Aaron Poole, marketing executive, PML Group with this week’s Out \ Look on Out of Home – 12th December 2025
Last week’s Out \ Look focused on OOH in motion, from responsive messaging to campaigns designed around the rhythms of real life. For the second part of our 2025 showcase, the lens shifts to the physical canvas of the medium itself.
Across the year, brands pushed beyond the frame. Landmark billboards became three-dimensional statements. Stations and shopping centres evolved into immersive story worlds. Transport structures turned into creative stages. Even the city’s walls, gates and night skies were brought into play. The result was a year where Outdoor didn’t just show up in the background of daily life but reshaped how places looked and felt.
2025’s biggest specials proved that scale still stops people in their tracks when it is paired with craft and a clear idea.
If 2025 proved anything, it is that scale still has the power to stop people in their tracks when it is paired with craft. Several of the year’s largest builds used physical extensions, texture and structural illusion to turn routine routes into shareable moments.
Sky’s Bound by Belief 240 Sheet in Terenure turned a key Dublin junction into a premium sports landmark, with a 2D extension lifting players out of the frame and echoing the movement and intensity of live football. The build carried the weight of a bigger platform presence, and it played its role as a genuine street-level statement rather than a simple campaign flag.
The National Lottery delivered multiple showpiece moments across the year. The All Cash Millionaire “Gold Standard” special on Ushers Quay transformed Golden Square into a shimmering ticket wall complete with a hand breaking through the surface mid-scratch. EuroMillions followed with record-jackpot builds that played with number and scale, from the Botanic Road overflow numerals to a three-panel €250 million sequence in Cork.
Other brands used structure to make product stories instantly legible. Virgin Media’s “Smoooooth” broadband backlit 96 sheet special build leaned into fluid motion through extended form. KFC’s Zinger Drip turned appetite into spectacle with a 3D sauce pour that appeared to spill off the billboard and onto the pavement while its portable 6 Sheet counterpart created a mobile moment on the GAA All Ireland Hurling finals weekend as it popped up around the capital’s high-footfall zones.
Flogas also brought purpose into the spotlight with The Gas Park, marking its Emerald Park partnership through two bespoke builds that merged brand identity with the Cu Chulainn rollercoaster in a playful, high-impact statement of sustainable energy.
Smirnoff’s 3D build work for the brand’s Ice revival in can form brought the brand’s return to life with product-accurate physicality across special builds on 48 sheets and golden squares, while “out of the screen” forced perspective DOOH effects hit consumers in the off-trade to grab attention.
Seasonal and brand-led stories found expression through material choices too. Colourtrend’s foliage-wrapped large format made the surface feel genuinely tactile, while Panadol’s St Patrick’s Day shamrock incorporated actual shamrock to celebrate the Irish-made product on the most Irish day of the year. To round out the same occasion, KFC’s Bucket of Gold brought a short burst of night-time spectacle through a St Patrick’s Day projection tied to the menu item’s promotion window.
Where landmark builds transformed single sites, immersive ideas transformed how people moved through the city.
At Connolly Station, The Irish Times and JBL collaborated on a sound tunnel that turned the underpass into a full-corridor experience, using the space itself to reinforce the product promise.
Entertainment launches leaned into enclosed commuter spaces to build atmosphere and anticipation. The Pearse Station underpass was used effectively for storytelling, including The Last of Us and 28 Years Later, proving how repetition through a corridor can feel more like world-building than standard poster rotation.
In retail environments, Nuromol made a statement at Dundrum by wrapping the main mall entrance and adding a bowling-themed topper on the interior lift shaft, tying launch creativity into the physical journey through the centre. Zootropolis 2 expanded that idea further with a multi-touchpoint takeover across lifts, interiors, travelator glass and standees that turned parts of the mall into a coherent film world.
Another key theme of 2025 was how confidently brands blurred the line between advertising, art and cultural texture.
In Cork, Guinness anchored the brand’s annual Cork Jazz Festival sponsorship with a massive mural and digital screen pairing showcasing the festival’s lineup at the Kino Events House. In Dublin, the brand’s second annual ‘Lovely Days’ concert series was marked by the installation of replica gates to the Storehouse at Aungier Street’s Golden Square, creating a physical entrance moment that echoed the brand’s most iconic landmark while inviting people into a local venue. These were strong examples of how place-led craft can make Outdoor feel native to the moment rather than layered on top of it.
One of the most distinctive sensory ideas of the year, Baileys reintroduced chocolate-scented DOOH across Digitowers, reinforcing indulgence through smell as well as sight. It is a rare example of a mainstream brand using scent in a way that feels both premium and playful, and a reminder that multi-sensory OOH can create memory structures that traditional formats simply cannot access.
