Outdoor: Popular Posters

woman on crack cocaine.

Not all posters have to be works of art; in fact, even some of the most
acclaimed ones - such as the long-running "white on red" poster campaign
for The Economist - can look like ten minutes' work in-between
tea-breaks. Yet this apparent effortlessness is hard work; creating a
poster can often bring the biggest headache associated with cracking a
brief.

For any young creatives seeking stardom, it's worth building up a strong
portfolio of posters, not least because the medium is becoming much more
powerful. Television and radio are suffering the effects of
fragmentation, so many industry voices agree that outdoor is assuming
greater significance.

What's more, posters can offer a pure advertising experience, without
any pesky editorial getting in the way.

Martin Galton, the creative director of Hooper Galton and the brains
behind the highly lauded Age of Terror poster for The Discovery Channel
observes: "Posters are more important than they've ever been. These
days, you may or may not see a TV ad, but everyone sees a poster."
Justin Tindall, the head of art at DDB London, whose trophy cabinet is
heaving with gongs for Volkswagen posters, agrees: "With the
fragmentation of television networks, posters are now the only
'broadcast' media."

And nothing divides opinion quite like posters. Was "hello boys"
triumphant or tacky, or both? Can a strong poster work equally well as a
print ad?

How much copy is acceptable and how big should it be?

The posters that came top in terms of awareness in a recent survey by
Millward Brown and Clear Channel weren't necessarily the ones that are
destined to enter the annals of advertising history. The Lux posters,
starring Sarah Jessica Parker, or SJP to readers of Heat, scored highly
because celebrities help to turn heads. Foster's ads tickle punters with
their laddish jokes as they pass them in the street, while the scantily
clad ladies in the Lynx and Venus Divine ads were popular too, for some
unfathomable reason.

Adrian Sanger, the group account director at Millward Brown who is
responsible for outdoor advertising, comments: "Many good outdoor
campaigns revolve around sex, celebrity or humour, or a combination of
all three."

Jerry Hollens, the creative partner at Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R
and the co-creator of award-winning posters for Land Rover, is surprised
by the choices: "They definitely follow some tried-and-tested routes,
such as using celebrities, but it's a little disappointing if these are
the posters that are standing out. There's nothing there that hits you
between the eyes."

Millward Brown produced two tables, one for "most effective" and one for
"want to look again". Yet, John O'Keeffe, the executive creative
director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, takes issue with the latter, arguing
that you shouldn't need to take a second look at a poster if the idea is
strong enough in the first place: "You'll never forget a great poster.
They're like hen's teeth and they're definitely the gold standard for
me. If you can create a great poster, you're unimpeachably at the top of
your game."

So which are the posters that are setting the advertising community
alight? O'Keeffe is a big fan of the Bupa campaign. "The line 'the
patient will see you now, doctor' reframes the whole medical debate in
just a few words." Volkswagen also impresses him: "The King Kong poster
(which was named best individual poster at the Campaign Poster Awards
last year) is a great example of a clever image that conveys that the
Polo is a tough car in an engaging way."

JWT's poster campaign for Persil washing powder strikes a chord with
Galton: "That one very simple thought - 'dirt is good' - has become a
strong piece of communication."

TBWA\London's campaign for iPod appears to be a unanimous favourite
across the industry. "Apple is a poster champion," O'Keeffe says.
"There's a certain confidence in believing that punters know that Apple
is good at technology. It's ineffably cool."

Jacqui Kean, the brand marketing manager at The Economist, agrees: "The
iPod campaign is brilliant, as is the choice of six-sheets outside Tube
and bus-stops where people are going to have a very long and horrible
journey to work."

A commute certainly offers advertisers an excellent opportunity to talk
to punters with posters, and here's where the art of long copy can be
used to great effect. Surely there isn't a Londoner around who's managed
to avoid being taken to "Old Tennessee" by the gentle, seductive prose
of a Jack Daniel's whisky poster.

