The Best of 2015's Outdoor Advertising

“Even if we have messages for the head, we should always seek to gain entry through the heart,” says Christoph Becker in a 2013 Adweek article. The advertising guru and CEO of gyro, an international ad agency, urges marketing professionals to craft advertisements that awaken consumers’ emotions first, before appealing to their wallets.

With a deluge of marketing dumped on us every day, we are increasingly turned off by impersonal campaigns that feel like advertisements. Millennials are particularly wary of brands that feel inauthentic; they want to be invited into a conversation, an experience they can share with brand makers and fellow consumers alike. Out-of-home campaigns that do this best encourage us to spend money while convincing us that it was our idea first.

Sound complicated? It shouldn’t. Angling towards authenticity just requires a new mindset, one in which the brand owner casts himself as the consumer’s friend, someone he can trust.

“These winning campaigns need no explanation,” says the 2015 OBIE awards website. They are simple and engaging, inviting the viewer to belong to a community. They offer laughter or surprise – or even hand sanitizer. They are intimate without being pushy or intrusive. They feature bold, easy-to-read designs that instantly convey brand character, often without even highlighting its name. They convince us that there is a creative mind on the other side of the billboard, and that its owner is real.

Explore 12 “” below:

The Last Ship

Every Soldier Is a Story

Larger than Life

Giant Carrot

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