Linda Locke, this year’s Chairwoman of the Outdoor Lotus Awards, thinks Outdoor advertising is growing in a big way. “With the pressure for brands to stand out from the crowd, coupled with the increasing cost of media, I expect more clients to be willing to utilise the outdoor medium in fresh and exciting ways so as to create word-of-mouth buzz as a more cost-effective way of communicating,” she says.
In fact, Linda thinks Outdoor is becoming a very dynamic media regionally with Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Greater China and increasingly, Singapore doing some of the most dramatic work in Asia.
Australia and New Zealand, she says, have always used the medium to great effect.
She cites the examples of the most exciting work in Asia recently. “In Hong Kong, bus shelters created by the Society for Community Organisative have been used to house the $20 bills reflecting that that''s all it takes to house homeless people. In Singapore, pairs of legs were discovered poking out of dustbins in the business district encouraging people to reeducate themselves at Singapore Institute of Management. In Malaysia, giant straws for Arts & Earth warn people of the danger of pollution and fountains dramatically highlight the absorbency of Scott’s Kitchen Towels. In Thailand, a giant comb straddling the chaos of power lines dramatises the benefit of P&G''s Rejoice tangle free shampoo. And in Japan, NTT ‘Filled the city with questions’, she says.
These are all examples of how the outdoor market is growing with more innovation than ever before, she says. “Bus-stop shelters, LCD displays on barges plying the Shanghai Pudong river, whole buildings wrapped in cables that turn them into digital billboards, MRT tunnels turn into giant flip books, hanging grips on trams become ties, pillars become giant tea packs, pavements, lift doors, traffic lights, the sky, fountains - anything and everything becomes a medium in outdoors,” she says.
Linda, who recently judged the Crestas, Cannes Outdoors and the Kodak Gongs, doesn’t think that judging the AdFest will be much different from the other shows, “except that the geography will be contained to Asia Pacific.” She says, however, “I do hope though that the category will be clear as it was confusing judging in Cannes where point of sale and posters, ambient were all mixed up with outdoors.”
And what would she be looking out for? “My criteria will be – ‘It could only work in the outdoor medium''. It has to be fresh, innovative and really leverage the medium to bring alive the idea for the product or brand,” she says.
