How Brands Show Up, For Real: Is Fake OOH A Problem? Or Industry Growth Hack? With David Title, Partner, Bravo Media

Tim Rowe In a piece titled Perception is Reality, Dr. Asha Prasad writes this, Your experience in life shapes your perspective, which becomes your perception. It's not set in stone and can change over time because perception is a way of looking at or understanding things based on one's own ideas or opinions rather than the actual facts. We've all seen the anamorphic 3D billboards with things like cars and shoes seeming to pop out of them, but what you're really seeing is a magic trick. That is, your perspective is being forced, which is how you get forced perspective. It's not the reality of what everyone is seeing. In fact, unless you're standing in a pretty specific spot, the actual digital billboard will look kind of distorted. And anyone who's actually done it will tell you they did it for the social media content. Not for the one person standing in just the right spot on the corner. Unless that happens to be Some influencer. So where's the line between what's real out of home and what's not? Is there a line? If the campaign is the content and the job of social platforms is distribution, then why is there a seemingly focused by some to diminish the value of CGI generated out of home? Is it because money wasn't exchanged for a physical ad placement? Because someone feels like they lost out on a sale? That's how it seems given the clearly agitated stance of some in the industry. My question though is this, Where's the line between spec art and a lawsuit? Is it promotion on social media? That's really what we're talking about. Call it fake out of home, virtual out of home, whatever you want. At the end of the day, it's digitally specced concept released into the wild. And is that the best strategy for attracting new advertisers to the channel? Hey, you're not allowed to play with that unless we say so and your check is in the bank. If we're being frank, there's no reason that publishers haven't been offering some approved licensed portfolio for brands to play with. Put it on the blockchain and voila, it's secure too. So to the curious marketers, the out of the box thinkers, the testers, the provocateurs, the status quo challengers, We welcome you and invite you to play with the ultimate canvas that is out of home. However, makes sense for you today because someday soon you'll have raving fans that expect you to show up for real and we'll be here to help bring those napkin sketches to life. Welcome to Out of Home Insider, the first podcast for media and marketing executives that connects how offline attention drives conversion. My name is Tim Rowe and for the past four years, I've been interviewing guests about their unique insights and bridging this misunderstood and undervalued opportunity for brands to create alchemy in the real world. Today's guest is David Title. David is a founder and partner at Bravo Media. A full service creative production studio that has worked with brands like Revlon, Krispy Kreme, and the NFL Network to pull off some of the craziest real world executions you'll see. So today we're going to talk about what makes real out of home. Whether it's CGI generated, forced perspective 3D, or a good old billboard on the side of the road, it may challenge what you've heard around the office. And that's the big idea I'd like you to consider. How often do you open yourself to opinions that challenge yours? Because it's easy to be hypnotized by the echo chamber and not realize that your once contrarian footing has been replaced by the comfort of casual compliance. I think Einstein said it best when he said this, we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them. So without further ado, let's go.

Intro by Jean-Paul Gedeon (JPGHawaii.com) Welcome everybody to the Out of Home Insider Show, a podcast like no other, hosted by the one and only Tim Rowe.

Intro by Jean-Paul Gedeon (JPGHawaii.com) Get ready to have some knowledge dropped on you and to be entertained because nothing's more valuable than food for your brain. So sit back, relax. We're about to dive in as the best industry podcast is about to begin.

Tim Rowe For folks that maybe don't know, or they haven't heard the first episode, give folks that the 60 second commercial, give them the kind of origin story on you and who Bravo Media is.

David Title Yeah, so I am David Title and I'm a partner at Bravo Media. And so we are a, we see ourselves as a creative production studio at our heart. We work both in events and in longer term settings like corporate and retail and hospitality and digital display. And our focus is on helping to create real world, real time experiences and to take advantage of all of the ways there are to sort of communicate and connect with folks, whether that's messaging around brands and advertising or lots of not-for-profits lately and all kinds of folks that are just looking to improve engagement with their audiences.

Tim Rowe I'm going to be, I'm going to be your hype man a little bit too here. Not just like a creative suit. It's like a innovations lab. You guys are really doing like first of its kind work. Not to, not to overhype it or oversell it, but you do really, really cool work. I'll make sure to link to that last episode. We talked about Revlon and projecting onto escalators and the, the, the food one, the, the, the food.

David Title Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Rowe Yeah, maybe give folks like describe that. I know that this is a podcast. So this listening audience, but describe this very visual dining experience.

