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 ( http://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 https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan/status/1379938847115542529?s=20

11/ Read the fulls Trends Q&A here: https://trends.co/articles/how-brex-launched-a-brand-with-ooh-marketing/

12/ More OOH Resources

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

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

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