maybelline FOOH creative
Image: Maybelline New York / TikTok

In July 2023, a video ad from Maybelline went viral that appeared to show a London tube train with giant eyelashes affixed to its roof pulling into a station and passing under a super-sized mascara wand, which brushed the eyelashes and sent them flopping.

Moments later, the ad cut to a bus receiving the same treatment from a mascara wand attached to the side of a building. It looked like a brilliant marketing stunt, but perhaps a little too good to be true.

However, many responses on social media took the stunt at face value and even talked about tracking down the ‘Maybelline Bakerloo carriage’. The Evening Standard reported on the stunt as if it were real, writing that, “The latest in weird beauty marketing landed in London this week in the form of massive, larger than life, King Kong-esque mascara wands dotted across London, courtesy of New York-based beauty brand Maybelline.”

Either way, for the Maybelline marketing team, the campaign had done its job: Delphine Consigny, Marketing Director at Maybelline UK, told Metro that, “The brief was to create something that surprised the consumer and made them question if it was real or fake.

“…we can’t believe the pick-up and momentum the digital asset has garnered with people amazed it isn’t real and calling it “genius marketing”…”

The evolution of CGI and computer editing technology has led to the emergence of a genre dubbed ‘fake out-of-home’, or FOOH – where an apparent out-of-home (OOH) campaign with a clever twist is shared online. Often, there’s an unlikely element to the stunts, such as Big Ben wearing a North Face puffer jacket in a video created by JD Sports.

It begs the question: does OOH need to be real if it’s creating buzz, driving conversation, and furthering the brand’s marketing message all the same?

Does FOOH achieve the same goals as OOH?

What are the key strengths of traditional OOH advertising? Primarily, visibility and scale – there’s nothing like being able to reach thousands of people with a well-placed, impactful billboard.

When done well, effective OOH can also drive conversation, particularly on social media, with amused passers-by snapping pictures of a humorous or creative billboard and sharing them, thus giving the message extra reach. Brands are well aware of the potential for OOH to become social media content in the digital age, and so OOH ads have become more geared towards social shareability.

The brand behind the ad will often kick-start this process with a social post about their OOH campaign. I never saw the iconic ‘Harder. Feta. Faster. Stronger’ four-way OOH collab between Numan, Cheesegeek, Surreal Cereal and Gymbox up close, but I know about it thanks to social media (and general marketing industry buzz). In that instance, does it matter whether the campaign physically existed?

(Sidenote that although I’m pretty sure it did, I’ve only ever seen the one shot of these ads used, and reporting never seems to specify which tube station they appeared in).

With that said, in the age of programmatic digital out of home (DOOH), OOH can be more granular, targeted and versatile, changing dynamically to display a certain message or being adapted to the viewer’s location. Some brands have even used state-of-the-art augmented reality (AR) technology to create immersive, interactive campaigns, such as Coca-Cola’s #TakeATasteNow that enabled consumers to interact with AR visuals on a huge OOH screen, earning a voucher that let them claim a free bottle of Coke Zero.

14 examples of augmented reality brand experiences

In Kyiv, Ukraine, Maybelline promoted its Falsies Surreal mascara with a giant AR mirror that allowed visitors to virtually try on mascara and appear on a huge screen overhead. This kind of interactive real-world experience couldn’t be achieved through FOOH, no matter how clever the creative might be.

Now, not every brand has the budget to accomplish something of this scale, and another point in favour of FOOH is that it’s something of a playing field-leveller: a smaller brand might have an extremely compelling and creative idea that could be accomplished with AR or an elaborate digital billboard but lack the resources to make it work.

However, some clever video editing can bring that idea to life for the brand much more easily, and again – it would succeed at grabbing attention and creating a stir all the same.

The reality conundrum: convincing, but not too convincing

FOOH wouldn’t be as effective as it is without the possibility that the campaign could be real – like the Maybelline tube train eyelashes, the best FOOH concepts are a little outrageous but plausible. If the idea were too ridiculous, it wouldn’t capture the imagination in the same way.

The need to tread the line between reality and imagination can sometimes work against FOOH. Some dislike FOOH on the basis that there’s no real commitment behind it: a brand isn’t truly executing a great marketing stunt, it’s simply visualising one. The fact that FOOH is lower-effort than true OOH can also make it seem ‘cheap’ – the brand wasn’t willing to do something truly elaborate and outrageous, but it wanted you to believe it was.

There is also the risk that those who believed a FOOH stunt was real may feel cheated when they discover that it wasn’t, although historically, consumers have been just as likely to express admiration for the editing skill behind a particularly realistic piece.

However, an over-saturation of FOOH ads would likely cause them to lose their magic – again, the concept relies on some level of believability. Most viewers are willing to enter into the spirit of FOOH and be entertained by the idea of Big Ben in a puffer jacket or giant handbags on wheels, but too much FOOH might cause them to feel taken for granted and ruin the suspension of disbelief.

Ultimately, the power of FOOH rests in good OOH: if brands weren’t executing interesting, novel and imaginative OOH campaigns, there would be no reason for FOOH to seem even remotely plausible. OOH can also achieve things that FOOH can’t, not just with its scale and reach, but by bringing surprise and humour into the everyday – as opposed to on social media where humour is often at risk of fading into the background because it’s in ample supply.

With all of that said, in the age of social media there’s no reason not to indulge in FOOH to bring a creative but outlandish concept to life if this can be done effectively. As with any choice of marketing medium, it all depends on what the goals are for the campaign; if social buzz and conversation is among them, FOOH has a proven track record in this regard. But it’s important to use it sparingly for maximum impact.

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