Monday, September 14, 2009

Outrageous Outdoor

Why is outdoor advertising in New Zealand so damn good?

It's hard to put your finger on. Maybe it’s the beautiful Middle-Earth like landscape, the adrenalin-loving people or the wide open spaces. The risk-taking, conquer the world/Edmund Hillary spirit. Whatever it is, OOH advertising in NZ is often truly innovative and eye-catching.



Here’s one recent example for the news website stuff.co.nz:




Those Kiwis just love to do cheeky and provocative stuff.

Here’s one for the controversial Hell Pizza brand (which in the past has used DM which involved giving condoms away in pizza boxes).



And one to promote the American TV show Weeds a few years back by DraftFCB.

This great campaign actually ended in people trying to steal the ‘weed’ from the billboard, which looked very real but of course was fake. A great way to generate some attention.



Colenso BBDO won a few awards with this exploding billboard:



There’s also some work that TBWA NZ has done over the last couple of years, some video game-sniper related stuff and some work for Adidas which is also very interesting.

The question is, why is OOH in New Zealand so good?

And in Singapore, what’s holding this market, a fellow developed country with about the same sized population, back from doing similarly great work?