Google Outside

Offer useful, relevant and meaningful demonstrations of the Google Search Experience (GSA) in context.

Existing DOOH infrastructure is generally used for broadcast-like video or image display, with little variation between screens and little or no dynamic content support, requiring a solution that can work over the legacy 3G network infrastructure.

Additionally, the Google Search system is not available out of the mobile app, so we had to retrieve, extract, connect, mash-up and consolidate several disparate public Google data sources, all meant to give different data, under different scenarios. We required thousands of API calls, all returning unique dynamic data, to be processed and connected in seconds, so we could generate payloads in minutes.

We wanted to surprise our audience by displaying something new on the screens: instead of advertising we created a utility platform for the city, providing useful information about the area, allowing Londoners and tourists to get the most out of the city, and reminding people of the magic of Google Search.

In order to achieve this, we re-created the Google Now and Google Search experience for DOOH, using Google Public APIs and Google’s Partner data sources, mashing together information about landmarks, public knowledge, maps and transit, movies, trends, entertainment and weather data.

We did it in a compelling way, telling charming stories that put a smile on people’s faces. The stories are fully dynamic and each contextual to the location, the time and date where it is displayed in the city.

This was the first time DOOH screens had been converted from monitors with no sense of location, interactivity and only a 3G data connection, into local hubs displaying real-time Search stories, specific to individual locations. While some other executions had done small bits of dynamic data updates in the past, this was the first-ever fully dynamic, contextually generated content platform for DOOH

Initially, we took over digital outdoor boards across London making each screen unique, smart and aware of its context. Every day, the platform generated thousands of stories, combining newly created “content cards” together to create relevant and useful stories, each tailored to the corresponding location and time of the day, taking into account the date, day of the week and weather.

Once the content stories have been generated, the system then packages the stories, removes any inappropriate content, optimizes the content and images for each DOOH network, and sends it to the DOOH media systems, which in turn distributes the content to each of the network screen locations.

Content optimization was crucial for the system to work, since all the content had to be downloaded on a daily basis and without issues across the existing 3G network connections, a world’s first at the scale we achieved for this platform.

We architected a highly optimized brand story engine, capable of retrieving content from key Google API services by performing thousands of simultaneous calls, and mashing up contextual data following our story composition template system, but able to create a high degree of randomness, resulting in ever changing content bits combined in thousands of different ways.

Our bespoke template engine was responsible that all content was adapted to the right format, following the brand tone of voice and identify guidelines, even with the high degree of variation and randomness by the system.

Google Outside generated a significant improvement in brand sentiment: Transport for London hailed the project as "the most innovative campaign ever run on our placements," 92% of people who saw it found the content interesting, 89% found it informative, 78% said they learned something new, and 68% found it personally relevant. The experience achieved an impressive 107.9% in Campaign Performance (equiv. +2,300,740 ad playouts), and 94% content performance (meaning only 6% of the time default content was displayed because of network issues) Most importantly, 1 in 5 people who saw Google Outside downloaded the Google Search app.

100+ story lines, 400+ content format templates, 10K+ daily API calls made, 3000+ contextual stories generated combining 5000+ content cards, 35 minutes content generation time, 4+ daily payloads sent across networks, all content transmitted and distributed over 3G!

2013: pilot launch – 160 digital boards in london
2014: London full launch – 200+ locations, 1000+ digital boards, 6+ DOOH networks
2015: Launch in Old Street and Station Screens – giant super wide screen format
2016: Re-Launch in Old Street – expanded to all Google Services

2015 Clear Channel: Outdoor Planning Awards – 1xGrand, 1xWinner
2014 D&AD – 1xWood Pencil (Bronze)
2014 Cannes Lions – 1xBronze
2014 Eurobest – 1xBronze
2014 Project Isaac Awards – 1xGold
2014 Lovie Awards – 1xGold
2014 LIA Awards – 1xSilver
2014 Digital Impact Awards – 1xSilver
2014 Dadi Awards – 1xWinner, 5xShortlist
2014 Brand Republic Awards – 1xWinner, 1xFinalist, 1xHonorableMention
2014 Creative Review Annual Awards – 1xShortlist
2014 Tomorrow Awards – 1xShortlist
2014 Campaign Big Awards – 1xShortlist
2014 Digiday Awards -1xShortlist
2014 Drum Marketing Awards – 1xShortlist
2014 Design Week – 1xShortlist
2014 Marketing Week Engage – 2xShortlist
2014 Mixx Europe – 1xMerit
2014 Social Buzz Awards – 1xFinalist