A revelation on Suffolk street

I am an advertiser’s nightmare. Or so I’ve been told by a friend who works in the industry. I walk through Dublin oblivious to all of the outdoor advertising that surrounds me. Until a few months ago that is.

Walking down Suffolk street on my lunch break, I noticed one of the slick new JC Decaux Metropanels outside the tourist office. The simple, clean, contemporary and very effective design caught my eye immediately. It complimented its surroundings. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it actually enhanced them.

I stopped and watched until the scroller had displayed each back-lit advert. Finally, a marketing company with some vision. No longer will we have to endure a city littered with shabby looking billboards, hanging from the hoardings surrounding building sites.

But wait, there’s more (Metropanels, that is)

When I got back to the office I took a look at the JC Decaux website. I saw the Metropanel had a big cousin, the Metropole, which are appearing all over Dublin, on strategic, busy commuter routes.

Like the Metropanel the Metropoles’ design was also simple, clean, modern and effective.

In the weeks that followed I noticed more and more Metropanels around Dublin.  They stood in strategic areas: areas of very high footfall and ones considered to have high “dwell time” potential like Luas stops.   Excellent design + excellent locations = good advertising.

I began to visualise the future for outdoor advertising. Was I looking at the evolution towards electronic, location based, time sensitive, personalised outdoor advertising content? The future looked bright. The once far-fetched take on outdoor advertising in films like Total Recall and Fifth Element no longer seemed so implausible.

Can advertising actually evolve?

With the declining consumption of traditional mass media advertising, TV and radio, and the heroic rise of non traditional content driven media, advertisers are constantly striving to find new and innovative ways to make sure their message gets to its intended target audience in a way that’s of added value to the customer.

I’m hoping that the new Metropanels and Metropoles may be the ticket, to give us digital age outdoor advertising content that really means something. Even to an advertiser’s nightmare like me.

I will watch with very keen interest to see if JC Decaux explore this space in the coming months and years. My prediction is that they will. What do you think?