Aaron Poole, Marketing Insights Manager, PML Group, with this week’s Out \ Look on Out of Home
With the Premier League almost back, Sky Sports is building anticipation for the new season by combining broad visibility with creative designed specifically for the environments in which it appears.
Running under its new “Your home of football” platform, the OOH campaign is already live across traditional and digital roadside and retail formats, bringing some of football’s most recognisable players into public view through Sky Sports’ distinctive green and blue pitch-led creative.
That consistent visual identity establishes the platform at scale, while individual formats provide opportunities to make the campaign work differently within particular locations. In Dublin, two installations take the creative beyond the conventional advertising frame.
On Dorset Street, a special-build 48 Sheet sees the player and sections of the pitch extend beyond the poster itself. At Gills Corner House on the North Circular Road, a large-format banner takes the idea further again, creating the impression of a football breaking through the building beneath the Sky Sports branding.
The banner creative, developed by Create @ PML Group, uses the physical characteristics of the site as part of the idea rather than simply adapting existing campaign artwork to the format. It is a simple idea, but one that demonstrates the opportunity available when OOH is considered as more than a neutral space for creative.
The location carried an additional layer of football relevance this week through its proximity to Croke Park, where Manchester United and Leeds United met in Dublin.
That connection to the matchday audience extended onto Jones Road itself, where a Sky Sports DigiVan was positioned on the approach to Croke Park as supporters made their way towards the stadium. The mobile format put “Your home of football” directly into the flow of the occasion, adding a timely audience moment to the campaign’s wider citywide presence.
The Dorset Street special applies the same principle to a more familiar OOH format. Rather than changing the overall campaign identity, elements of the creative physically extend beyond the 48 Sheet, creating additional standout while remaining recognisably part of the wider “Your home of football” platform.
PML Group’s IMPACT Attention research found that 85% of respondents consider innovative OOH formats effective at capturing attention, with the same proportion associating them with increased brand memorability. Some 84% also said brands using innovative formats appear more innovative themselves.
Those findings underline the potential of creative developed with the particular strengths of OOH in mind. Innovation does not necessarily require complexity or additional technology. Sometimes it begins with recognising what a location, structure or format makes possible and designing accordingly.
Elsewhere, the brand platform is already building presence across a broader mix of OOH environments. Large roadside formats provide scale and repeated visibility, while digital and smaller-format screens carry the campaign into retail and commuter settings.
The result is a campaign that can remain visually consistent while using the different strengths of each environment. Some sites build frequency and familiarity; others provide the opportunity to create a more distinctive physical moment.
“This campaign is all about capturing the excited anticipation and emotion that comes with the start of a new football season on Sky Sports, and Out of Home has given us the perfect canvas to do that,” notes Caroline Donnellan, Marketing & Brand Director, Sky Ireland. “By combining national reach with standout creativity, we’ve been able to amplify the campaign in a way that truly cuts through. Our bespoke Special Build in Drumcondra and big impact Gills banner added an extra layer of creativity and spectacle. Together, they’ve helped create a campaign that celebrates the excitement of the season’s return and reinforces Sky Sports as your home of the football.”
The campaign will continue to evolve as the Premier League kick-off approaches, with further digital activity set to follow. For now, its live presence demonstrates two complementary strengths of OOH: the ability to establish a recognisable platform across multiple everyday environments, and the opportunity to make individual locations work considerably harder when the creative idea allows.
Samsung Takes Galaxy Z Launch Into the Moment
Samsung has combined sustained citywide visibility for its new Galaxy Z range with more concentrated OOH activity designed around particular audience moments.
The clearest expression of that approach this week came at the Convention Centre Dublin, where the campaign was projected across one of the city’s biggest canvases.
On Tuesday evening, the large-scale projection ran from dusk for approximately four hours, deliberately coinciding with audiences leaving the nearby 3Arena concert and moving through the Docklands.
The site provided Samsung with scale, but the timing gave the activation its relevance. Rather than using the landmark purely as a large canvas, the campaign put the Galaxy Z launch into a moment when concert audiences were already moving through the surrounding area.
That attention to audience movement is visible elsewhere in the campaign too. Mobile DigiVan activity has taken the Galaxy Z range onto Dublin’s streets since 7 August, with locations including Temple Bar, Camden Street and Harcourt Street prioritised later in the day to take advantage of increased footfall and bus traffic.
A wider digital OOH presence across roadside, retail and transport environments provides the campaign’s broader citywide visibility.
The devices themselves also lend naturally to digital OOH. Motion-led creative sees the foldable handsets open, rotate and transform on screen, using movement and scale to demonstrate the product form rather than relying solely on static product imagery.
There is a strong role for OOH around new product introductions. PML Group research among Dubliners found that 92% agree OOH is effective at informing consumers about new products or product varieties, increasing to 95% among AB audiences.
“OOH plays a key role in bringing the Samsung Galaxy Z launch to life, delivering high-impact visibility across key locations and allowing us to connect with audiences as they move through the city,” said Marie Riordan, Starcom.
For Galaxy Z, that broad launch visibility is being complemented by moments where audience, place and timing come together.
The Convention Centre projection was the clearest expression of that approach this week: using one of Dublin’s most distinctive landmarks not simply to make the campaign bigger, but to put the launch directly into the path of an audience already moving through the city.
Planet OOH: Netflix Puts The Last House on Sunset Boulevard
Netflix turned a Sunset Boulevard billboard into a live extension of its latest film this month, with a performer spending three days inside a fully furnished house built around the OOH site.
The activation supported the release of sci-fi thriller The Last House, starring Greta Lee and Wagner Moura. The film follows a family who suddenly find themselves sealed inside their home with no way out, leaving them to survive as their supplies begin to run low.
Netflix took that premise into the real world from 6–8 August at Sunset Boulevard and Selma Avenue in Los Angeles. Around 30 feet above street level, a weathered, ivy-covered house was constructed around the billboard, complete with furniture, books, plants, curtains and a resident of its own.
Actor and experiential producer Nathan Shoop occupied the space over the three days, reading, eating and watching the street below through binoculars. He also communicated with people gathering underneath using a whiteboard, while the build posed the question: “How long can you survive?”
The concept and production came from Los Angeles agency Extra Credit, turning the central tension of the film into something people could encounter in the middle of the city rather than simply see depicted in an ad.
That physical presence also gave the campaign a life well beyond Sunset Boulevard.
Crowds gathered beneath the installation, footage spread across social media and the unusual sight was picked up by television and news outlets across the US. The LA Times reported people travelling to the site after first encountering the activation through videos and news coverage, while broadcast reports brought the stunt to audiences who were nowhere near Los Angeles.
It is a useful reminder of what a distinctive OOH idea can generate beyond the audience immediately in front of it. The billboard provided the stage, but the interaction around it became part of the campaign too, creating material for social feeds, news reports and word of mouth. One billboard became a house, a performance and, ultimately, a story people wanted to share.