Viacom Outdoor recently ran a long-copy competition for creatives and
undertook research to see how advertising on the Underground was
regarded.

Steven Fuller, the company's head of consumer insight, was intrigued by
the results: "People think the Underground would be a dull place without
advertising and 79 per cent of people said they had done something as a
result of seeing an ad."

He adds: "You have a captive audience on an Underground platform because
there's nothing else to read and people are waiting an average of 3.2
minutes for a train. The long-copy cross-track ads about domestic
violence (one read: "When was the last time you told your girlfriend you
loved her? Was it just before you hit her?), were fantastically
impactful and didn't use images because they didn't need to."

Fuller adds that advertisers are making the most of media placement
too.

When the film The Incredibles was advertised, full use was made of the
"T" shape on London's buses to show off Elastigirl's flexibility and Mr
Incredible's superhero build.

Steve Parker, the UK buying director at Starcom, comments: "The media
placement is critical and more attention is being given to tailoring the
selection of the outdoor location to the creative. A good poster is
really only as good as its creative, but you can enhance its power by
making sure it's in a relevant location."

It obviously works the other way too, and it pays to avoid running that
big, bold, controversial banner in inappropriate places. For all its
deserved recognition as a classic, TBWA's "hello boys" for Wonderbra
wasn't without its critics. The poster was slammed for being placed in
some Muslim neighbourhoods, which didn't appreciate Eva Herzigova
thrusting her bulging chest at them.

A recent poster campaign for UKTV Style's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
show suffered similar accusations of insensitivity. One of the
executions read "Bless This Crack House" - and found itself 50 yards
from a genuine crack den in Brixton, South London. It was a sloppy piece
of media planning that was not lost on a number of insulted locals who
believed the poster was referring directly to their neighbourhood.

Media planning done thoughtfully, however, can make an event out of a
poster. Hooper Galton recently unveiled a "watershed" poster to promote
Sex Sense, a show on Discovery. A sash across the poster informed that
restrictions prevented the poster from being revealed until 9pm, when a
man with a ladder removed it. The words read: "Sex on Discovery. Don't
expect to get an erection."

"By adding that extra layer to it, the poster got talked about and got
in the papers, so you can use events like this to your advantage,"
Galton says.

The Economist is also skilled in the art of intelligent media
placement.

It recently ran an execution outside Chelsea Football Club's Stamford
Bridge ground, which stated: "You don't have to be a billionaire to buy
success."

Kean says: "You're looking for impact, relevance and entertainment with
a poster; your message has to make people stop and look. And yet quite
often I find myself looking at posters and thinking, 'what does the
advertiser want me to do as a result of seeing this?'"

Kean believes that financial services advertisers are some of the worst
offenders, squashing in so much information in their posters that none
of it can ever feasibly stick.

Hollens agrees: "People aren't necessarily approaching posters with the
right mentality when they try to cram as many things as possible into
them."

David McEvoy, the group marketing director at JCDecaux, recommends
devoting time to testing. "We can make a digital print of a poster and
put it in situ for a client so they can see how it's going to look.

"We also offer another testing kit with an A4 piece of paper, Blu-Tac
and a tape measure and encourage people to view it from 15 feet in their
office as they're running towards it."

The physical exertion is intended to mimic driving past a poster because
80 per cent of posters are seen from cars, according to Yvonne O'Brien,
the marketing director at Clear Channel. Like McEvoy, O'Brien advocates
extensive testing.

"We encourage advertisers to pre-test before the poster goes out on to
the street because this helps them know whether it will be effective or
not. Clients are receptive to the tools that are out there to help them
improve their creative."

And creative, it seems, needs all the help it can get. Ask a creative
director which posters they like and the same brands crop up time and
time again: The Economist, Apple, Land Rover, Coca-Cola and
Volkswagen.

The "cometh the hour" Beckham execution for Adidas also strikes a chord
for its boldness, and even ads from that bygone era when surreal posters
for Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut were allowed to decorate the
streets.

