The new ads are 100% viewable by their target audience for as
many seconds as he cares to look. P&G spokeswoman Tressie Rose
confirmed that Mr. Pritchard had seen the one nearest the
headquarters. She added: "We agree. The ad is real."
The campaign was created by Partners & Napier in Rochester,
New York, a Project Worldwide agency.
The ads direct curious onlookers to campaign website
FeeltheReal.org. The first wave of ads included 1,500 placements in
15 markets nationwide targeting 50 ad agencies, often in billboards
or transit shelters near their offices and sometimes calling out
individual agency executives or creative directors, said OAAA Chief
Marketing Officer Stephen Freitas.
The idea isn't entirely about poking fun at viewership problems
of digital media. It's also meant to portray out-of-home as "a
perfect complement to the digital space, because it's out there in
the real world and can help guide you to some of that digital
content," Mr. Freitas said.
But then, when news of Mr. Pritchard's speech hit last week, the
OAAA also welcomed the opportunity to point out that its medium has
few viewability issues, he said. "It's also a great use case to say
look at how targeted out-of-home can be."
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Billboards might seem like a blunt instrument to reach Mr.
Pritchard plus maybe his fellow P&G marketers. But the OAAA
wouldn't be the first to give that a go in the headquarters city of
the world's biggest ad spender.
Billboards that went up largely in neighborhoods surrounding
downtown last year bearing the Snapchat logo were aimed at least in
part at catching the eye of P&G marketers, said a person
familiar with that campaign.
Similarly, Radiocentre, the trade group for U.K. commercial
radio, targeted
rival Unilever Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith
Weed, who oversees the world's second biggest ad budget, in radio
ads there last year.