David Title A lot of what we do is really taking advantage of the technologies that are out there, especially in the world of display, and repurposing them to heighten the experience. So we got to work with Le Bernardin, which is a Michelin star restaurant here in New York City, and they were doing a special private dinner. And so we worked with the chefs to capture all of the plating experiences, how they plate each dish, which is a big part of the whole thing and then we actually mapped and projected on the private dining table throughout the entire meal so that before each plate hit the table there was a display of how the plating occurred and then because this was a dinner that was also a function for a corporate event. There was also a lot of other visual messaging and branding that happened throughout the experience, but it created this very heightened, immersive world of dining that was super exciting and I think allowed us to integrate into this very beautiful meal without taking away and really trying to add elements to it. And I think that's the thing with all of the cool technology out there. It's not about the tech and it's not about, you know, no one cares about technology when they're having an experience. They just care about the impact it's having on them. And so You know, we love being able to use all the tools that are out there to create those moments of connection and, you know, uh, projection mapping. Like I love that. And, and some of the other stuff we're probably going to talk about today, like it's an obstacle illusion, right? That's what makes it cool. And it's not really technology that does that that's design and that's content. And that's taking advantage of our own brains. Uh, to deliver the goods. And our brains love optical illusions. We love seeing things that we can't totally make sense of or that we have to put together or that seem impossible, but yet there it is, I'm looking at it. And when you have that experience, you don't go, gee, I wonder if they did that with a conventional projector or some new fangled laser, or it doesn't matter.

Tim Rowe Someone's dad is standing there criticizing the execution of the work. Because that's like a thing dads do. I don't know if you've gotten to that stage yet, but I think I'm definitely there myself.

David Title They won't even see it. They won't even know. They're going to be so consumed by the experience that it never even enters your mind. Those are the best. That's when you know you're doing it right.

Tim Rowe It's a magic show for the mind. And I think that that's really the beauty and the power of it. And what we're going to talk about here today, because it's been getting attention and news and things like that. Maybe a place for us to start the conversation on is, why is it so important for brands to show up in the real world, even if they fake it?

David Title Yeah, you know, look, life happens in the real world. That's where we all are every day. And yeah, we're spending a lot of time looking at screens and staring at things, but a lot of that time is not going to be of much value to anyone trying to connect with me because I'm doing something else. And out in the real world, there's just so many opportunities to connect. And beyond that, you want to exist in the real world, you know? There's a reason why almost every DTC brand out there eventually opens a store. It's very hard to be just virtual. And so feeling like you have a presence in the real world, being perceived as being in the real world, is important. And that's why brands do big activations. And that's why, you know, out of home advertising is a thing. It helps to establish that, that existence.

Tim Rowe Absolutely. And the thing that I'd love to maybe double click into it in that and we've teased it a little bit is fake out of home. Yeah, there's this new phrase or branding out of home.

David Title I don't like it either.

Tim Rowe I like to call it virtual out of home virtual out of home. Okay, so what does that mean?

David Title So I guess take a half step back, right? So one of the big things in the sort of trends of digital out of home that happened in the last, I mean, probably goes back a couple of years, but really the last year, it feels like it became mainstream is the quote unquote 3d, but anamorphic displays. That's sure. Look 3D, the big ones, Piccadilly Circus has a huge example of it, but now there's probably seven or eight of them in Times Square right now that are using two-sided buildings or two-sided boards to create it. But you can even create a similar effect even on just on a single flat board. And it's an optical illusion. Again, love optical illusions.

Tim Rowe Love, love magic.

David Title That's why we love Adam Foam. And, but the main way that everybody learned about them is they saw them on social media. They saw them on Instagram, they saw them on LinkedIn, they saw them on TikTok. And because the truth is, how many people are really, look, there's a lot of people in Piccadilly Circus, don't get me wrong. But compared to the number of people that are on Instagram, it's pretty tiny. And, and so, you know, it, it's People love to see these cool optical illusions. Again, it's not a secret. And the content is driving that. And so you started to see that it became pretty clear that, look, those anamorphic billboards really only look good from one very specific angle on the street. What do you mean by that?

Tim Rowe Like, cause I personally haven't seen one in real life, but I'm sure everyone listening has at least seen a picture of one on the internet that maybe has maybe done or been involved with some of those projects. And we can talk about what goes into that, but specifically the mechanics of it. Let's think about this. I'm in Times Square. There's a huge digital spectacular, big, bold and beautiful. And I have to stand like on one city block or like in a, in a small Hulu.

