2023 was quite a year in terms of "Fake Out Of Home advertising" and in my opinion will for sure be known as the starting year of it. Following the fake out of home ads of some brands, especially fashion and lifestyle brands, the wording for it is still not 100% clear. Mixed Reality Videos, Augmented Reality Videos, Virtual Reality Videos, Fake Ads, CG Ads, CG Marketing, ...are some of many names people in the marketing space started calling these kind of videos.
As of now it looks like people are going for "FAKE OOH", which in my personal opinion has a little bit of a negative touch to it, since the wording "FAKE" tends to be used in a negative context. Now if you don't know yet what Fake Out Of Home is, I'll give you a short Introduction to it.
Fake OOH advertisement or as we like to call them "Mixed Reality Videos" are basically compositions of a real videos with computer generated imagery (CGI).
In short: putting/ tracking 3D objects in a conventional video.
In general the usage of CGI is nothing new, Hollywood is doing that for quite some time already. Asking google I found the following: "The first feature film to use CGI as well as the composition of live-action film with CGI was Vertigo (1958), which used CGI in the opening credits of the film. The first feature film to make use of CGI with live action in the storyline of the film was the 1973 film Westworld." If you want to read more about the history of CGI in Hollywood, there's a lot of articles and examples to be found on google.
As you can see this stuff exists for a long time already and most of us don't even notice it. Nowadays there is bearly any movie which does not use CGI. Now you might ask why should I care?
There are several arguments for and against CGI in advertising. Some people debate that it takes away the authenticity of advertisement and that people will not be able to distinguish between real and virtual elements anymore. Other see the incredible amount of opportunities we get through Mixed Reality Videos.
I personally would argue that the authenticity does not depend on whether something is computer generate or not. In the end it all comes down to the execution, if it fits my brand and how my clients interact with the created ads. Especially in a world of TikTok, Instagram and more it's hard to stand out - but statistics show that at least at the moment these are the kind of ads that go viral organically! And I find this quite interesting in a time where the narrative is, that reach is dependent on the money you feed this platforms.
To sum it up you can think whatever you want of Mixed Reality Videos, Fake Out Of Home or however you want to call them, but numbers don't lie, whether we talk about reach or the cost of such videos, that's why I have some examples that might be of interest for you.
@maybelline on instagram - normal having between 100k and 1mio views:
@zara on instagram - also proving unhinged content is a thing
@alexanderwangny on instagram - doing a huge CG installation
@jacquemus on instagram - making it a whole (very successful) fake out of home campaign:
Mixed Reality Videos are a great chance to advertise in places where you never could before. They're environmental friendly, since you don't really have to do an actual installation and they're a great way to go viral organically. I'm of course a little biased in this matter, but the numbers don't lie.
My suggestion: give the fake out of home advertisement a try!
