Creativity bubbles over

It's been decades since the first neon signs were hoisted above the region's capitals and many more since sandwich boards were being trudged around city centres, but it's only now that the power of outdoor advertising is being properly acknowledged and embraced in Asia. "The opportunities are increasing quite considerably in pretty much all markets," says Jonathan Thurlow, deputy regional director for Universal McCann. The standard of work that's resulting from new opportunities, and from more thoughtful use of long-standing outdoor media options, is being celebrated not just in the region, but internationally. TBWA Japan's now world-famous 'Vertical football' work for Adidas won a gold Lion at Cannes this year, Starcom Thailand won a media Lion for its use of cinema for Heineken, in owning the digital sound check that accompanies films. And J. Walter Thompson in Malaysia won the top prize for outdoor work, the outdoor Grand Prix, in Cannes, for the 'missile car' created for television station Ch-9, in which giant model missiles appeared to be moments away from hitting a vehicle. Some of the region's most creative outdoor work -- despite the long lead times and intense bureaucratic headaches involved in getting it approved -- is being done in mainland China. Only a few years ago, production quality for posters was so hit and miss that many major advertisers refused to use them at all, and site ownership in some cities was so scattered that almost every placement had to be negotiated individually. "Outdoor is now the second-biggest media in China after TV," says Sam Lam, vice-president -- business of Tom Outdoor Media Group, which launched in 2001 and claims to be the biggest specialist outdoor media company in China. "This is no longer a supporting medium." He says expansion by international outdoor specialists such as MPI and JCDecaux have made it much easier for agencies and advertisers to buy multiple sites across several cities. At the same time, WTO entry and the upcoming Beijing Olympics have made outdoor an attractive way for international brands to communicate with visitors to China, as well as office workers on their way home or out to dinner. In Hong Kong, as well as giant building wraps in the Financial Times style, bus wraps and train wraps, an essentially low-tech but high-impact form of tunnel advertising has this summer revolutionised commutes on underground sections of the MTR. A new media player in the region, Submedia, has created United Airlines and Budweiser advertising that appears to move like a film as the train moves; in June, the same technology was launched on Tokyo's Ginza line for Suntory, and Submedia is planning to hit other Asian markets soon. In Thailand, long famed for its super-sized -- and occasionally lethally large -- outdoor signage, advertisers have the technology to create billboards that are part-lightbox, with moving parts. Soon, they may also be able to use Bangkok's new underground rail line, which is operating but without any advertising at all, as a high-level dispute over who has the right to sell media space there drags on. Narong Tresuchan, who heads OMD in Bangkok, says the growth in popularity of outdoor there is for some advertisers a cost issue -- their budgets simply don't stretch to TV. Others, however, are seeing that it's working for some of the country's biggest advertisers and, as TV rates rise and outdoor remains so much more affordable -- they're prepared to give it a go. "Unilever started to shift money into outdoor about three years ago, and people really took notice," he says. "There's no measurement of outdoor in Thailand, but when clients are happy with it, they talk about it, and it grows from there." In Thailand, total adspend on outdoor was up 25 per cent in the first half of this year, according to Nielsen Media Research, and spending on cinema advertising rose 43 per cent. In Hong Kong, outdoor adspend was up 33 per cent during the same period. Outdoor and transit advertising in Japan, meanwhile, is worth about US$5 million a year and accounts for about 10 per cent of total adspend, figures from Dentsu show. New technology is one reason for the rise in spend. Another is flexibility on the part of media owners, who are offering much shorter contract periods than just a few years ago, making it cost-effective to use outdoor for short-term promotional work rather than, say, year-round branding on an airport billboard. General consensus is that the growth in outdoor is coming, at least in part, from budgets that previously went to TV. "It's increasingly difficult for TV to reach the audiences that were once expected," says Douglas Woodring, CEO of Submedia Asia. "We have more channels to chose from, devices for blocking ads, more distractions and choices. TV has traditionally been the default choice for reaching a large mass of customers in the most efficient way, yet this is no longer a sure bet." If necessity is the mother of invention, then the growing number of displays in the already-cluttered streetscapes of Asia's capitals have given media and creative agencies cause to work harder, not only to be noticed, but to resonate with the target audience. "They have to be more creative," says Thurlow, "because as these different types of out of home opportunities emerge, the context of what you're seeing and how you're seeing it becomes increasingly important. If you're going to put an out of home message into a CBD environment, for example, it needs to be in context with people's frame of mind. It's not just a question of where you put the message, it's where, when and what." With this in mind, media agencies are setting up dedicated in-house units to handle outdoor, or linking up with outdoor partners, a trend something outdoor specialists say is being driven primarily by clients. "Agencies have probably been lulled into a bit of laziness in the past," says Ron Graham, head of Poster Publicity Asia-Pacific. "They've found it easier to spend the budget fairly simply on a TV and press mix ... and at the front end, more clients are expecting better accountability from their out of home investments." Such investments from agencies reflect the industry's belief that the noise currently being made in outdoor is yet to reach a crescendo. Outdoor adspend in Asia still lags behind that in Europe as a proportion of total spend, and in China, for instance, where Tom's Lam says outdoor has shown double-digit increases for the past 10 years, growth of more than 10 per cent is expected for at least the next two years. "This is not a trend that's just a peak of fashion or what's in vogue at the moment," says Graham of Poster Publicity. "It really is a long term upward trend."