Increased out-of-home activity, more choice within the medium and the sheer number of available ad faces have presented advertisers with a challenge similar to that which confronts them in television – how to break through the clutter.

Out-of-home media – touted by its boosters as effective and cost-efficient – has been steadily gaining in popularity over the past few years, partly as a result of the growing fragmentation in television viewing. This is most evident in major markets where an advertiser can use outdoor placements to cover a city both dramatically and at a relatively low cpm.

In the past two years alone, the number of outdoor advertising faces across Canada (those audited by comb, the Canadian Outdoor Measurement Bureau) has increased by 13% to 34,046.

And that just covers posters, billboards, transit shelters and murals. It doesn’t take into account the proliferation of non-traditional products from unaudited companies and members of the Outdoor Advertising Association of Canada, products such as aerial, elevator and washroom advertising – even sidewalk art.

According to Brian McLean, president of Toronto-based outdoor company Mediacom, as the number of ad faces continues to increase, the success or failure of a campaign is directly attributable to the creative execution.

‘Mediocre creative will never break through in our medium, but great work shouts loudly in any environment,’ adding that’s regardless of the number of boards.

Mediacom recommends ‘distance testing’, says McLean, a process in which every new ad is mocked up at various viewing distances in slide form to test the communication elements in ‘street’ terms.

Some recent campaigns – Levi’s Silver Tab, Labatt Out of the Blue come to mind – have raised the bar creatively and McLean says he’s hoping out-of-home will become the next creative battlefield.

Advertisers have been using giant murals painted on buildings to create impact for the last few years, but now traditional billboards and transit shelters are becoming more innovative through improvements such as space extensions, 3D and motion, and, in the area of transit advertising, entire subway stations being bought up by a single advertiser.

Earlier this month, a campaign by PowerBar Foods Canada of Mississauga, Ont., for its PowerBar brand athletic energy bar launched a three-dimensional moving superboard in downtown Toronto with a life-size mannequin actually peddling a mountain bike.

Perhaps the most daring execution yet is Labatt’s ‘Out there at night’ outdoor campaign. Unveiled last month in a hot Toronto entertainment area, live go-go dancers, fire-eaters, contortionists and bands perform in customized metal cages suspended on poles about 10 feet off the ground.

While he agrees that outstanding creative and a big idea go a long way to breaking through outdoor clutter, Doug Checkeris, managing partner of The Media Company of Toronto, says he also believes that placement has an impact on success.

‘One of the things we’ve raised with the outdoor community is that an outdoor face, is not an outdoor face, is not an outdoor face. One might be quite different from the other in its ability to break through the clutter,’ says Checkeris.

‘An outdoor poster clustered with two others on top of a building presumably has a different impact than one that is at eye level or closer to the street.’

Not surprisingly, McLean doesn’t believe placement is an issue unless the view is obstructed, that placement preference is subjective and varies from person to person.

He says breakthrough creative will grab attention wherever it’s placed and multiple executions or frequent creative changes will keep eyeballs coming back.

McLean says traditionally, ad agencies haven’t placed much importance on the creation of out-of-home advertising, adding that when an out-of-home campaign isn’t successful, the outdoor industry gets the blame, even when the creative is sub-standard.

He attributes the lack of agency interest in outdoor to the fact that it accounts for only a small portion of most ad budgets, adding that responsibility for creative often falls to juniors who have not yet developed an understanding of the medium.

McLean says most out-of-home providers publish guidelines for success in the medium. Mediacom’s, for example, contains a model for predicting outdoor awareness levels, outlines the most successful creative approaches for outdoor, and identifies factors leading to advertising wear-out.