I hate outdoor.

Not being outdoors, I love that but what I am talking about are the millions of billboards that litter our skylines. I hate them.

This wasn’t always the case as I used to love outdoor back when outdoor used to be smart, simple and beautifully executed in the context or the environment it was situated in. 

Now, most outdoor we see around us is shit. 

It’s been reduced to meaningless clutter that ruins every skyline around the world. You just have to visit markets like Bangkok where it is really bad to fully understand what I am talking about. There, all you will see is large-sized outdoor with no idea attached to them, unless your version of an idea is the use of a celebrity headshots holding a bottle of shampoo. Now, I do like Ronaldo and he does have a good looking head of hair, but do I really need a 30-meter long billboard on the side of a 5 lane motorway to tell me that. 

So how do we get back to great outdoor? 

Well, firstly you have to do something interesting and different. It doesn’t happen often but when you get it right, everyone notices. One such idea came out of London for Microsoft Xbox and the launch of their game, Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Introducing the Survival Billboard. Not just a billboard, but a game of endurance. They took one of the oldest advertising mediums and then turned it into an entertainment channel. With this idea not only did they make me fall back in love with the outdoor medium but in my opinion created one of the best outdoor pieces ever made.

The idea was so simple and reminiscent of the age-old hand on car mall promotion where you find some people to compete for a prize and the last person standing wins it. Except for this, they did it all the way up on a billboard. Simple and intriguing.

What they added to bring this idea to life made this idea genius. They turned the billboard into an interactive entertainment channel where average people on the street could vote using their mobiles on what extreme conditions would hit the contestants next. Those challenging conditions ranged from being hit with a snowstorm to pissing cold rain for hours on end. It was fun to watch and even more fun to participate as we could decide and control the entire thing from the safety of the sidewalk. All of this happened in real-time, in real life on a real billboard in London just like the hunger games but for real. Are you not entertained?

This reality show on the billboard gripped Londoner’s eyeballs with a staggering 3.5 million views in a day via multiple channels such as twitch as well as every social channel out there. They even live-streamed the billboard to other digital billboards all over London, a billboard on a billboard, which was something in itself. People were captivated by this idea with all the excitement unfolding in front of them.

And it worked, so well in fact that the average dwell time for a standard billboard was only around 8 seconds but The Survival Billboard had an engagement of over 8 minutes. People were interacting with it across all channels and it became so popular that every news channel came down to televise the drama as it unfolded.

As with every great reality show it all had to end, much to the disappointment of the public who would have loved to continue the torture. The ultimate survivor received an amazing Tomb Raider inspired trip around the world but the real winner here was the public as we finally got to see a piece of outdoor that really made us stop, take notice and most importantly be a part of the entertainment.

Now if only we could take a little bit of that thinking and repeat that with the millions of other sites that scatter our cities so we have less of Ronaldo and his nice hair.

I Wish I Had Done That.

Gary