Flying High - OOH Advert
The Devon Air Ambulance is a charity dedicated to providing rapid and agile medical services through helicopter air ambulances. They needed a social & OOH ad to replace their usual fundraising methods due to COVID-19.
The project was a collaboration between creatives and strategists from the UK and Canada, bringing together a myriad of diverse backgrounds such as advertising, psychology, and business management.
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Skills
Creative Direction Advertising
Strategy
Animation Illustration
Client
Devon Air Ambulance
Team:
Project Manager/Creative Director: Daiki Shinomiya
Illustrator: Connie Le
Creative + Strategy Team (Canada): Alvin Zheng, Asma Ansari, Bella Wang, Louise Delfin, Sophie Babenko, Tristian Turigan,
Creative + Strategy Team (UK): Owen Bush, Jess Allen, Leoni Fretwell, Charlotte Weston, Alexei Peters
Technical Consultant: Alexander Prins
Final advert
“The campaign delivers an important message about the service: the highly-trained medical team on board the Air Ambulance can provide the same level of care at the scene that a patient would not otherwise receive until arriving at a hospital Intensive Care Unit. Being able to administer this enhanced level of treatment when every second counts, can make all the difference to the outcome of the patient concerned.”
THE PROCESS
As we were brought on board later into the campaign process, we were provided with the advertising medium before the audience. Our challenge was to figure out a way to maximize the opportunity that these display TVs had and to somehow catch a passer-by's attention to deliver the intended message.
With the key requirements in mind, we recognized that our first priority was to identify the ideal audience to target with these advertisements. However, there was no data available by the display TV providers, meaning that we were initially left in the dark about engagement levels and the demographic of people seeing these adverts.
USER RESEARCH
To identify the target audience and measure their attitudes towards display TV advertising, we curated a list of open-ended questions that would allow us to draw meaningful insights. We first brainstormed an exhaustive list of questions that we would want to ask, and then narrowed them to a list of 13 questions. These questions ensured that we would get a good idea of the public's attitudes towards charities and advertisements, such as when they donate and what types of adverts stand out to them the most.
A psychology background was especially useful, and we brought on board a quantitative psychologist with over 20 years of experience to consult on the wording of the questions.
With the primary qualitative research conducted, we were able to gather some meaningful insights. For example, we identified that people tend to actually donate to a charity in their own time after seeing the advert, instead of donating on the spot. This indicated to us that despite having a text-donate CTA, we would need to also signpost people to easily access the web donation information in their own time.
Secondary research has also revealed that despite the pandemic, the general UK public's trust in charities have actually increased since 2020. This indicated to us that we needed to make it very clear that the advert was for a charitable organization and one that is entirely funded by the public.
DESIGN PROCESS
Helicopter Taxis: Addressing a common misconception
Many people think that Air Ambulances are solely there to transport injured people to hospitals. In reality, this is not one of their main services.
Instead, the Air Ambulances are there to bring the critical care to the patients wherever they are, and even administer the critical care on-site until land ambulances can arrive.
We wanted to focus on this concept for the advertisement, somehow showcasing that the Devon Air Ambulance brings the hospital and emergency care to the patient wherever they are, instead of just a simple taxi service.
In the end, we settled on an animation that figuratively puts a hospital inside a helicopter.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Gaining hands-on experience directing an OOH advert for a real client
Noticing a lack of creative opportunities for students at my University, I decided to launch my own advertising project outside of my degree for a real client.
It was a great experience directing a multifunctional creative team spread across 3 timezones for my first foray into advertising, learning the ins and outs of creative project management and advertising on the fly by collaborating with truly inspiring and diverse creatives.
I was able to apply my previous experience and knowledge of the creative process and client management to this project, actively upholding communication between the team and client.
This project enabled me to develop invaluable creative project management and advertising skills and experience to apply in future projects.