NDA’s Marketing the Marketers series talks to the marketing and comms leaders behind the success of our leading companies. Next up is Ben Hope, Marketing Director at Clear Channel UK.
What exactly does your job entail?
I head up marketing at Clear Channel UK, one of the UK’s largest Out of Home advertising and infrastructure companies.
My role covers speaking to a very broad and diverse set of customers – everyone from local planning officers who install bus shelters on local high streets, right through to CMO’s of major international brands crafting their next big advertising campaign thinking about the best way to creatively reach their audiences, as well as our own colleagues.
For NDA’s readers, I think the most relevant aspects would be helping advertisers and agencies to better understand the benefits of digital Out of Home, showcasing inspiring campaigns and delivering proof that our channel can support hitting their marketing objectives.
My absolute favourite thing to do is the solving the jigsaw between what we want to say, and what our customers need from us, and how do that in a way that’s simple, memorable, and motivating.
What campaign or piece of marketing/communications are you most proud of in your career and why?
There are a few things that spring to mind across different projects, but they all have a common theme, which is feeling slightly uncomfortable before they go to market. There’s an element of risk; you’re trying something the brand has never done before but your gut says it’s the right thing.
When we created the first-ever employee value proposition at Clear Channel, we interviewed on camera more than 30 colleagues from different departments, offices, and depots. We had no idea what they were going to say. The edited video turned into one of the most beautiful, authentic, varied, and inclusive pieces of work that told the story of our people and showcased the culture of the company in such an interesting way.
From that moment on, collectively, we became ‘the People behind the Posters’.
It’s a positioning that has stuck, that gives our people pride. Its spawned so much authentic content for our website, social channels and internal communications, galvanising the team internally. It has helped our media and landlord partners get to know us better – the people that they work with day-to-day. It was also a core part of the story that helped us to win Commercial Team of the Year at the Campaign Media Awards.
Who has been your biggest inspiration in your career to date and why?
When I was younger, I wasn’t particularly self-assured or confident. It was my A-level art teacher, back home in Sunderland, who was the first person to really get me to believe in myself.
She challenged me to really look at myself and at the world around me. She unlocked my creative thinking and truthfully, made me see the world in a completely different way. She gave me a belief that my voice, my opinion, and my values mattered, and that I should, and could, put them out there. I was sad to learn recently that she passed away.
In more recent times, I’m fortunate to work alongside some brilliant leaders at Clear Channel who I learn from daily, including Martin Corke who has been great. He’s placed a lot of trust and faith in me, been a great leader, and a personal champion. He has helped me to grow in my own career, hopefully helping to support others to do that same.
What is the biggest challenge in your sector and how is your company helping to address it?
The biggest challenge within Out of Home is, and for a long time has been, measurement. Digital Out of Home as well as the programmatic buying capabilities continue to grow, and clients are interested in exactly what our channel can bring to the party to help them meet their objectives as part of their media mix.
We’re an active contributor to industry working groups looking at how we can help clients get the best data possible, using best practices, to measure the impact of their outdoor advertising.
Separate to that, we’re also looking at the right metrics to be tracking when it comes to measuring Out of Home, and we’ll be adding more work on effectiveness throughout the course of this year. Adding results to the theory is exactly what our clients are looking for.
What is the biggest opportunity in your sector and how is your company helping to make the most of it?
The biggest opportunity is overcoming the biggest challenge, so solving the above!
Beyond effectiveness, I think creativity remains a massive opportunity for Out of Home. We run a series of work called Powerful Posters, which helps brands to make the most of the canvas they buy. It was a piece we kicked off with an industry roundtable of heavy hitters – Nils Leonard, Costanza Rossi, Enyi Nwosu and more – that gave us a great foundation for the conversation.
We’re used to seeing the one-off stunts and special builds win awards, but the truth is Out of Home’s superpower is reach. Just recently I’ve seen Les Binet talking about outdoor being the last broadcast channel. Predictions from Omnicom indicate that OOH will be 50% higher than the next single channel as ‘daily time spent with media’ by 2028.
My belief is that making thousands of posters, seen by millions of people, simpler and more memorable is a significantly more sensible and effective strategy for brands. As godfathers of effectiveness, Binet and Field, say “The more people an advertising medium reached, the more effective it was in hard business terms… in other words, for most brands, the best strategy is to hit as many people as possible.”
We have a brand-new proposition launching this year, Clear Channel Roadblock, where an advertiser can take over as many of our digital screens as we can give them. Making sure the creative is right is integral to that being a success.
How important, and why, are the following in helping your promote your ow company:
The press
To drive an increase in the mental availability of Clear Channel we need to make sure we’re reaching more of the right people, exactly what we’re advising our own customers referenced above. The trade press remains one of the key ways that we can break beyond on own contacts to reach new people, and the key thing for us is to generate interesting opinions, inspirational ideas, and informative content that positively builds our reputation.
Events
Events are a great channel to make someone feel differently about you. Our flagship event, the Outdoor Media Awards, are the best annual celebration of the outdoor industry in the market, and we work hard to make sure people are not only inspired by the great work, but also feel the vibes of what this industry is all about. It’s entertaining and fun, just as a great event should be.
Your company’s owned media
We typically don’t advertise our channel on our channel, however, central to our promotion is how our channel is used and how it’s unique in the media landscape.
From the one-to-many nature, the sustainability credentials of our medium, the millions of pounds of charity support and social value that the industry delivers to the fact that OOH advertising revenue helps to install, fund, and maintains vital public infrastructure at no taxpayer cost.
