Aaron Poole, Marketing Insights Manager, PML Group, with this week’s Out \ Look on Out of Home
ESB Networks is making time part of the message in its latest OOH campaign, using Dynamic DOOH to bring the idea of flexible electricity use into everyday moments.
Running under the campaign line “It’s simply a matter of time”, the activity turns household routines including ironing and washing up into prompts to think differently about when electricity is used. Rather than communicating one fixed message throughout the day, Dynamic scheduling allows the campaign to align its creative with different periods and contexts.
The activity supports ESB Networks’ wider energy flexibility programmes, which encourages customers to move electricity consumption away from periods of greater demand on the electricity network and, where possible, towards times when more renewable electricity is available. ESB Networks identifies 5pm–7pm (usually) on weekdays as peak hours, while flexibility events can also encourage greater usage at times of surplus renewable generation.
That makes timing more than a creative device. It is central to the behaviour the campaign is trying to encourage.
Delivered through Liveposter, the current Dynamic OOH layer runs across digital roadside, retail and transport environments, giving ESB Networks opportunities to reach people at different points in their day. Creative copy ask questions including “Making ironing more rewarding?” and “Cleaner washing up?”, before directing audiences towards information on when they can make greater use of renewable electricity or earn rewards for changing the timing of everyday tasks.
Rob Coleman, campaign and communication manager at ESB noted “The campaign is encouraging people to think differently about when they carry out everyday household tasks. Dynamic DOOH was a natural fit because timing is central to the message itself, allowing us to align the creative with different periods of the day. Combined with a broad mix of roadside, retail and transport environments, the campaign can deliver both scale and contextual relevance.”
The approach demonstrates a particularly natural role for Dynamic DOOH. Contextual relevance is not being added around the edges of an otherwise static message; the context is the message. The campaign is asking people to consider when they use electricity, while the OOH itself changes according to when it is being seen.
The Moments of Truth research reinforces the value of that relevance, with consumer brain response 18% higher when viewing relevant Dynamic DOOH content and spontaneous advertising recall increasing by 17%.
By combining broad digital visibility with dayparted creative, ESB Networks turns an abstract idea around electricity flexibility into something much more tangible: the dishwasher, the iron and the everyday decision to do something now, or at a better time.
Sky Sports Takes Premier League Build-Up to the Minute
In recent weeks, Sky Sports has combined classic OOH formats with Dynamic and Programmatic Digital OOH to deliver a high-impact launch for its new Premier League season coverage.
From 17 August, the campaign introduced a live Dynamic countdown across digital roadside and retail screens, tracking the days, hours and minutes until the opening fixture kicked off at 8pm on 21 August.
Powered by Liveposter, the Dynamic element transformed the growing anticipation among football fans into a visible, real-time presence in public space, building excitement and momentum ahead of the season’s return.
Rather than introducing a new campaign message, the countdown evolved an established one. “Your home of football” had already been building familiarity across OOH in the preceding weeks. As kick-off approached, the role of the digital layer became increasingly immediate.
Caroline Donnellan, Marketing & Brand Director at Sky Ireland, described the campaign at launch as being “all about capturing the excited anticipation and emotion that comes with the start of a new football season.”
The countdown took that ambition quite literally. Every passing hour brought the message closer to the moment audiences themselves were waiting for. That progression continued once the countdown reached zero.
Across the opening weekend, an additional programmatic Digipanel layer gave Sky Sports the ability to add weight during a concentrated set of football-focused windows.
On Friday, activity ran across the two hours immediately preceding the 8pm season opener. Further windows on Saturday and Sunday coincided with the periods when Premier League matches were being played, amounting to 13.5 hours of additional presence across the weekend.
The significance is less in the buying technology itself than in what that flexibility allowed the campaign to do. Broad OOH established “Your home of football” ahead of the new season. Dynamic then made the approaching kick-off increasingly tangible with every passing day, hour and minute. As the matches arrived, programmatic provided an additional layer of precision, concentrating further presence around moments when football was commanding attention.
Each element was doing a different job towards the same objective. For Sky Sports, that meant the journey towards the new Premier League season could play out in public too, first putting football back into view then counting down with audiences towards kick-off and finally adding extra weight as the action got underway.
The Traitors Ireland Returns to the Streets
Suspicion is returning to Irish screens this weekend as RTÉ brings The Traitors Ireland back for a second season, supported by an OOH campaign putting one of last year’s biggest television hits back into public view.
The new series begins on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player on Sunday 30 August, with Siobhán McSweeney returning to Slane Castle as a fresh group of Traitors and Faithfuls enter the game.
Across Dublin and beyond, the distinctive Traitors creative is appearing across commuter, roadside and transport environments. The campaign carries the visual world audiences already associate with the programme into public space, with Slane Castle, cloaked figures and host Siobhán McSweeney providing an immediately recognisable backdrop to the August 30 return date.
English and Irish-language copy extend that presence, while bus-side creative takes the campaign onto the move through the city.
For a programme built around weekly reveals, cliff-hangers and conversation, that repeated visibility has a useful role in the lead up to its launch. OOH kept the return date present during everyday journeys, helping move audiences from awareness that a new series is coming towards a clear piece of appointment viewing.
RTÉ says the second season will introduce new players, new gameplay and further twists, with The Traitors Ireland Uncloaked also returning immediately after each episode.
Planned by dentsu X and PML Group, the OOH campaign ensures the castle gates are opening on the streets before they reopen on screen.
