Outbrain
Brand campaign

Advertising   |   Branding   |   Digital

Rethinking Outbrain’s positioning

Outbrain, a leading digital ad platform for the open web, excels at delivering high-ROI, attention-grabbing ads at the bottom of news articles. Recently, they rolled out innovative, cross-funnel ad solutions built right into articles, featuring dynamic options like video and high-impact ads. They challenged us to create a campaign that showcased these new capabilities and, more importantly, elevated their brand. Our bold strategy shook up advertisers’ perceptions, sparking a dynamic, multi-pronged campaign that boosted their profile and offerings.

CHALLENGE
Get media agencies and brands to see Outbrain not just as a data-driven, lower-funnel ad solution, but as a powerhouse across the entire funnel.

INSIGHT
Our in-depth interviews and competitive landscape analysis revealed that advertisers’ perceptions of the company needed to be dramatically shifted in order for them to fully embrace Outbrain’s new solutions.

APPROACH
We created a bold campaign urging advertisers to rethink everything they knew about Outbrain—and digital advertising itself—centered around the tagline “Rethink What’s Possible.”

BRAND CAMPAIGN
Avoiding overly complex descriptions of Outbrain’s new product capabilities, we crafted punchy, clever headlines to grab attention and spark curiosity. Our revamped graphic designs infused movement and energy into the Outbrain brand while spotlighting their stunning new ad placements.

ONYX CAMPAIGN
We further designed a sister campaign for their new premiere offering, Onyx, the product that exemplified Outbrain’s new positioning.

Outbrain’s creative team unleashed the new creative across all channels and touch points. To mark Onyx’s anniversary, they dominated Times Square Tower with an epic, building-covering video display.

"SJI brought several different benefits to the table, all of which were a very pleasant surprise. They were able to expertly grasp our highly-technical business quickly, and surface the key messages that would help us accomplish our goals. Their process and execution was extremely fast and seamless — they were able to operate independently, and make my life much easier in the process. Most importantly, the creatives they provided for our campaign far exceeded our expectations. They gave us a huge number of options to work with, which we wouldn't have been able to formulate ourselves. SJI helped us think outside of the box and quickly and easily create an exciting campaign concept which our company is so proud of!" Katie Secret CVP, Global Head of Marketing at Outbrain

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