Published on
May 28, 2024
.png)
Welcome to the Breakdown, a weekly roundup of the best real-life marketing examples, created for marketers and agency folk that want to create work that actually works.
Briefly is available to everyone - and all of these campaigns are live in Inspo, our own AI-powered case-study finder that adds some flair to every brief. Sign up to try it out.
In this Breakdown, we're looking at ✨ OOH ✨ - a format that demands some of the most impressive and clever creativity.
An integrated campaign with some very poppy outdoor work.
In TBWA\London’s first work for the coffee chain giant, they’re all about summer personalisation. Featuring the new season’s drinks (including a Crème Brulée Cream Cold Foam that goes on top of a coffee and something called a [Frozen] Starbucks Refresha), the work is running across outdoor, digital and social media.
“Starbucks X You” is the line that runs across all the work, as much a design element as a tagline. And so much of this work hinges on the design. There’s a glossy editorial vibe, coupled with some incredibly bright summer pinks and greens. Even the backgrounds for the imagery are like ‘modern’ pop art.
It’s definitely eye-catching work. Classic QSR product photography makes everything look good (in a sanitised, hyper-real kind of way), even if the copy is forced to take a back seat role. In a way, that’s perfectly fine. The copy is mostly menu items anyway, with a few snappy one-liners like “Personalise your perfect brew” and “Find your easy breezy summer freezy vibes”. I’m not sure what to make of it - it’s doing attention really well, but not sure about the rest. Does it make me crave a Starbucks? No - but then I’m an ‘extra-hot triple foam latte’ guy all year round.
Deli Kitchen lean into one of the weirder product ‘claims’.
Flatbread brand Deli Kitchen has launched its first integrated campaign, focusing on a central, attention-grabbing visual.
A flat face.
The Greek style flatbreads are “so tasty, so versatile, so… flat!”, according to the accompanying social ad.
Like Starbucks’ work, this is meant to catch your attention. I would bet that “flat” is not a particularly strong category purchase driver, but then again, this is OOH. Low dwell time, low attention means you need work that catches someone’s eye and holds it long enough for them to see your clearly communicated brand. Anything else is either unnecessary or actively works against you. So going on pure idea alone, this is lovely work that looks horrible. I have never wanted to see a face flattened out, so I suppose I’ll remember Deli Kitchen that little bit more when I’m next looking for unleavened bread.
Wilkinson Sword unwittingly plunged the worst platform in the world into a frenzy.
Sort of. A small frenzy. Barely a skirmish.
But still, people had opinions.
The outdoor work comes off the back of a bigger campaign, with some hero TV ads leading the charge. As a whole, the campaign revolves around the idea that a razor with bad blades is as bad as [insert funny metaphor].
In the TV ads, those metaphors include “a barman with bad accuracy”, and a “waiter trained in a zoo”.
But it’s the OOH work that’s come under fire. Specifically, for its copy. This was the offending culprit:
For the life of me, I can’t understand the hate.
The only problem I could see with this is the reference point. Is “quite a good accent” that bad for a secret agent? All the spies from movies and TV shows have, at best, quite good accents (except for Jodie Comer in Killing Eve). And surprise surprise, most of our spy reference points are from movies and TV shows. The message gets diluted because I’m not sure whether it’s saying “quite good” is actually bad. But that is being so, so nitpicky.
Here are the rest of the ads:
They’re lovely bits of copy, as you can well see. They do the OOH job of getting your attention, and the message is clear and quick. Wilkinson Sword make good blades.
I can’t understand why people chose this campaign to start critiquing copy. I suppose since it is so copy-led, it means there’s very little else to comment on - and people love to criticise. Honestly, I think this work is otherwise oddly unremarkable - it’s good copy, simply executed. That should be the minimum standard for outdoor work like this. But I find myself defending it absolutely, because some people think that spending 10 minutes analysing an ad meant to be looked at for 30 seconds at most is an effective way to tell if it’s good or not.