IN DEPTH: From LA to London, audiences make content
User-generated content (UGC) continues to be a popular way to engage the public with digital out-of-home media, typified by new ventures from a dozen transit firms in Los Angeles County, Clear Channel Outdoor in New York, and Coca-Cola in London.
In Los Angeles, public-transit organisations including the County Metropolitan Transportation Authority – the major operator of buses and trains in the area, with Metro Rail among its services – are running the Transit Flicks Video Contest.
They are inviting transit users to submit short films, up to two minutes long, explaining why they enjoy using public transport and encouraging others to try it. Judges will select finalists whose videos will be made available on the Web, and the public will then vote for winners.
Winning work will be shown on Transit TV, which has more than 4300 screens on about 2200 Metro buses.
In New York, meanwhile, design students are being given a chance to get their work shown on Clear Channel Outdoor’s Spectacolor billboard in Times Square.
The students from New York City’s High School of Art and Design have created six billboard designs on the theme of tolerance, dealing with issues ranging from racism to gay rights, as part of a programme in which they are mentored by professional designers.
Their work on the project has also included a session with Mike McGray, Clear Channel Spectacolor’s VP of creative and marketing, examining billboard advertising techniques. The students’ creative executions will be shown from 6 to 31 July.
But not all projects involving users in creating content for digital out-of-home are so formal. In London, for example, agency Sedley Place is filming World Cup fans in Piccadilly Circus and airing the footage immediately on the Coca-Cola digital sign.
Celebrate here, please
During each match in the soccer tournament, up-to-date scores and a World Cup news ticker from Sky will run on the sign. At the same time, staff in the London square will invite fans to stage their own celebrations on a small area covered in artificial grass to resemble a football pitch.
Video of these celebrations will then reach the sign in less than 90 seconds via Wi-Fi.
More than 30 different videos were shown during the England-Slovenia match on 23 June, according to Sedley Place, which has been working with Coca-Cola on the Piccadilly Circus spectacular site since it installed its first non-neon sign in 1997.
“This is true interactivity,” said account director Alastair Patrick. “It’s fun, surprising and rewarding, yet doesn’t ask much of the consumer. It perfectly encapsulates the Coca-Cola World Cup core creative idea of ‘What’s Your Celebration?’ and plays perfectly to the multinational context of Piccadilly Circus”.
It is also said by Sedley Place to be the first time that consumers have been able to see themselves on a digital screen in Piccadilly Circus. But if digital out-of-home operators continue to find in UGC a cost-effective way to spark interest in their screens, it’s unlikely to be the last.
www.clearchanneloutdoor.com
www.sedley-place.com
www.transittv.com
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