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, 2025 OOH Media Conference speaker, and HubSpot’s Head of Brand Paid Media, Jonathon McKenzie shares their creative process, the importance of OOH in their media strategy, and how advertising continues to evolve.
Read Jonathon’s Q&A in The Drum
What role does out of home (OOH) play in your media mix?
OOH is a proven high lift, high reach channel in our brand media strategy. It delivers unduplicated awareness at scale, particularly in dense markets and around key cultural moments such as F1, SXSW, and other major sporting events. Based on recent brand lift studies, OOH consistently ranks among the top drivers of aided awareness, especially when paired with audio and video to reinforce messaging across touch points.
How do you approach creativity in OOH advertising across formats?
We design OOH creative to be simple, bold, and contextually aware. In large format placements, we lead with branding and a singular takeaway, knowing we only have seconds to grab attention. For street level and experiential formats, we aim for relevance whether that is localized language, time based messaging, or pairing with real world moments such as airport ads timed to industry events. Clarity and resonance outweigh complexity in OOH.
What challenges do you face in balancing creativity and data in marketing?
The biggest challenge is ensuring that creative ideas scale within data informed frameworks. It is easy to default to what is measurable, but data does not always account for storytelling, emotion, or creative breakthrough. Our approach is to ground decisions in performance data such as brand lift, down funnel results, reach, or engagement, but leave room for cultural intuition and creative risk taking, especially in brand forward channels like OOH and social.
How do you see the future of advertising evolving?
The AI train has left the station, and I’m doing everything I can to be in the conductor’s seat. The future of advertising is full funnel, format fluid, and audience led and increasingly powered by AI. As data and reporting become even more central with Nielsen One advancing TV measurement, the question isn’t whether to focus on brand or performance, it’s how to plan the entire funnel with intention, from awareness to conversion. That means understanding what each channel is best at and using them accordingly. Channels like place-based OOH, audio, and contextual video will play a bigger role not because they’re trackable, but because they’re proven to drive unduplicated reach and shift perception. Creativity will always matter, but media craftsmanship and knowing how to plan and sequence channels for real impact will be the real differentiator for brands.
Published: June 9, 2025