OOH has a duty to capture the public’s imagination with green poster innovation

An out-of-home advertising site that cleans the city air around is far from unusual from a medium that has always led the way when it comes to green innovation.

Earlier this year, Kinetic announced a partnership with cleantech company Pluvo. The partnership will see hundreds of distinctive columns pop up in UK public spaces where pollution is high such as busy roadside locations, and where viruses are more likely to be transmitted such as rail stations, airports and shopping malls.

Launching in 2021, the columns can scrub up to one cubic metre of air per second, the same as 2,000 human breaths. In a six-month trial in north London, the tech was proven to clean up to 99% of harmful particulate matter, noxious gases, and airborne viruses.

Best of all, installation cost will be funded in a similar way to London’s “Santander Bikes” with brands sponsoring the units. For the advertiser, the benefits are obvious – a brand presence in key locations in busy urban areas plus the positive association of providing cleaner air. For the public and landlords, it means the Pluvo Columns deliver cleaner air at negligible cost – it really is win/win.

With sustainability at the core of many brand’s strategies out-of-home already provides a perfect canvas for advertisers to highlight their green credentials to the public. In the last twelve months we’ve seen Sanex transform a corner of east London into moss-covered murals, while brands as diverse as Nando’s and Persil have used OOH to highlight their sustainability messages.

Sites like the Pluvo Columns that make a positive impact on the environment around them offer brands the potential for even greater creativity and deeper engagement with audiences. Sites purifying the city air aren’t entirely new as demonstrated by Alpo’s brilliant recent campaign in south London which used a special air-purifying coating that cleans the air without impacting the appearance of the ad. What is different about the Pluvo columns is that they are a permanent fixture.

It isn’t hard to see why they’d be the perfect fit for any brand looking to engage the public with a message of sustainability. Full details of our upcoming launch are under wraps but I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear we’re in talks with multiple energy suppliers and electric vehicle manufacturers about sponsoring the columns.

OOH’s “turbo-charged” green revolution

This model of advertising funding crucial public infrastructure is part of OOH’s DNA. Although we naturally spend a lot of time telling people about wonderful examples of creativity on our poster sites, we often don’t talk about what’s going on behind the sites.

While it’s impossible to miss advertising on bus shelters in towns and cities across the UK, most people don’t realise that the advertising actually pays for the cleaning and maintenance of the shelters.

In fact, virtually all the advertising you see on public transport gives revenue back to the transport operator. All in all, 50% of OOH revenue goes back to public infrastructure, cash-strapped local authorities or the wider economy.

In recent years, OOH’s green revolution has been turb-charged. Greener fleets, more sustainable production for classic poster sites, and digital screens powered by renewable energy have simply become the norm. Likewise, many OOH operators have committed to go carbon-neutral and to send zero waste to landfill.

With 88% of the public saying they want brands to help them make a difference and sustainability increasingly at the core of many brand strategies, the time has arrived to be bolder when it comes to capturing the public’s imagination with green advertising innovation.

“Fundamental” green initiatives

Pluvo columns purifying city air join bus shelters that provide habitats for bees, poster sites that harvest rainwater, solar powered sites, and billboard vinyl made from recycled ocean plastic as examples of genuine innovation from a sector that has always treated sustainability not as an added extra, but as a fundamental.

Aside from tech innovation, media owners support an array of green community initiatives. These range from Clear Channel’s partnership with Trees for Cities which has seen over 400 urban trees planted across the UK, to JCDecaux’s partnership with Manchester City Council which saw a ‘sensory structure’ built in the city’s Moss Side area – as well as providing hundreds of free plants to help locals make their homes a little greener.

OOH has weathered an unprecedented storm and is now perfectly placed to get back to growth. Naturally we’ll want to remind people of OOH’s power of reach, of its creativity and of the power that data is unleashing in the sector. But, let’s also not forget that part of the medium’s power is that it is at the heart of our towns, our cities and our communities.

Being such an integral part of our urban environment has always come with a responsibility to take sustainability seriously and it’s a responsibility that our sector has never shirked.

COP26 Glasgow

With COP26 in Glasgow on the horizon, sustainability will be top of the agenda not just in the coming months, but in years to come.

OOH should be at the forefront of driving the urban sustainability agenda. Adapting to the new world dominated by environmentally friendly technology is a great way to both achieve business goals and ignite the public’s passion for a sustainable future.

We’ll be hearing a lot more about green media technology over the coming decade and out of home is well placed to force the pace of change and shape the debate about how brands can, and should, use the exciting new technologies that are emerging to truly capture the public imagination with green innovation.

Ali MacCallum is UK chief executive of Kinetic, the WPP out-of-home specialist agency