Ambient techniques also came to the fore. The relaunch of Boland’s Mills as a communal creative space saw the brand employ the use of reverse graffiti to reveal subtle creative in proximity to the building itself, a subtle but confident reminder that innovation does not always need scale to earn attention.
Projection added a further layer of night-time presence. Visa and the NFL lit up the Convention Centre ahead of the organisation’s inaugural regular season game at Croke Park for the Steelers vs Vikings game, turning the building’s façade into a major city signal. Sky’s Small Town, Big Story premiere brought a calmer, narrative-led take on projection on Dame Street earlier in the year, coinciding with the arrival of Chris O’Dowd and Christina Hendrick’s visit to Dublin for their Late Late Show appearance.
2025 also showed how transport structures can deliver both continuity and surprise when they are treated as part of the idea.
Around the NFL’s Dublin moment, Visa supported the Convention Centre projection with a Luas column football special that extended the takeover into commuter eye-line and helped the wider city activity feel joined-up rather than single-site.
Paddy Power delivered one of the year’s most playful multi-layered runs for the brand’s annual sponsorship of the Iveagh Gardens Comedy Festival. The Tram Café takeover adjacent the venue brought the campaign into real life featuring comedians serving coffee and jokes to customers, supported by a banner at the location, the annual neon “Paddy’s Pants” Luas column at St. Stephen’s Green a fully wrapped LUAS that carried the humour across the city. The combination of venue, transport and supporting media turned sponsorship into genuine street-level theatre.
While the biggest specials grabbed long-distance attention, some of 2025’s most engaging work rewarded proximity and interaction.
Cadbury delivered one of the year’s strongest retail-led moments with the launch of its new Dairy Milk Mini Eggs small bar. The tease-and-reveal storefront on Leinster Street South culminated in a live sampling moment with the hosts of the I’m Grand Mam podcast, turning a product update into a public event. That physical storytelling carried through into the brand’s annual Worldwide Hide and Secret Santa promotional periods across Easter and Christmas, turning bus shelters into a giant location pin and digital roadblock takeover for each respective activation.
Disney and Pixar’s Elio offered a different type of community-led innovation, inviting schoolchildren to design calls to the stars that were then unveiled on a Harold’s Cross shelter. It was a neat contrast to the heavier engineering of the year’s largest builds and a strong reminder that creative participation can be just as memorable as scale.
The brand also brought sci-fi drama to the streets with the launch of Alien Earth on Disney+. The East Wall backlit special used a frame-breaking alien and tail, supported by a wrapped Luas column and wider roadside formats to build a coherent presence that felt designed for the environment.
Retail innovation also showed up in smaller but punchy format upgrades. Heinz used Adshel Live Retail to bring character-led storytelling to the store threshold for the brand’s partnership with the popular Mr. Men franchise around the back to school period, while Goodfella’s Adbox Extra added physical presence at the point of decision with frame-breaking pizza creative. Currys anchored Black Friday with a raised Black Tag and perimeter lighting at the Golden Square at Ushers Quay, a compact but high-impact seasonal cue in one of the city’s busiest retail-minded corridors.
Wingstop’s portable “bag” special and series of ‘graffitied’ classic formats brought launch energy into high footfall zones around the brand’s first Irish store opening, reinforcing how physical brand objects in motion in addition to guerilla-style messaging updates can turn an opening-week story into an on-street moment.
Oreo’s Night Twist completed this close-up strand with neon messaging to unlock a day-to-night reveal that felt designed for the street rather than simply placed on it.
With December now in full swing, the strongest signal of where OOH creativity is heading may be how the market has mobilised physical craft for the festive window. Across 2025 we saw brands treat Outdoor as something that can be built, wrapped, lit and engineered. In the final weeks of the year, that ambition accelerated into Christmas, with formats designed to act as public landmarks rather than seasonal reminders.
Re-Turn is using the festive period to launch its new ‘Re-turn it Right’platform with a bespoke special build Christmas tree made from 5,000 Re-turned cans at Wexford Street’s Golden Square wishing passers-by ‘Many Happy Re-turns’ for the festive period.
Just down the road, Rockshore’s Aungier Street Golden Square brings to life the lager’s Christmas Craicer campaign with backlit raised hand features showcasing the mobile modernisation of the traditional festive activity.
Last but not least, An Post’s annual ‘Send Love’ Christmas campaign returns with a pairing on Luas networks featuring a rotating heart Luas column special at St Stephen’s Green and wrapped Luas Green Line meeting consumers just outside of one of Dublin’s busiest shopping districts.
Outdoor’s best work in 2025 treated physical space as a competitive advantage. From landmark builds and immersive commuter corridors to transport theatre and store-threshold specials, brands showed how far the medium can stretch when the environment is part of the idea. The benchmark for 2026 is clear. The most ambitious Outdoor will be designed for the street, not just placed on it.