Sanger thinks there's definitely room for improvement: "I'm afraid to
say that there is still a lot of mediocrity and standards are still
incredibly variable."

McEvoy, however, begs to differ: "The general standard is higher, but
there are fewer mould-breaking posters. Maybe posters are more
risk-averse these days? We judge the medium by the stand-out ads, so
where's the next Wonderbra, or the first Economist ad or Cantona for
Nike? No-one will praise the Tesco Value posters, yet they matched the
brand communication with a legible and creative idea."

Technology is helping posters to smarten up their act. Research by
Viacom Outdoor indicated that 61 per cent of commuters in London feel
that their journey is made more pleasurable by the addition of digital
escalator panels on the Underground, and pilot schemes are under way at
Tottenham Court Road.

As well as technology helping to improve the sites themselves, with more
backlit and scrolling sites replacing corners of poorly glued posters
flapping in the breeze, it's also lending a helping hand behind the
scenes.

O'Brien reveals that Clear Channel uses electronic labelling to ensure
that, where possible, the poster is near a relevant retail outlet;
L'Oreal, for instance, advertises near an outlet of Boots. When sampling
200 campaigns, Millward Brown found that this can push up sales by a
further 40 per cent. Sanger says: "Outdoor can work effectively when
it's supporting a product simply because of its proximity to
retailers."

And, of course, being in the right place with a strong message can
really get up the nose of the competition. This has been a time-honoured
strategy employed by RKCR/Y&R for Virgin Atlantic over the years. "BA
don't give a shiatsu" and 18 jellies on a bespoke billboard to
demonstrate "18 years of giving BA the wobbles" are two stand-out
examples.

As posters increasingly lend themselves to smart thinking and innovative
media ideas, creatives need to be skilled in the art of condensing a
brand message into an eye-catching work of art.

Jeremy Carr, the creative director at Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy
and the art director behind "Roseanne Holland", sums it up: "The
ultimate brief is a 96- or 48-sheet poster because there's no hiding
from it. You can do a little press ad that might not be the best, but
unless a poster is engaging, no-one's going to bother to look at
it."

THE UK'S MOST EFFECTIVE POSTERS
BRAND TITLE OF POSTER CREATIVE AGENCY
Disney King Arthur Feref
Lux Brings out the star in you JWT
Domestos Don't miss it Lowe
Slim Fast Beaches Grey London
Singapore Airlines Australia's Batey/Red Cell
Knorr Say no JWT
Sunsilk Silky JWT
PG Tips Pigeon DDB London
Wanadoo Man shaving M&C Saatchi
Orange Coloured buttons Mother
Source: Millward Brown/Clear Channel.

TIPS FOR POSTER-MAKERS
- Condense the message
- Don't use more than 12 words ...
- ... but experiment with long copy for cross-track campaigns
- Test posters as they will be consumed, ie. not as an A4 proof on a
desk
- Make sure the media placement enhances the creative message
- Integrate posters with the rest of the media mix ...
- ... but don't be tempted to use the endframe of a TV ad
- Investigate hanging posters in new or unusual places, but be careful
to avoid shocking sensitive neighbourhoods
- If the budget is tight, maximise PR potential by devising a stunt -
Use strong glue

THE UK'S MOST POPULAR POSTERS
BRAND TITLE OF POSTER CREATIVE AGENCY
Bacardi Latin quarter McCann Erickson
Disney King Arthur Feref
Venus Divine Divine AMV BBDO
Lynx Cave/Shirt/Tattoo Bartle Bogle Hegarty
PG Tips Pigeon DDB London
Foster's Girl M&C Saatchi
Singapore Airlines Australia's Batey/Red Cell
Lux SJP limo JWT
Coco Mademoiselle Chanel (creative in-house)
Domestos Don't miss it Lowe
Source: Millward Brown/Clear Channel.