becoming legitimate customers of the outdoor industry, financed by crowd-funding.

Disappointingly, the poster industry turned down the famously articulate quote from Boris Johnson on the importance of British industry – “fuck business” – because of the swear word. So the illegal paste pots had to come out again outside the Jaguar Land Rover factory in Solihull.

When Theresa May went on one of her many expeditions to Brussels, there was a Led By Donkeys poster reminding her that she had said, “I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union”.

But perhaps their most famous effort was the huge banner passed over the heads of the People’s Vote march and filmed by their specially hired helicopter, featuring a tweet from MP David Davis arguing:”If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy”.

Credit: Led By Donkeys

It was shared millions of times online.

And that is why Led By Donkeys, named after the inept British generals of the First World War, has been so effective – the telling still image of the words is arresting in its own right, but it is when they are photographed and tweeted and retweeted that they take off and enter the national conversation.

It is highly unlikely that the Led By Donkeys campaign had anything to do with the decision of Global to enter the outdoor market in a big way, but Global executives must have at least smiled at the additional evidence of just how effective an outdoor campaign can be.

It was further proof, if any were needed, that the decision by a commercial radio company to buy big in outdoor was not totally crazy.

This week the Competition and Markets Authority cleared Global’s acquisition of Exterion Media to add to the purchase of Outdoor Plus and Primesight last year, making the radio company second to JCDecaux in UK out-of-home.

While much of British business put new developments on hold during the Brexit political paralysis, Global has pulled off in plain sight what will be seen before long as a bit of a media coup, every bit as creative in its own way as the idea conceived in The Birdcage.

Global, which has reached its limits in radio acquisitions, has managed to create an extra media arm from scratch within a year.

The key thing for Global must have been the obvious fact that outdoor has not been hit by social media anything like as much as the rest of the traditional media, because it reaches everyone who goes out into the world to work, shop or socialise and it cannot be switched off.

Perhaps outdoor has been called “the last broadcast medium” too many times already, but there is enough truth in the saying to keep the cliche alive.

Global’s new adventure comes with long deals for advertising sites on London railway stations and the underground, not to mention the sides of 360 buses.

We already have effective video advertising in central underground stations – there must now also be future outlets for LBC on digital posters.

Advertisers in general, not just organisers of political campaigns, should also pay attention to why Led By Donkeys has shown the professionals a thing or two about reach and effectiveness.

They have deployed humour, made people laugh and retweet, and then made them want to buy the mug and the t-shirt.

There might even be some business for Global from Led By Donkeys in future. There must surely be opportunities on the sides of 360 buses.