A digital advertising company at the premium end of the market, Ocean Outdoors realised that it needed a premium brand. But with no existing brand to speak of, it was creating a new identity from a standing start. Molly Pierce reports

Ocean Outdoor is hard to miss. Across Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester, it operates large-format, innovative digital advertising sites in 35 premium locations. It’s hosted Kelly Brook in Reebok trainers and not much else at Battersea Power Station, and spray paint artist Jamie Brown abseiling down a billboard at the Foundry in Shoreditch to create a Becks advert over three days.

The company, established in December 2004, had been development-led from the outset, with a focus on sourcing outstanding sites for billboards. Ocean Outdoor offered something completely different to the rest of the outdoor advertising market by exclusively working with top quality sites, and its growing traction in the outdoor marketplace was recognised in 2008 when the private equity firm Smedvig Capital invested £5.5 million in the company. Smedvig’s chief executive Johnny Hewett cited Ocean’s “proven ability in the premium end of the market, and a reputation for delivering ‘best of breed’ quality.”

But until recently, Ocean Outdoor had little in the way of a brand identity. Richard Malton, Ocean’s marketing director, takes up the story. “People were starting to recognise Ocean sites – such as the three digital screens at Holland Park Roundabout – but wouldn’t know who the operators were. Advertisers would want to use the IMAX site, but wouldn’t know it was an Ocean site. We were known for a premium product, in a premium location, attracting a premium audience – but we didn’t have a premium brand; we didn’t have any brand at all.”

Ocean Outdoor needed a brand that would pull all its sites together. Heavenly, the London-based branding agency, came on board in August 2010, and its managing director Richard Sunderland says the potential was immediately apparent. “The quality of the sites meant that Ocean Outdoor could build a really strong identity. It lacked differentiation from other outdoor advertisers in its attitude and brand proposition, but there was the possibility of positioning the company to engage with its audiences.”

“Heavenly’s brief was to simplify everything,” says Malton. “Our ad sites have so much visual impact, we wanted to ensure they were the main feature of any campaign.” This aligned with Ocean’s prior focus on developing a premium product. “The sites jump out of every photograph, so Ocean’s brand needed not to clutter up or take anything away from the images.”

Heavenly wanted to reinforce Ocean’s stated belief in simplicity with data about the company and the marketplace. The agency carried out an internal and external brand audit, together with a competitive review of the other major players in the outdoor advertising market. Graham Barnetson, commercial director at Heavenly, says it quickly became apparent that Ocean Outdoor’s competitors approached things differently. “In outdoor advertising, there’s a ratio of impact to coverage. Ocean Outdoor operates at the quality end of the market, but other providers of outdoor advertising, such as JCDecaux, might have high profile location sites in addition to the mass coverage they can also supply to advertisers. The new brand needed to provide armour for Ocean Outdoor that would protect them in that marketplace.”

Competition is a loose term to describe Ocean’s position in the marketplace, according to Malton. A JCDecaux or a ClearChannel can offer vast amounts of coverage compared to Ocean’s select handful of sites. However, the noise Ocean Outdoor is able to generate through offering such a specialised product provided an opportunity for capitalisation. Heavenly’s research showed that other outdoor advertising companies had very functional, cross-media brands, and that Ocean was already dealing with landlords, advertisers and agencies in a more stylish way than its competitors.

The brand name was next up. “No one knew where ‘Ocean Outdoor’ had come from,” says Malton. “The founder of the company seems to have pulled it out of the air. Changing the name was dismissed quickly because it had critical traction with customers and staff. So we tried to retrospectively reinvent the name – but ended up with a lot of dreadful nautical puns and a sense of futility.”

Ocean decided with Heavenly to drop the seaworthy aspect of the branding and take advantage of the goodwill that the brand already possessed. But what did they want Ocean Outdoor to represent now? The brand’s new strapline, The Art of Outdoor, is designed to characterise the essence of the company.

