How advertising matters: Outdoor media strategies for increased engagement with creative climate change messages

Amid many contemporary communication strategies, creative advertising approaches are clearly powerful tools. Yet out-of-home (OOH) or outdoor media (OM) often receives little attention in advertising research, particularly when used in the context of climate change, sustainability and environmental issues. This research helps to bridge the gap with experimentation and analysis OOH or OM in the context of environmental messages by exploring how size, type (static versus mobile), placement, and content on advertisement engagement may shape engagement. We use data collected in a real-world field experiment in 2022–2023, garnered through two waves of data collection using QR codes and clickthrough rates on mobile smartphones. We found that larger advertisements outperformed smaller ones with the same message, that exterior bus advertisements garnered more engagement than interior advertisements, and static billboards were more engaging than the transit or bus advertisements with the same messages. Furthermore, we found that general climate change advertisement messaging gained more engagement than more specific sustainable fashion advertising messages that linked to climate change. Overall, we found that creative advertising through OOH/OM can be immensely powerful and effective in raising awareness and garnering engagement or even persuading people to take action within a wider context of advertising/PR work and climate science-policy processes and institutions facing influential carbon-based industry and climate change countermovement pressures. This experimental research has been designed and executed in order to help provide insights for ongoing campaigns for enhanced climate, environment and sustainability awareness and action. In the context of ongoing research to understand the utility of advertising – by carbon-based industry, by groups seeking to inspire greater pro-environmental behavior – our experimental work provides insights and implications for academics and practitioners who seek to shape and influence pro-climate awareness and behavioral action. Together, these dynamics shape ongoing challenges of communication, (mis/dis)information-sharing, education and literacy in contemporary society.