By collaborating with creative, media, specialist, digital and PR agencies, as well as with clients and technology partners, Clear Channel hoped it could build long-term partnerships to foster innovation in out-of-home advertising and help brands achieve business success on often-limited budgets.
At the same time as having the objective of building collaborative relationships with advertising, media and digital agencies, Clear Channel also wanted to put the fun and fame back into outdoor advertising by creating more special builds. And, it goes without saying, it also aimed to increase revenue and profit.
To achieve these goals, the Clear Channel Collaboration and Create team embarked on a roadshow incorporating creative agencies, digital agencies and media agencies. The teams also worked closely with the in-house communications and marketing teams to implement a launch strategy that included a newsletter, website, video, e-marketing, direct mail and business-to-business advertising.
To push the medium of outdoor, Clear Channel became involved in industry events. These included sponsoring the Outdoor Lions at Cannes, where it hosted a creative seminar, and staging a Clear Channel Creative Seminar in London in May. All the presentations were captured on video and made available through Vimeo, as well as being Tweeted live.
As far as creating famous ads goes, Clear Channel came up with some of the most innovate outdoor executions of the year. For the 20th Century Fox film Percy Jackson, it created the world's first "real 3D" campaign, with ads on 42-inch high-definition screens in bus shelters that appeared to be 3D without viewers requiring glasses.
The company was also behind a Beck's outdoor campaign that incorporated a 52-inch plug-and-play screen in bus shelters that displayed images generated by users' music and then uploaded a customised Beck's bottle label to the panel and to Flickr.
For the RNID, a series of digital posters were created that reacted to the ambient sounds of passing traffic, footsteps and conversation. And Clear Channel's work on 20th Century Fox's Avatar was described by the director James Cameron as the most impressive outdoor build he had seen.
The roadshow meant that more than 150 agencies saw presentations from Clear Channel. It has completed more special builds than in the previous year and revenue has more than doubled in the past 12 months, with profits up by 81 per cent.
The impact on the overall business has been to help deliver strong double-digit growth in revenues and profits in the same period.
FINALISTS
Ocean Outdoor
JCDecaux