• by Barry Lowenthal , Op-Ed Contributor, November 5, 2015

Some brand messages need to be very public, while other messages are better suited for private viewing. Messages designed to raise social consciousness or controversial political messages need to be public.

When it’s important that a community debate an idea, the message needs to be very public. In other cases, particularly when the message deals with a personal or intimate issue, for the message to be heard by the target it needs to be private.

A lot of pharmaceutical communications use this model. Politicians use this model and even cause-based markets use this model. The public plus private formula is tried and true and an effective mode of communication. But what’s changing is the kind of media we’re using to deliver these very different messages.

Instead of using TV and print to deliver this combination we’re using out-of-home and social.

Media planning textbooks have always described TV as a great channel to reach mass audiences in public media. These textbooks also describe TV’s ability to reach a lot of people at the same time thereby educating a particular audience about a brand’s value.

TV’s ability to instantaneously inject a particular conversation into popular culture was unparalleled for a very long time. But it’s getting harder and harder to educate a lot of people about a particular brand message using TV outside of the Oscars or sports. Today, we have to look at other media combinations to deliver public brand messages. And today, OOH is increasingly becoming the media of choice for public brand declarations.

TV audiences have shrunk and a lot of TV is viewed after the original air date.  TV can’t be relied upon to deliver mass reach.  OOH is much better at delivering local market reach. Also now that 81% of Americans live in urban areas, OOH is becoming a scalable way to reach most of Americans.

There is also something really exciting about seeing a compelling brand message and knowing that all of my neighbors have seen the same ad and know the same thing about the brand.  

Additionally, we were excited to read about Google’s DoubleClick UK digital OOH test as an indication of how OOH will be bought at scale and targeted in the future. Inevitably OOH messages will become even more bold, dynamic and timely than they already are.

How we communicate public brand messages has changed and how we communicate private messages has changed too. Increasingly one-to-one messages have shifted to social and mobile, the most personal delivery vehicle. In fact social, particularly Facebook, does a really good job at being both a targeted private message platform as well as a public message platform.

While Facebook can deliver more reach than any other channel against just about every single target, it can’t provide the feeling you get when you’re on a street corner and  see an ad that makes you blush a little. And you know that everyone around you is also a little uncomfortable.

But Facebook does a better job at micro targeting than just about any other media channel. Facebook is a great way to deliver personal intimate messages and if your privacy settings are set to a particular way no one will ever know you’ve been targeted.

More and more brands understand the need to disrupt the conversation while still engaging consumers. Brands understand that as more consumers take control of their media and block ads, public channels like OOH are more  important. When used in combination with personal channels like mobile-based social channels consumer sentiment can be shifted.