Thread by @TrungTPhan

1/ Brex raised new funding at a $7.4B valuation.

Interestingly, the corporate card startup launched in 2018 with a very successful $300k out-of-home (OOH) ad campaign.

Here's a breakdown of Brex's OOH strategy 🧵

2/ First, what are out-of-home (OOH) ads?

There are 4 major categories:

◻️ Street furniture (bus benches, phone kiosks)
◻️transit (taxis, busses, airports)
◻️place-based (arenas, shopping malls)
◻️billboards (traditional and digital)

Billboards make up 60%+ of OOH inventory.

3/ What's interesting about OOH is that if used correctly, the cost to reach 1k people (aka CPM) is cheaper than other ad options.

4/ In OOH campaigns, there is usually a trade off between:

◻️ Frequency: How often your target demo sees an ad
◻️ Reach: How many *total* people see your ad

Brex launched to a very specific demo (startup founders in SF), so it optimized for frequency:

5/ Brex spent $300k for a 3-month campaign to "dominate" its chosen area.

"Dominate" entails:
◻️ Owning 50%+ of the ad inventory in a selected region
◻️ Capture attention quickly and be omnipresent

Brex really did feel like it was "everywhere"

6/ Brex used the "Anchor and Amplification" strategy.

An ANCHOR is a big attention-grabbing ad unit that a large % of your audience sees (eg. Brex took over the platform station next to Oracle Park)

Once you establish an anchor, AMPLIFY your message around the city w/ more ads.

7/ Choosing locations

With so many options, it's important to do "market rides" (a "from-the-ground" POV)

A well-known Brex billboard is “Money Tree”. This ad space was long devalued b/c a tree obstructed it.

A market ride found it had the opportunity for a clever creative.

8/ Creative tips #1

◻️At the start of a campaign, the message should be very direct and clear ("the first corporate card for startups").
◻️ After brand is more established, you can ad some mystery ("this will catch your 'interest'") to drive curiosity

9/ Creative tips #2

◻️ OOH happens in a flash (keep copy to 7 words or less)
◻️ Color contrast is key to make ads -- often seen at a distance -- legible (stick to primary/complementary color combos)
◻️ Don't forget the CTA (brex.com/rewards)

10/ The playbook is from a Q&A I did w/ Brex's Head of OOH last year for Trends.

Brex rolled out a similar strategy for 2 other demos: ecomm (in LA) and life sciences (in Boston)

For more biz gold, smash that FOLLOW: @TrungTPhan

11/ Read the fulls Trends Q&A here:
trends.co/articles/how-b…

12/ More OOH Resources

Geopath (for initial OOH mapping and measurement): explore.geopath.io/user/public

List of 200+ OOH ad companies: geopath.org/our-org/

Rate card for Clearchannel (an OOH vendors) to see inventory costs: clearchanneloutdoor.com/how-to-buy/rat…