How Canva Disrupted Traditional OOH Advertising And Why It Worked
- The New Look of Billboard Advertising
Traditional billboard ads aim to impress. Canva’s billboards aim to connect.
For years, out-of-home (OOH) advertising has been defined by polished visuals, catchy slogans and big ad budgets. But Canva ‘s latest OOH Campaign flipped the script, reminding us of how far creativity can go in refreshing a saturated advertising medium.
In mid-June, Canva partnered with Stink Studios and OMD to launch the “Creative Chaos” OOH campaign around Waterloo Station in London. The witty, self-aware out-of-home campaign featured cheeky, oversized billboards that poked fun at everyday client-agency frustrations. This transformed the station into a playground of inside jokes and marketing truths.
Some of the notable billboards included one that was captioned “When ‘make the logo bigger’ goes a bit too far,” which featured a Canva logo floating outside the frame and another one captioned “Turns out the 16x9 was meant to be 9x6,” highlighting Canva’s magic resize tool.
With this campaign, Canva did not just advertise, it reimagined what billboard marketing can be. And in doing so, it made billboard marketing feel fresh, relatable and impossible to ignore. In this blog, we will explore how Canva’s campaign shifted traditional billboard marketing and the effective lessons brands can learn from its approach.
Why Canva’s Approach Worked: Key Takeaways
1. Disrupting Traditional Billboard Advertising
Traditional OOH advertising tends to be broad, polished and brand-centered. Canva’s approach flips this by placing the audience front and center, embracing their design mishaps and the imperfections, in a humorous, relatable way. Instead of mass messaging, Canva opts for smart, situational storytelling. Their billboards wink at every designers who's ever gotten frustrating client feedback, embodying Canva’s core promise: giving users control over their brand's visual identity.
Key insight: Your billboard does not need a big photoshoot budget to make an impact. What you need is a big idea that resonates with your audience on a personal level.
2. Targeted, Industry-Inside Messaging
Niche-focused messaging is more effective than broad targeting. It personalizes your marketing specifically to the audience, making it relatable and addressing their specific pain points. Targeting a broader audience does not equate to connection. Canva’s billboards spoke directly to creatives, designers, marketers and agencies. By playing with their niche audience’s frustrations and inside jokes it made the campaign feel personal and fostered deep connections with its audience. Speaking directly and smartly to a smaller, relevant group can be far more effective than trying to reach everyone.
Key insight: OOH advertising doesn’t need to shout, speak clearly to the right people, tap into their language, references, and inside jokes, and you’ll build more genuine connections.
3. Product Features through Creative Storytelling
Smart advertising shows rather than tells. In this campaign, Canva infused product features, such as Magic Resize, Background Remover, and Brand Kit, directly into the narrative of each ad. Instead of listing the product features, they wrapped them in relatable jokes and humorous, real-life creative mishaps. This approach is not just clever, it’s functional marketing that positions the brand as someone who finally understands their workflow.
Key insight: Don’t just promote features; find clever ways to incorporate storytelling that reflects real life. This will enable the audience to be entertained without overwhelming them with salesy feature promos.
Canva’s OOH campaign was more than a clever execution but a case study in modern, audience-centered marketing. In a landscape that has long been ruled by glossy high-budget visuals and generic messaging, Canva proved that thinking outside the box, being relatable to a niche audience captures attention. By speaking directly to their niche audience, embedding product features into real-life scenarios and breaking the traditional OOH mold, they were able to spark conversations.
For brands, the lesson is clear: great advertising isn’t just about promoting but connecting. In this oversaturated media landscape, connection is the most disruptive force of all.
At Coral Communications, we believe the future of marketing lies in sparking conversations and meaningful connections. We help brands create bold and audience-first campaigns that resonate.
