To OOH or not to OOH?
Plus lessons from Smallhold's downfall, peak fragrance, etc.
Sorry this one’s a bit late, got caught up with a proposal and other life stuff! Dispatching from Saffy’s café — get the bourekas and enjoy ample hotspot service. It’s always relatively quiet with plenty of shaded seats, and luckily I don’t yet have enough subscribers to ruin that.
Trying a new format this week: Longer link roundup first, followed by a deeper dive on one relevant topic that’s been on my mind. Feedback encouraged (you can’t hurt my feelings, I’ve worked in startups for 10 years).
Do brands need “stories”? Not always. A friend who used to lead a hot gen-z brand told me they pulled back on storytelling depth after research showed their customers only cared about vibes and good product.
Last week I wondered aloud how David would GTM and the next day they answered: a giveaway! Not groundbreaking but they are giving away 5K packs — reminds me of when Girlfriend Collective gave out free leggings for its launch. Still have them still wear them.
“You can’t eat technology.” Smallhold co-founder’s perspective/narrative on what went wrong. TLDR venture capital just exacerbates bad fundamentals.
“Younger consumers perceive shopping as a social activity.” — Ana Andjelic’s take on optimizing digital retail for this new-ish reality.
Eyes on Spence, sexy racquet sports brand launching soon 👀
The Dare, Molton Brown, Monastery and Cult Gaia are some of the latest to capitalize on the fragrance craze. Feels like we’re about to peak.
FT’s macro-trend reporting on said fragrance craze: “At least for the moment, the fragrance market is achieving the holy trinity of increasing penetration, frequency of use and there is a clear trend towards premiumisation.”
I shared some thoughts on fragrance in body care in my first post.
I’m over brand Nalgenes but this one from Faccia Brutto is clever in context.
Youth To The People launched a new cleanser to replicate the Superfood cleanser success, which I assume accounts for a good majority of sales.
Filson launched women’s. Judging from the many roles Buck Mason has open for their women’s line and how little they post on that account, it’s a challenging expansion — but after 127 years in business hopefully Filson is well-equipped!
What’s working in the world of gut health: The words “fiber,” “probiotics,” and enhancing what we already consume (i.e. soda) vs adding to the mix.
Insightful BoF podcast re: fixing Nike, particularly at minutes ~18 and ~23 re: needing strong product innovation in addition to strong brand campaigns, and how their DTC move went from hero to zero in the matter of a few years.
On that note, DTC recruiter darling Jason Touray on how to navigate career in the “rocky startup ecosystem.” The times are a changin.
How a few startup brands that actually made it to growth-stage are stepping up their marketing game, from more channels to adjusted positioning and messaging. Speaking of more channels…
To OOH or not to OOH
Several years ago towards the end of the DTC bubble, a mentor said OOH was an ego play that drove no results. They used the example of Glossier’s Body Hero launch campaign — the brand invested heavily in OOH and allegedly it wasn’t a hit launch from a sales perspective.
I’ve since realized that the issue likely had little to do with the channel (which was just one in a cross-channel campaign) and more to do with the creative — it was a product launch campaign in a brand campaign’s body (pun intended) (def inspired by Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, which is notably a brand campaign).
For a while it felt like brands really pulled back from OOH outside of wheatpasting, a “more affordable” option because it stays up for five seconds. But now that we’ve evolved beyond digital DTC as a business model (for the most part) and need to ~get creative~ to drive eyeballs and engagement beyond the social hellscape, it’s very much back.
Ritual’s Trace Like A Mother campaign billboards caught my eye when it launched back in April. The whole campaign was brilliant, and the OOH felt like a strong extension. I was right, according to their Brand VP Caroline Turim Irizarry:
“Trace Like a Mother was our biggest awareness campaign to date. We knew we wanted to create a multichannel experience for the consumer and bring the campaign to life in different ways. OOH was a natural fit for the creative approach to this campaign, provoking the consumer to want to learn more about our brand and products. It also allowed an opportunity to double down in certain markets. The results are in and we found OOH to be more efficient than some performance channels. We will definitely be looking to leverage OOH in future campaigns.”
Jones Road Beauty is another brand I’ve noticed start to invest in OOH lately. Their Sr. Brand Dir. Payal Patel Plofker kindly shared some valuable insights with me:
“We started investing in OOH once we felt like we had a good baseline of brand recognition that would allow greater potential for success with OOH. Our strategy in the beginning set web traffic as the primary goal since we are a DTC brand so we’re able to get a better sense of attribution and effectiveness this way by collecting as many data points as possible.
We worked with Adgile Media for our first large scale OOH campaign and Tom was extremely helpful in navigating the process. We’ve since then learned quite a bit, and have started placing retail traffic as our primary goal to help market our newly opened stores. Early signs show great success here as well because we’ve created a very tailored approached based on the neighborhood we are in and how residents and tourists behave in those areas.
Biggest lesson here is to start small, keep your budget lean, and set up your campaign to provide as much information as possible. Learn from it and expand slowly. I’ve seen brands make OOH mistakes by thinking bigger is better and that’s not the case (at least in the beginning). I also see brands put up OOH creative that isn’t top of funnel which won’t work nearly as well. I would assume most people who see your OOH will be new to your brand, so stay as top of funnel as possible. It can take about a year to really get a good handle on what your customers are resonating with and what will be most effective in reaching your goals.”
I’ve also worked with Tom and his team at Adgile, an early OOH 2.0 player in growth-optimized truck billboards. His current thesis (albeit biased but I trust him):
On the election opportunity:
“In this exact moment, the reasons OOH ‘sucks’ is also its saving grace. What’s going to happen when political campaigns blast billions of dollars in the digital marketing channels? They're going to get very competitive, and therefore very expensive. That competitive market force simply doesn't exist right now for OOH.”
On the larger landscape:
“Publicly traded, algorithmically designed digital publishing organizations (Meta, TikTok etc.) with a responsibility to shareholders are incentivized to erode as much margin from brands as they can without churning the business, effectively limiting the upper bound of ROI in these channels in a steady state.
Like a casino, you win ‘just enough’ to remain addicted, but consistently winning over the long term is a really hard thing to do (hats off to the folks who do it so well, of which there are many).
It’s why creative iteration has become so important in the digital media arena, we're all just throwing curve balls at the algorithm in an attempt to throw it off our scent.
And so that I'm playing both sides here — it’s important to mention that this too is the eventual fate of OOH as the category continues its march toward digitization. But for the moment, it presents a pretty rare and compelling arbitrage opportunity that only the most progressive brands understand.”
Long-time OOH specialist Hunter Arbaugh just launched a boutique agency, Supper Club, which aims to solve for affordability and efficiency by cutting overhead. His take on driving ROI with OOH (aligned):
“Success comes from creating a simple, powerful visual that tells your story in a split second. Focus on imagery that not only speaks to your target audience but also fits the vibe of the location. When your creative stops people in their tracks, you’ve got their attention—and that’s where the real ROI kicks in. A well-placed, well-crafted message can turn curiosity into engagement and brand awareness into loyalty. In a time when brands are obsessed with measuring every dollar spent, I believe it’s crucial to get back to the heart of it all: creative storytelling.”
All that’s to say, with the right budget and strategy, OOH is an increasingly impactful top-of-funnel channel for both DTC and omnichannel brands.
Brand marketers rejoice.
— Jess
Related to this as I work for OOH agency! Thanks for sharing!
I also only care about vibes and good product