Every month, OAAA’s marketing team sits down with a brand marketer to discuss creativity in OOH, the role OOH plays in the media mix, and their perspective on the future of advertising. This month, Tory Marlin, Executive Director, Sapphire Experiences Product Strategy at Chase, and Tania Keenan, Executive Director, Brand, Advertising, Media for Chase Sapphire, share how OOH plays a role in an omnichannel strategy, reaching consumers at key moments with culturally relevant creative.
Read Tory and Tania’s Q&A here.
What role does out of home play in your media mix?
TK: As the premium travel and dining card, Chase Sapphire deploys a full omni-channel media strategy highlighting our main product benefits. Specifically, we leverage out-of-home in two ways:
1) One of the most sought-after product benefits for Chase Sapphire Reserve is access to our Sapphire Lounge By the Club airport lounges. To help support our Airport lounge strategy, we hand-select key out-of-home placements in airport locations to capture consumer attention at pivotal points in their travel, promoting access to lounge and highlighting lounge location or travel and dinging benefits as an evergreen marketing strategy.
2) To help support product news, out-of-home plays a critical role in our regional marketing strategy to drive awareness and build buzz. In the case of the Chase Sapphire Reserve refresh earlier this year, we took a page from the fashion playbook to feature icons such as Claudia Schiffer and Hailey Bieber alongside our Sapphire Reserve card to announce something new was coming to the marketplace.
How do you approach creativity in OOH advertising across formats?
TK: For the Chase Sapphire Reserve product refresh, we used high-impact units across key markets to drive awareness and build buzz using fashion icons Claudia Schiffer and Hailey Bieber holding our Sapphire Reserve card. In digital units at major transit locations, e.g. Grand Central Station, the creative strategy was to lean into our product benefits of travel, dining, lounge to highlight the value proposition of the product to generate interest and drive consideration.
In our airport markets where we have Sapphire Lounge by the Club airport lounges, the messaging highlights lounge benefits and location to drive interest and traffic.
What challenges do you face in balancing creativity and data in marketing?
TM: The real balancing act is effectively using data to inform creative and buying decisions, but not slow down speed to market or stand in the way of capitalizing on cultural momentum. At Chase, we listen to our customers, from market research to social chatter, and this input drives everything that we do. But brands, especially luxury brands like Sapphire Reserve, should not only contribute to, but should define culture in advertising.
So we make spending time with the data part of our everyday work, and try to understand our target so well that we can make quick creative decisions knowing what’s right for them by heart.
How do you see the future of advertising evolving?
TM: To break through, brands need to provide a meaningful experience or tell a meaningful story. There’s always something else going on that our target can look at, read, listen to or attend – generating FOMO isn’t enough anymore. The most impactful advertising experiences give us something of value – tangible, physical, creative, intellectual. Our industry is also seeing an erosion of trust in digital information, combined with a massive shift in the way consumers seek and engage with information. Marketers have an incredible opportunity to develop clear, consistent, and meaningful communication that consumers can trust in a challenging time.
We’re excited that at Chase Sapphire Reserve, we get to curate true lifestyle experiences and opportunities for our cardmembers. We have the privilege and opportunity to play a role far beyond utility for our cardmembers – we’re their travel guide, dining expert, and more.
Published: December 16, 2025