The Outdoor Advertising Association of America has released the nominees for the 64th annual OBIE Awards for creative excellence in outdoor advertising.

OBIE award winners will be announced on April 25 at the Traffic Audit Bureau’s Out of Home Media Conference in Palm Desert, Calif.

Among the nominees is Zoom Media for graffiti murals used as a live media event in targeted neighborhoods. Next week, Media Life will profile another nominated program.

This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.

What
Unique graffiti murals that are designed for a specific community. Each mural contains a logo and web site of the sponsoring advertiser.

Who
Zoom Media, headquartered in New York.

How it works
Graffiti murals are painted by local artists in demographically targeted communities. Last fall’s GlaxcoSmithKline campaign to promote Nicorette featured one-of-a-kind creative painted on exterior walls at street level. There was one mural painted in each market.

“Each market has a different creative because a local artist designed it,” says Patrick West, general manager of experiential marketing. Artists were given a theme, in this case “change,” on which to develop the mural. “To make it authentic you can give minimal guidelines, but you can’t control it,” West says.

Within the mural, the artist was required to include the URL for the web site Nicorette set up for the campaign. The murals were then posted online and consumers were invited to vote for their favorite design. The artist who created the winning mural in Chicago was then commissioned to develop a second unique wall in another Chicago location.

The murals measured approximately 20 feet wide by 10 feet tall but were customized based on the walls the clients chose. Says West: “Almost all were at street level, primarily targeting pedestrians.”

The installation of graffiti murals often turns into a community gathering that can last several days. “When these murals go up it’s truly an event,” West says. “No one watches two guys put up a billboard, but when a crew of artists start painting they draw a crowd. People hang out, take pictures. Some clients embrace that for press purposes or give away samples or do surveys or prize giveaways.”

Another element of the campaign was an art education program in each of the mural communities. Art classes were taught by the mural artists. “We partnered with local community centers,” West says. “The graffiti artists came and led an art class where the kids created a live mural.”

 

Advertisers often reproduce the unique murals developed for placement on an out-of-home wall for use in other segments of their campaigns.

“It’s a unique media because the creative drives it. So when you get these custom pieces of artwork they tend to take on a life of their own,” West says. “They’ve been turned into promotional t-shirts, dealer calendars, online mini-films, screen savers and wallpaper. One became a mini art exhibit, traveling with different promotions an advertiser was doing.”

Samples that were branded with the Nicorette URL were distributed during mural and art education events. The program ran from August through November of 2005. The initial five murals were each up for 60 days. In some cases, graffiti murals stay up as long as a year or longer. Wall owners have veto power over creative.

The graffiti mural campaign was coordinated with a radio tour that included on-the-air interviews with graffiti artists in each of the markets.

Markets
The OBIE-nominated campaign appeared in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Other markets are available by request. “The only market off the top of my head that doesn’t allow it is San Diego,” West says.

Most mural campaigns are multi-market, with about half of the campaigns using the same creative in each location.

Numbers
There were 18,000 visitors to the campaign’s web site, spending an average of two minutes, according to Jennifer May, spokesperson for GlaxcoSmithKline. The campaign generated 126 media placements, totaling 23,919,391 impressions, according to West.

Additionally, the winning mural received more than 50,000 of the 140,000 votes cast online. Fifty thousand mint placebo samples were distributed in each of the five markets.

How it is measured
Traffic counts to a unique web site was the primary measurement tool.

 

“The typical out-of-home measurement standards rarely apply to murals,” West says. News stories about the events were also use to gauge exposure.

What product categories do well
“We’ve worked with a wide array of clients who were looking for new mediums to get their image out there into the field,” West says. “Right now a lot of automotive groups are in love with murals.”

Demographics
Older African-Americans living in urban markets were targeted for the Nicorette campaign. Location is the key factor in targeting specific groups with graffiti campaigns.

Making the buy
Lead time is eight weeks, with the first four weeks devoted to creative development. Factors that affect cost include number of murals in a given market and length of campaign. Costs usually run from $6,000 to $15,000 per month.

“The majority of programs are multiple walls in a market,” West says.

Who else is using graffiti murals
Atari, Axe, Cartoon Network, Coca-Cola, Dodge, Ford, Heineken, Nike, Pepsi, Snapple, Sony PlayStation and US Cellular are recent advertisers.

What they’re saying
“The way they used graffiti murals is very different than they have been used in the past. A theme was created and given to local artists to interpret on their own. The murals were created by these artists. They weren’t just making a logo and painting it on the side of a building.” – Randi Pesso, buying director for MediaCom, the agency placing the campaign for GlaxoSmithKline.

Web site info
Zoom Media at www.zoommedia.com
See the murals at www.MyCityMyArt.com

Etc.
GlaxcoSmithKline has commissioned a documentary film about the graffiti program featuring the artists.