NewsLine Column: Out-Of-Home, Alone?

Some of the major names in out-of-home and ambient media recently announced their intention to form a trade association separate to the existing Outdoor Advertisers Association. But will this really improve this up and coming media’s standing in the advertising community, or serve to increase the level of confusion caused by fragmentation, asks Naked Communications’ Jon Wilkins

I realised how confusing all this outdoor and ambient media was becoming at the Campaign Awards this year. We were fortunate to win the ‘Best Outdoor Campaign’ for a campaign that didn’t include one bit of media situated in an outside space. Yep, that’s right, our entire campaign for Batchelors Supernoodles took place in pubs, pub bogs, and in the khazis themselves (with exploding toilets the piéce de la resistance!).

So there is evidently some confusion here, not least as to where the emerging field of ambient sits.

So there is a logic to why ambient media companies may create a sub-category all of their own now. We understand this would have its own trading body and all that that entails. I’m sure there are a multitude of reasons to do this- not least to raise the business practice, standards, and to move to create a common currency.

There is also a lot of brand litter nowadays with a lot of businesses that really shouldn’t be branding all and sundry; basically offering to tattoo their kids across the heads for a price- they evidently need weeding out, if the sector is to grow in strength and get taken seriously.

However as a layman, you’d have to ask one basic question; does creating yet another divide in our fragmenting and crumbling media industry really help any of the users, the marketers and agencies in the long term?

We already have an outdoor industry that works together, has cleaned up its act, has a common currency, good standards and practices. Call me old fashioned but don’t ‘Out of Home’ and ‘Outdoor’ seem a bit similar? If you’re planning outdoor, surely you are planning traditional posters as well as ambient? Certainly most of the outdoor specialists are already catering for the broad away of ‘outside’ media.

Wouldn’t be great if there was a way of skipping the inevitable confusion yet another industry body would create, and instead homogenising outdoor – in its broadest possible sense – to include posters, ambient etc? I’m sure there are sound reasons why this isn’t happening, but I’m also sure these will be to do with internal politics amongst contractors, not what clients or agencies really want.

Maybe the way to become part of the media establishment is to actively work with the outdoor bodies to create one single trading body now, before the inevitable divide confuses us all.

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