But as the Asian population becomes increasingly mobile, advertising agencies - and more importantly their clients - are beginning to treat outdoor with more seriousness and imagination. And their focus is generating some remarkable results. "There's a lot of growth in ambient or non-traditional media - things like bicycles being dressed up with an advertiser's logo and ridden around the streets, blimps and balloons, banners and all types of temporary media,
"Technology is always changing the landscape for outdoor, but most of the changes and the growth you see in Asia these days are from the actual executions themselves. It's not as though you're going to a media owner and buying a light box or a billboard - you're actually creating media temporarily for a specific client and a specific idea."
One such creation was the transformation of one of Hong Kong's white Star Ferries into a red advertisement for airline Virgin Atlantic. The campaign sent a captivating and potent message to the public - thanks to both its novelty element and prominent location - and proved a valuable brand-building exercise for Virgin.
"Given the amount of time people spend outside the home, it's not surprising that we have seen a significant growth in outdoor advertising,
says Warren Poots, sales director of Buspak Advertising. Buspak conducted a survey in Hong Kong late last year and found that most people spent an average of 10 waking hours away from home, four of those outdoors. "Transit advertising, in particular, is ideally suited for reaching people mainstream media doesn't as it takes the message to where the people are,
says Poots.
The value of outdoor is rapidly gaining acceptance. ACNielsen figures show that in the past two years, spending on outdoor advertising has risen 43 per cent in Singapore and 48 per cent in Thailand, and is now worth about US$50 million a year in each market - still only a fraction of what is spent on print and TV advertising, but a huge leap nonetheless.
John Williams, business development director for Asia Posters in Singapore, says that while outdoor infrastructure is evolving and advancing, the key to a successful outdoor campaign remains the same, whether it be on large-format billboards, LED screen displays, taxi tops, painted trains or anything else. "Outdoor in any form has got to be very strongly branded, because if you don't get outdoor in a second or two, you just don't get it. It's got to have a clever idea and be really simple."
He also says the way outdoor advertising is received by consumers is consistent across Asia: "Most people say Bangkok's different but it's not. It doesn't matter whether you're a Chinese, Singaporean or Thai - the issue is that you've got two arms, two legs and two eyes, and all you have to do is move outside."
Williams says the "clever
element of outdoor can be in either the infrastructure itself or in the creative content. Take for example the blimp recently used by ANZ Bank to promote credit cards in Hong Kong or Virgin painting Hong Kong's Star Ferry in its trademark red. Both campaigns created a flurry of press interest.
Other inventive initiatives include the use of pillars for Bangkok's Skytrain railway for advertising aimed at motorists stuck in the city's notorious traffic jams along its main traffic arteries. And a recent Federal Express campaign in Bangkok took regular billboards and turned them into FedEx parcels, producing not just a memorable execution but some good PR at the same time.
Industry players and observers agree that outdoor has taken great strides in recent years. Advancing technology allows for much larger structures to be built and with more eye-catching results. LED screens, for instance, are not only much bigger than they were a decade ago, but boast vastly improved picture and sound quality.
Industry observers say technology has been key to turning anything that can be imagined into reality. As such, what used to be two-dimensional advertising medium can now deliver advertising messages with far more creativity and impact.
But there is also a sense that outdoor is an industry being held back from even greater success. Some say the problem is an apparent lack of imagination on the part of creative agencies to make the most of outdoor opportunities. Others say it is a matter of logistics and budget.
Martin Dufty, managing director of Optimum Media Direction (OMD) Thailand, says the cluttered nature of Asian cities presents a challenge to outdoor advertisers, who have to work harder to be noticed than in the clearer streets of the West. "The flip side of that, though, is that you can do mad outdoor things that you would never get past the planners in London or New York,
he says. That is, of course, provided you can convince media owners - and your clients - to play along.
Dufty cites the example of a campaign for phone company Sunday's sponsorship of the Cirque du Soleil's Hong Kong tour, for which seats, windows and safety poles on MTR trains were plastered with stickers featuring eye-catching characters from the show. He said the MTR Corporation initially took some convincing: "They say 'but that's not media space'. Exactly - that's the point. Then you say 'we'll pay you for it', and they're the magic words.
