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Oct 11, 2024

How We Captured the Essence of the OBIE Awards


A Slow Clap Case Study

Background

For more than a decade,Trademark has partnered with Slow Clap on hundreds of video projects for clients like Slack, Adobe, Webflow, and Appian. So when Trademark called us to collaborate on creating video content for the OBIE Awards — a celebration of the best ads in the out of home (OOH) advertising industry, aka the “Oscars“ of the OOH advertising world— we jumped at the chance! 

The OBIE Awards takes place annually and is part of a conference organized by the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA). Owing to Covid, the event had been held remotely for the past two years and 2023 was the year it was coming back, in person and better than ever… so the bar was set.

The Obie Awards video opening title card.
The scope of the project was twofold—to create a kick-off video for the event as a whole (the OAAA conference) and then a second kick-off video for the OBIE awards. On top of this, we were tasked with creating the video content to announce the award categories and winners, of which there were many.

The kick-off video for the general session had to explore the theme “breakthrough” and needed to use images from current award nominees to garner excitement and anticipation for the event. The kick-off video for the OBIEs, and subsequent awardee videos, explored a completely different design motif and had to present each nominee and then awardee efficiently, due to the amount of awards.

“This organization is the most established organization in America for people who specifically work in the field of Out of Home Advertising. OBIEs are the Tony’s or Oscars for those who do Out-of-Home Advertising.”

- Daniel Lichtenberg, Creative Director at Slow Clap



The breakthrough logo used for the OAAA video.

Approach

We held extensive meetings with the various stakeholders involved in the event to understand the event theme breakthrough and how they wanted it to be incorporated into their branding and the event as whole. We knew we were going to use motion graphics in the kick-off video, but we needed to be aligned on how. We brought on graphic designer Larry Brown to assist and create the vision.

For the award introduction section, we also needed to work with the stakeholders to create a style that captured the essence of the OBIEs and the city of Nashville where they were being held. Again, Larry was the mastermind of this section and built on their use of existing branding of neon lights to create movement throughout with lights turning on and off.
An out of home ad in Times Square featuring Netflix’s release of ‘Wednesday’. This won an OBIE Gold Award 2023.

Execution

Our team created all of the video content for what was a long and multimedia-intensive event and, as with any large video project, it didn’t come without its challenges.

Once we had the content organized the next challenge was the entertainment aspect. The people attending the awards show were masterminds of advertising— they were expecting a show! But we were working with very limited constraints because of the amount of awardees we had to present in a short amount of time— how can we do this in an entertaining, slick way? We had to figure out a way to make static images, like billboards, feel dynamic and interesting yet flow in a connective way. We were essentially producing a slideshow and we all know slideshows can be a little, well, dry. So we really leaned on the design aspect to keep things moving and fun. Working with Larry, we embedded movement through motion graphics into the award-announcement format, so the neon light would turn on or the guitar would shake. This allowed us to keep things moving while keeping eyes on the branding.
Algorand Times Square Takeover for an Earth Day activation. This won OBIE Gold Award 2023.
The final challenge was ensuring consistent audience engagement and visual unity throughout the event. In the kick-off video for the entire conference, we used snippets of previous winners and current awardees to give the audience a taste of what was to come. We used images of people out on the streets, watching these feats in advertising, to demonstrate that lockdown is over, we’re out and about! We brought everything together with a cyclical-motion motif of the OAAA logo.

For the OBIE awards section, given the Nashville location, we cleverly incorporated the saloon country vibe into transitions with lights turning on and off, together with sizzles from said neon lights. We really created the atmosphere of a downtown Nashville saloon where creatives meet after a hard day at the office.

Two people looking at an out of home advertisement.

“We started the OBIEs project with a really solid understanding of what the client wanted and what we were going to create for them. More than anything, it was fun to work with the team. Everyone is super knowledgeable, nice, and willing to get things done!”

- Larry Brown, Graphic Designer

 

An epic OOH campaign at Times Square featuring Avatar: The Way of Water reunited audiences with Pandora. This won OBIE Gold and Platinum Award 2023.

Result

We created impactful visuals that thrived on the massive screens used at the conference. The combination of the awardee footage, together with our graphic and motion designs helped maintain excitement and pace as the awards were announced. The end result was a captivating presentation that held the attention of an audience of 760 people, showcasing our ability to deliver high-quality content.

“If we didn't have Slow Clap, we wouldn’t be able to pull off the client's vision.”

- Stephanie Tejada-Feinman, Lead Producer, Trademark

 
Need to wow your audience? Reach out to Slow Clap for your next video project.

 

Videos to watch:

Opener Animatics

OBIE Judges GOLD  

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