David Title Oh, in a, in a. You know, it's it's a it's a kind of a continuity of diminishing return. So there is a literal optimum spot stand here that you could stand in for the the the best illusion possible. And every degree you move away from that spot, the less the 3D effect is perceivable. And at a certain point, it actually skews because that's what it really is. It's not 3D, right? It's a forced perspective animation. And so from oblique angles, Uh, it looks very distorted. And depending on what the content is, you know, can be distorted to the point that it's not really perceptible as as what it's supposed to be. Um, so, but, uh, on the other hand, people love to see them on social. And so, uh, it's become very valuable for brands to create as cool a possible anamorphic display as they can, so that they can gain that additional impact through through social media. And which brings us to this notion of virtual out of home. uh, which really takes two forms. Um, you know, for years, the nature of our work, we were constantly making what we would call a comp, which would be a digital version of some crazy idea we've come up with for a client and, um, and you know, so they can see what it might look like. And so we'll, we'll make a, we'll make a virtual version of whatever that thing is. And, and, uh,

Tim Rowe And so like a rendering for them to iterate on or give feedback, understand it better, get the concept.

David Title Sure. Yeah. And so, you know what, let's say, and so let's say we were working with a client that wanted to create a, you know, I want to do a projection mapping display across the facade of this building. I can make a video that looks. kind of like we already did it. Um, and so that we can talk about design and content and all that stuff. Turns out, of course, you can do the same thing with billboards, right? I can create content for any billboard in the world. a virtually and make it look like that content is on that billboard. As long as I have some kind of video footage of that billboard, it doesn't even have to be digital. I can make it look like there's content there. And just

Tim Rowe Sorry, not to step on you there. You made me think of this. We didn't talk about this in the first conversation, getting prepared for this, but that's such a valid point. I've personally been involved and I think it's okay so long as you let the client know. Just using Photoshop to clean up a POP image of a digital, right? You don't want it all grainy. You want the creative to appear in its original integrity on the finished glamor shot that you're sending to the client. Like happens all the time. Happens all the time. And that's. fake. That's right. That's forced. It's artificial. It's virtual.

David Title It's not, it's not, it's not really the image, not what was actually there to the person standing there. But again, everything is perception. Uh, and, and we live in, you know, advertising is perception, uh, brand, we talk about brand perception. Uh, and so, so yeah, so like, you know, uh, And we've even, you know, we've worked directly with companies like New Tradition, who have the one time square display, which is a challenging display for some brands to get their heads around. We've done comps for prospects of theirs to show them, hey, here's what's possible.

Tim Rowe Here's what it could look like. Cause that is hard to imagine what is. What it could look like, what is possible, right? All of those things. I mean, that's one of the reasons personally, I love playing with generative AI so much. I think it's a great, right. It's, it's, it's a great environment for idea generation and iterating quickly and Hey, what could it look like doing things like that? How are, so maybe, so it makes sense that brands kind of come to this point and realize,

David Title And so now they're going, wait a second, in some cases, why not create this crazy cool content for a digital on a home display, but never run it in the real world? Why not? Why not make the virtual version of that and distribute that through my social media channels and through influencers and all the same things I would do to try to get attention on a billboard in Times Square. I would take a video of it and then I would send it out to social. Exactly. That is the playbook. That's the playbook. It's not a secret playbook. And so, you know, I think that there's, you know, it opens up this whole concept of, okay, so, so let's say I'm gonna, let's say I could do that, right, instead of, so I'm gonna, you know, make this really cool thing, and I'm going to put it up, and it's going to look like we were in Piccadilly Circus. Or we were in Times Square. Or, you know, wherever is important for for your brand to be. But, you know, then you go beyond that and you go, well, wait a second, do I even need a billboard there to begin with? Not if it's all virtual.

Tim Rowe So the billboard or the space, you could, you could manipulate really any space to create this virtual effect. I mean, if there's not a billboard there, you know, I want to project onto the Statue of Liberty.

David Title Yeah, we're, you know, we're talking, you know, feature film visual effects tricks, being reapplied to something a little more down to earth. But and taking advantage of, you know, some of the advances in just the sort of animation technology that's out there and rendering technology that's out there and everything else. And, you know, and people have seen the other kind of version of this is the virtual activation. What's that? And so some of the examples that people might have seen online, there was like a 50 foot tall Barbie walking around in Dubai.