A similar theme is now being used in a campaign to promote the DBS banking group on train windows in Bangkok.
"I think there's a willingness on behalf of certain clients to take risks and produce good work,
Dufty says. "But what happens a lot is you run up a mock-up and they say it's absolutely brilliant, then you show them the production costs and they say 'that's not brilliant'."
In China, improvements in the use of outdoor media have come in part due to the consolidation of media ownership, making it easier to negotiate site use. And new infrastructure projects, such as road networks and rail links, are rapidly gaining momentum and creating new media space. Kam Ling, chief executive officer of MediaNation, says that just a few years ago production hurdles such as non-standard billboard sizes in different cities made outdoor campaigns a nightmare on the mainland. Now it is possible to do an overnight nationwide blitz on phone boxes, train stations and bus bodies.
He says entire metro station interiors are being used as media space, as they are in Hong Kong, and LED screens inside the trains provide an easily updated medium for text.
"Before, when you bought outdoor in China you bought light boxes along a whole street,
Kam says.
"Nowadays people have more focus on the locations, and when you choose a location, it doesn't mean the most prime location but the most relevant location.
This, he says, means choosing a train station rather than the more prestigious site beside Hong Kong's Cross-Harbour Tunnel, if your target audience is university students, for example.
While creativity is being applied to the use of outdoor infrastructure, Kam says inspiration is lacking in the content, holding back the success of outdoor both in China and more broadly.
"People are getting more and more sophisticated and there are some successful campaigns ... but a lot of people still consider outdoor as just an extension of print advertising,
he says.
"Hong Kong is getting better, but in China the creative part of outdoor advertising is still quite under-developed as creative people tend to focus more on TV and print media."
Poster Publicity's Graham agrees that some outdoor advertising miss the mark because the creative is wrong. He recently had to walk right up to a billboard in Hong Kong and scrutinise it before he could tell which product was being advertised.
"It will always improve with experience ... though I must admit it's sometimes disappointing that you see old mistakes being repeated," Graham says.
"Creative is more important in outdoor than in any other media. If you get a good media choice with an outdoor billboard in the right place and get the creative wrong you've wasted your money. Creative is at least half the equation."
Dennis Wong, chief executive officer of Leo Burnett Hong Kong and China, says Kam's criticism is overly harsh, although he concedes that mistakes are being made in outdoor.
"Some of the clients complain that some agencies don't pay enough detailed attention to the surrounding environment,
he says, giving the example of a Hong Kong billboard in which the text was obscured by trees below.
"But people's mindset has changed. They don't treat outdoor like just another commercial - they take more consideration of the neighbourhood.
It's all being taken more seriously."
Outdoor vendors report that more and more high-end clients are starting to use outdoor, with companies such as Time, CNN and Standard Chartered Bank advertising on taxi bodies in Hong Kong. Billboards, which used to be dominated by now-outlawed tobacco adverts, now feature the big names in fashion, supermarkets and finance.
Dufty hopes the financial barrier to creativity in outdoor will be lifted as economies pick up across the region and consumer confidence returns: "I get the impression it's on the cusp of doing crazy things," he says.
Asia Posters' Williams says outdoor has not so far been as progressive in Asia as it could be simply because many advertisers are only just discovering it and making what he calls the "leap of faith
required to make the most of it.
"The outdoor business is certainly growing, there's no doubt about that, but there's a lot of people out there who, for a whole host of reasons, won't touch it. Or often the client will stick their finger in and say 'we're going to have this and this and this', and you end up having too many elements, some too big and some too small, and it just doesn't work."
But he says a drought in outdoor can very quickly become a flood, if just one or two clients are prepared to try it. In Sydney, for example, he says one hair-care company started using bus shelters for the first time and within three months all their rivals were using them too.
"They think 'someone's taken the risk, I can do it now',
Williams says.
"It's sometimes a case of monkey see, monkey do."