“We came to ‘The Art of’ very quickly with Heavenly. But the rest of the line took longer,” recalls Malton. “We considered ‘Impact’, amongst others, but ‘Outdoor’ felt right – it communicates our uniqueness, our originality, the potential of our sites. The bulk of Ocean’s inventory is digital advertising – and it’s digital advertising that actually makes use of the medium. In the overall digital outdoor market, only 30% of the advertising moves or is interactive in any way. We place a strong focus on creativity in working with advertisers on their sites, and work with arts organisations to provide a canvas for new artists. So the tagline is simple, but encapsulates exactly what Ocean Outdoor does on both literal and figurative levels.”

The mark designed by Heavenly continues the suggestion that Ocean’s sites can turn adverts into works of art. “Adverts on Ocean Outdoor sites are showcased, as though they’re in an art exhibition,” says Sunderland. “The tag line implies that these sites are the best possible way – the most artistic way – to use the medium, and the new icon needed to carry on that premium sense. Before, it was just a blue box; now, it’s shorthand for Ocean Outdoors [the two circles of the logo double as the company’s initials] and is a very stylish representation of the company.”

The design and implementation process took four months, with Heavenly developing brand guidelines and leading internal and external implementation. Sunderland characterises the internal branding implementation as “pushing against an open door – which was great from our point of view. Ocean was ready to take on change to its internal culture.”

Since Smedvig’s buy in, the company had doubled the size of its sales and marketing teams. “Ocean recruits at a very high level,” says Malton. “Bringing in experienced people is part of our identity – clients should have confidence in our team because the team has confidence in itself.” Heavenly worked with Ocean throughout to communicate the brand to the team of 18. Developments on the work were shown in-house and to the board at various stages, and Malton credits Heavenly with being industrious in bringing the team in, without drifting into design by committee.

Sunderland’s take on the process revolves around collaboration. “Brand behaviours don’t start with imposing rules,” he remarks. “We worked with internal audiences to understand how the company functions, and through a series of grown up, collaborative conversations we wound up with boundaries, rather than instructions.” Barnetson describes this as the ‘Ocean way’.

“Only 30% of digital advertising is interactive in any way, but we place a strong focus on creativity in working with advertisers on their sites. ‘The Art of Outdoor’ is simple, but encapsulates exactly what Ocean Outdoor does on both literal and figurative levels”

With the main brand elements in place by Christmas, the new identity wasn’t launched until Valentine’s Day 2011. The delay was due to the new website put in place by Ocean’s in-house web and design teams, who worked closely with Heavenly and used its guidelines to create a very on-brand portal. Adverts were also run in the trade press, but as far as both sides are concerned the proof of the new brand’s success will be whether it translates into revenue.

“This new brand is the umbrella for all of Ocean Outdoor’s sites,” says Malton. “Although we currently have a strong London focus, we’re targeting cities outside the capital – and we only want the absolute best sites in those cities. We want our potential business partners to look at our brand and see the value that our sites can bring.

“It’s often spoken of as the ‘framing effect’: a black dress, advertised in Vogue and Take A Break, is perceived by readers as having far more value in its Vogue context. The values of the surroundings are transferred onto the advert – they frame it in a particular way. So the ‘framing effect’ that our sites offer justifies their additional value for advertisers. The new brand is positioned in a premium way: there won’t just be 100,000 people looking at your advert on an Ocean Outdoor site, there’ll be 100,000 people looking at it in a particular way. The Ocean Outdoor brand performs that strategy for us.”

Peer Review

Toby Southgate, The Brand Union:

The notion of an outdoor media company branding itself might seem ironic. But once you get over that perception hurdle, there is a good case for creating a strong and differentiated brand for Ocean Outdoors.

Ocean Outdoor has tapped into a significant niche. The potency and impact of moving image in the outdoor media environment is hard to miss - I nearly drove into the Hammersmith flyover when I saw Kelly Brook writhing around in her Reeboks.

If Ocean Outdoor can build scale and reputation quickly, the business stands to do well. The new branding is clean, crisp and typographically spot on. It seems to have taken inspiration from fashion and retail (the Vogue ‘O’ is instantly recognisable) but given the likely target market, that’s an understandable route to take.

-->