Tim Rowe Sure. Was that real? No, of course. I mean, not the not the 50 foot tall Barbie, but like, was that actual?

David Title None of that was no, none of that. The only thing that was real was the B roll underneath it.

Tim Rowe Okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna ask the question because I think it becomes the line of delineation, which is What's the difference between spec art and I guess a lawsuit like what's what speculative but why are people so upset? It doesn't it's not new by any means and no, it's there's two things to it.

David Title I think uh, One is, you know, one question is like, if I if I put something virtually up on that billboard and Piccadilly Circus, which in the real world is owned and operated by somebody that charges quite a lot of money for me to appear on that billboard, but if I'm only appearing on it virtually, I I, I honestly don't know. I don't know. I'm absolutely not a lawyer. I didn't even pretend to go to law school. Um, so I don't, I don't know. Uh, you know, it reminds all of it reminds me a little bit of like the early days of YouTube when nobody was quite sure what was going to fly for copyright. So you just do things and wait for a cease and desist letter. Um, and if you never got the cease and desist letter, you just kept doing it. Um, and if you got a cease and desist letter, you stopped. Um, Uh, because I don't want to go to court.

Tim Rowe Um, see, also, we're not lawyers.

David Title There's no idea. Um, now, so that's like the actual existing billboards. Like, is that cool? I don't know. Uh, it seems to me that I see billboards and movies all the time where they change the content. And I don't think those billboards have gotten any payment for it.

Tim Rowe Or, or the flip side to that movies with real billboards in the back and those brands are getting free added value, right? No one paid for that, but no one was upset because there was a transaction on the physical asset.

David Title There's a whole business of going back into old television shows and replacing products digitally. So like the classic one is the, yeah, Seinfeld reruns, what's in the refrigerator is different over the years. Stop it. Yeah, no, it's true. Oh, no. They'll change products on the table. They'll change labels of things. They'll add paid product placement into shows like this stuff's all just part of our landscape.

Tim Rowe And we don't even we don't even I mean, the Seinfeld thing, I think is going to trip a bunch of people out and someone's going to there must be a tick tock that compares. I would think there's got to be a tick tock for everything at this point. It would seem that way. So how are brands, maybe what's the long tail look like to this? I think it's all upside, getting more brands, testing, getting more brands, playing, giving them an appetite, giving them a sandbox. I think this is more, more marketers, just as consumers consuming this as content, right? We are an ad for ad ad force. So actually in a little bit of way, we're an ad first channel, right? This becomes content that enables our growth.

David Title you know, creating so like these virtual activations, like the 50 foot Barbie, there was a great one, I think Maybelline with a mascara for the mascara brush on top of the train and on top of the bus. There's a handbag company that made it look like handbags were driving around Paris. Yes. Uh, all of these, I think, uh, they're wonderful. They push creative. They let smaller brands do really big things, uh, and have big ideas and see how they land. And, and, and they're engaging and it doesn't matter if they'd really done those bags on, you know, the bag cars in Paris or the, uh, you know, or even the 50 foot Barbie, which crazy, not real.

Tim Rowe Um, thank God.

David Title That'd be, you know, even if they'd done that, almost nobody would have actually seen it in real life. All we would have seen are the videos. And so the video is great. And it feels real. And I'm also not saying lie about it. Um, right. Yeah. My favorite one about a year, year and a half ago was the Zara in Soho. This artist whose name I'm blanking on, which kills me, but he does these great 3D video effects. And it made it look like the Zara store was like this insane 3D balls floating around. And I looked at him like, what a great comp. And then like 10 minutes later, somebody called me and asked me how they did it. And I was like, what do you mean? it's not real. Like, what do you know that looks real? It's totally true. Like, well, for starters, there's no more door. There's no door to the store. Like, um, no retail takes away their door. Um, it defeats the purpose of retail. But but it It's not there's no point in trying to lie about it to say, oh, this is real. I don't think you have to sit out there with a, you know, a loud horn. It's fine. It's fine.

Intro by Jean-Paul Gedeon (JPGHawaii.com) It's fine.

David Title Right.

Tim Rowe Yeah. Please, please give us extra credit because we're letting you know it's not real.

David Title Right. But the idea is, oh, this is really fun. What a cool idea. It makes me think your brand is cool.

