Baked goods brand Bauducco mixes influencers, OOH for holiday campaign

Dive Brief:

Baked goods brand Bauducco Foods merged social influencers with out-of-home (OOH) elements for its holiday campaign, according to a news release from partner Outfront Media. The effort tapped into Outfront Media's Social Influencers program,
As part of the push, Bauducco took over the Cube, a 4,000-square-foot full-motion display in New York City's Times Square. The brand encouraged passersby and social influencers to share holiday messages with their loved ones, which were then shown on the Cube's screen in real time. The campaign, created with Bauducco's creative agency Samba Rock, includes a video that is being released via the Social Influencers program and Bauducco's digital channels.
The Outfront Social Influencers program combines Outfront's internally sourced social influencer network with social influencer platform WeAre8. Outfront's database includes more than 9 million influencers and 25 million nano-influencers. Partnering with WeAre8 aims to help brands extend their OOH campaigns to new audiences.

Dive Insight:

Bauducco is blending together two marketing channels that don't often match up — OOH and influencers — to grow brand awareness around the holidays, when its panettone and other baked goods are popular. Rolling out the campaign a week before Thanksgiving is timely, with the Cube installation strategically positioned in a high-traffic area where New Yorkers and tourists may be doing their holiday shopping.

OOH, which covers billboards and other outdoor signage, has historically been a fairly static advertising format, but new digital capabilities around data, location and mobile have renewed marketers' interest in the channel. Baudcco's effort with Outfront and agency Samba Rock follows similar campaigns from other brands this year.

Adidas ran an effort with Clear Channel Outdoor this summer that used billboards in New York City and Los Angeles to create personalized messages for some of the brand's influencers. Pepsi more recently debuted a two-part campaign in the Netherlands that encouraged people to take a blind taste test comparing Coke and Pepsi and then retargeted them through programmatic digital OOH ads at shopping malls that were activated by mobile beacons.

Beyond presenting an opportunity to experiment with technology, OOH marketing appears to resonate with consumers. Brands that put 15% or more of their media budgets to OOH advertising see a 24% increase in brand trust and a 106% increase in perception of brand quality, according to research by IPG Mediabrands' OOH division Rapport.