A November to Remember: Talon wins 14 awards for OOH at The Drum & Media Week Awards

Along with our incredible agencies and partners, Talon has won 14 awards for Out of Home (OOH) at The Drum Awards Festival and Media Week Awards 2024.

A month the Talon team will never forget, let’s dive into the campaigns and what made them award-winning.

Media Week Awards

Gold 🥇

Econometrics: Location Matters for MMM

Our research, in partnership with JCDecaux UK and Nielsen, explored the role of econometrics and how we can make clients’ OOH measurement more effective. We found that utilising granular location data in MMM modelling can increase OOH ROI by up to 42%.

Media Innovation: Doritos Silent

Snacking and gaming are increasingly incompatible. But in 2023, Doritos wanted to change that with the launch of Doritos Silent, the world’s first AI-augmented snack. An idea like this needed a new approach – an OOH campaign to launch the impossible and drive the nation into a frenzy. ​

A Piccadilly Lights takeover, banners, murals and prOOH made Doritos Silent unmissable. Driving hype, the stop-and-stare OOH creative made people double-take, on the streets and online – placed at the heart of the campaign strategy.

Silver 🥈

Long-Term Media Strategy: Walkers #CrispIN or #CrispOUT

Lunch is a must-win battleground for Walkers. Once a staple of lunchboxes up and down the country, by 2020 they’d become a bit stale; over half the nation just weren’t thinking of Walkers at lunchtime.

Walkers would utilise its media to jolt a new behaviour. How could they get light buyers to crunch? With a peculiar British ritual; the crisp sandwich. 88% of Brits agreed crisps improve sandwiches. But they ferociously disagreed on whether they belong in or out of sandwiches. Could we marry Brits’ favourite lunchtime snack with their favourite lunchtime staple to successfully resolve a time-honoured British debate?

A once in a lunchtime idea; are you #CrispIN or #CrispOUT? Over 3 years, we used media to create a dividing line. In or out. Yes or no. Them or us. Pitting sides of the country against each other. A little levity, a lot of debate. With transformational results for Walker’s, we pulled it out of the bag.

Media Creativity: Under £250k: Channel 4 Partygate

Partygate. We sacrificed, they partied. The country was outraged. Meticulous research and new sources told the real untold stories of Partygate juxtaposing wild nights at Downing Street with the experiences of the general public.  ​Our task was simple but not easy, get people to watch.

With OOH being the backdrop to people’s lives, our strategy was based on being present on formats which fitted the style of urban and gritty media placements. We would hide in plain sight. Using legal national flyposting, we positioned Partygate alongside real event adverts, with beautifully designed posters inspired by the 90s rave scene.  ​

Media Idea: Launch: Don’t Gift – NOTHS

8 in 10 Brits reported receiving a “bad gift” for Christmas 2022. As a result, over 3.08 million bad gifts were thrown away. NOTHS’ aim was to encourage ‘wiser’, more sustainable gifting.​ Kicking off the campaign we launched three special builds in London’s Westfield Shepherd’s Bush and Vinegar Yard and in Manchester’s Salford Chapel Street. 

The final burst of OOH consisted of our fully optimised DOOH schedule consisting of Large Format Digital, D48s and D6s in motorway service areas, shopping centres, underground, roadside and rail environments.​

Media Creativity: Launch: Doritos Silent

Media Creativity: Over £1m:  Doritos Silent

Large Collaboration: Over £250k: Doritos Silent

The Drum Awards

Gold 🥇

Advertising: Dynamic and Interactive Digital Screens: Share the Warmth with Quaker Oats

Quaker shared the warmth by helping to ensure access to a warm and nutritious breakfast for families across the UK – in a way that is intrinsic to the brand itself. Quaker effectively used different OOH capabilities to drive awareness of the issue of child food insecurity and its charity partnerships; with attention grabbing 48s and interactive/dynamic capabilities to offer consumers real value through contextually relevant coupons based on UK weather average temperatures. 

Silver 🥈

Advertising: Creative Humour: This van driver Should’ve gone to Specsavers

Specsavers pushed the boundaries of OOH advertising by creating its very own parking fail – a Specsavers van parked on a rising bollard! The results were phenomenal with over 6 million social media views and almost 1 million likes, comments and shares. The stunt even had coverage on ITV, radio and in numerous news titles as well as industry wide recognition amongst our peers and other advertisers.

Advertising: Immersive Experience: Pepsi MAX X UEFA Champions League Final London 24

Pepsi MAX went all in for the UEFA Champions League this year. Bringing unexpected enjoyment to audiences across the UK, Pepsi MAX ran three activations for fans in football-focused cities of Liverpool, Manchester and London. Whether you were looking for a quick 2v2 game and a free football at their hidden pitches or wanted to watch the live game on the big screen, with a Pepsi MAX in hand, then they had you covered. Pepsi Hidden Pitches was born!

Bronze🥉

Advertising: Charity/Not for Profit/Social Purpose: British Heart Foundation ‘Til I died’

British Heart Foundation (BHF) set out with the goal to highlight a tragic reality – 12 people under the age of 35 are lost to sudden cardiac arrest in the UK each week. Using the stories of 12 young football fans who died too soon to highlight this tragic disease, we unveiled 12 powerful murals of football fans who lost their lives to sudden cardiac death, in time with the UEFA Euro 2024 kick-off for an extended audience reach. This campaign went viral across social media and outlets, it even had a slot on BBC Breakfast.

Advertising: Immersive Experience: Will you be next? Allwyn, Lotto

Will you be the next UK millionaire? We made the whole of Great Britain feel like they might be next, with an unmissable and inclusive launch that drove talk-ability, engagement and consideration to play. Anyone can be a millionaire with Lotto, you must be in it to win it!

Advertising: Use of Location: Big Little Welcomes, British Airways

Connecting loved ones for over 100 years, British Airways (BA) wanted to celebrate the warm, fuzzy feeling with the hundreds and thousands of people landing back in the UK to spend Christmas with their loved ones.  ​‘Big Little Welcomes’ made sure that BA was a part of these reunions, giving audiences the chance to write messages for their loved ones as they landed back in the UK.

As a result, the campaign saw strong customer engagement with BA receiving 200+ messages submitted in just the first day of the recruitment going live! These messages were displayed on OOH formats as the passengers landed back in the UK.​ Post campaign, BA saw positive movements in brand health during a period where category average was in decline.​

We’d like to thank everyone who made this possible, and congratulations. Roll on 2025…

View the full results for The Drum Awards and the Media Week Awards.