Tim Rowe Let's go. And then I think, too, it creates an expectation by the people who love your brand the most. Now they expect you to do real shit. Yeah. They expect you to show up. Yeah. You can't just do virtual things and fake stuff like all the brands. It's funny, right? The brands that are making these big, big event. You can tell. You can tell if it was done on Canva. If it was done on Canva and cool. And that's interesting, too, because no one gets upset about that when it's obviously not real.

David Title Yeah, when it's passively real, it's, you know, I think some people don't feel feel like they're getting lied to or like, you know, we're trying to trick you. But honestly, I think that group is pretty small. I agree. And and I think honestly, you know, let's get down to brass tacks. Let's talk return on investment. Let's talk specifics. What does an average campaign cost? You probably know more about the real world prices than I do. But if I wanted to be on one of those really marquee billboards in Times Square for a week, or even a day or two, and I wanted to create the content for it and document it, that is a hefty investment. Healthy five figures. Yeah, you know, and and I think for a fraction of that price, you can be creating everything but the on-the-street experience.

Tim Rowe When the real job to be done is what you described there at the end, it's the content. It's the content for distribution.

David Title Invest in the content, invest in coming up with the great idea, invest in the right people to produce that so that it's really cool. That's what people want to see. That's what we want to consume. you know, and you should still do it on real in the real world. 100% because being out there and being in play is also vital, but it doesn't have to it doesn't have to be a either or situation, right? And always how you treat it. We're working on a piece right now, which is a is a virtual out of home piece that initially looks like a really good real out of home. And then all of a sudden, it does things and you realize, Oh, wait a second, That's not possible. That's, you know, we're playing with that whole idea.

Tim Rowe I love that. If folks are listening and they want to learn more about what Bravo Media does more, maybe specifically about this connect with you, what we'll do too, is I meant to just mention this. I'm definitely have mentioned it in the intro is we'll link in the show notes to lots of these examples, because I think it's, it's important to see a range and kind of see what's possible and how people are, are thinking about how brands are executing against these things, because we all are familiar with how brands show up for real. And I think as we start to put those two pieces of the conversation together, it's going to enable more media companies to actually book more real campaigns, sell more space because it again, it's that testing platform for a brand that maybe they, maybe the thing they want to do is literally not possible. Maybe they've already exhausted every agency option, technical partner that there is, and you just can't project onto the Statue of Liberty. You just can't do it. I'm reminded of that. It's kind of, I guess, dating myself now, but do you remember the Mark Echo campaign, where they staged it to look like they were graffitiing? Was it Air Force One?

David Title Yeah.

Tim Rowe On an air force base, but it wasn't, it was, it was a different plane. Right. Like that was, that was an incredible moment in kind of pop culture. This is again, there's probably folks listening that are like who Mark Ecko, what, but I think about that again, this is not new. This is not new.

David Title Um, and I think it's exciting. It's also, you know, think about it as virtual gorilla marketing, virtual gorilla marketing.

Tim Rowe I like that. I like that. Where do they get in touch? We'll link to all those assets.

David Title Tell them the I love connecting on LinkedIn. I think I'm one of two David titles that shows up. I'm definitely the one that isn't the dentist. Um, And so I would love to connect with you there. Please check out bravomedia.com. And for real simpleness, I'm David at Bravo Media. So anyway, you'd like to get in touch. I would love to chat. Yeah, let's make some cool stuff.

Tim Rowe Encourage you to get in touch with David and his team, explore this content. Even if this conversation made you feel uncomfortable, congratulations on making it to the end. These are the, frankly, these are the topics that are going to grow. the industry and that's good for everyone. So David, I can't thank you enough for being here, being willing to share on what is maybe to some a sensitive topic, sharing so willingly and really giving us that in the trenches insight that you have. Thank you again. Thanks Tim. Absolutely. If you found this to be helpful, please share it with someone who could benefit. As always, make sure to smash that subscribe button and wherever you're listening, leave the podcast to review. That's how you help us grow and we'll see y'all next time.

Intro by Jean-Paul Gedeon (JPGHawaii.com) What did you try? It might take a lifetime to know just who you are. Quarter century, I finally came to my senses. I finally got my hand up on the tinted Benz, kid. I see the world clear through my tinted lenses. With the dream and the drive, the possibilities endless. Now print that, send this all the way to Tokyo. Take a trip down south down to Mexico. Next stop Shanghai, the world class trade show. First class all the way, cause that's how we roll. yeah call us the rock star businessman rocking shows we handle business man we got our own future in the palm of our hands cuz divided we fall in together we stand