Adverts are telling you a story this month in London, and for once it might be an idea to pause and listen. That's because Google has taken over 175 Digital Out of Home displays (DOOH) -- marketing screens dotted across the city -- to showcase its Google Search app for iOS and voice control by delivering hyperlocal mini-guides to the area of the city they are located in.

Before you start shouting at digital billboards in the street, the latter control mechanism is still confined to your device.


However the Google Outside campaign -- launched last week and ongoing for a six-week period -- is designed to reflect what consumers can achieve with the technology.

So far, sounds like any other marketing campaign.

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But what this means on the ground is that the screens (including ones in 15 major Underground stations) will be automatically delivering real time, relevant information about the area you're in -- or, as the digital advertising agency behind it R/GA London put it to Wired.co.uk, in their best marketing voice, delivering "beautifully human stories founded upon immensely powerful real time data".

Show don't tell is the philosophy James Temple, R/GA London


As an example, if you're near a Tube station with links to East London, the screen might ask and deliver answers to the following: "What is bisque", "compare crayfish to lobster", "what time does Billingsgate fish market open", "how do I get there", "set the alarm for 4am". Or if you're at King's Cross you might get a screen telling you what the weather in Paris is right at that moment, followed by opening times at the Louvre -- in case you fancy a spontaneous trip to Paris on the Eurostar. According to Google and R/GA London, it's capable of generating 3,000 of these unique "stories" everyday.

The point, VP, Managing Director and Executive Creative Director at R/GA London James Temple tells us, is to use data as a catalyst for storytelling -- "and that's pretty rare". "Show don't tell is the philosophy," he adds.

How to crunch city data

The agency has been working closely with Google to create the campaign, delivering a trial run last October on around 100 displays over a four-week period. Google's engineers, together with its marketing department, Creative Lab and R/GA London, worked on the best way to weave Google's voice in with five key APIs, to deliver information that is timely, and most essentially, helpful to anyone who might be happening past.

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Those APIs include directions, places, maps, movie and entertainment and weather. So if it's bad weather where you are, the display might direct you to the nearest cinema to shield from the rain on a grey Sunday afternoon. The idea is to crunch together all that data in the backend, to create constantly updating and relevant "story cards" (there might be around five in a series).


The backend works out a local circumference to ensure all the stories being delivered are truly neighbourhood ones

"Points of interest, curated landmarks and tourist attractions -- we've crunched through all of this to allow us to create a pattern where we can create automated stories as well as some pre-canned stories," explains Temple. "So you might get coffee shop suggestions in the morning, and a gallery opening in the afternoon."

The team at R/GA London and Google have an interface where they can see those thousands of data points being pulled together in real time. They can zoom in to one of the spots at a bus shelter or tube station to see what narrative sequence is currently being displayed. Then, if there is something particularly timely and relevant they want to flag up, they can manually write a different "story card", and a new narrative will be automatically generated from it.

The whole system took about two months to create and only existing infrastructure was used. The results needed to be simple and elegant -- something truly helpful that would suit a tourist as much as it might a Londoner. Temple gives the example of walking past the London Eye and seeing its height displayed on one of the nearby screens. "I didn't know how tall it was," he tells us, "and that then becomes a conversation starter, which so much of advertising is meant to be. It's a beautifully simple story that's useful."

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According to Google it also stands to reach 150 million views across the six-week period.

There's that complexity but you have to make it beautiful and simple Graham Bednash, Google's Consumer Marketing Director

Changing the face of digital advertising

Whether or not something like this actually hits the spot though, and transforms the digital display from a mere flash of marketing spiel to something worthwhile, is down to the tone of the message being relayed.

Google says it worked carefully to ensure it was not didactic, nor behaving as the definitive guide -- something that probably wouldn't go down too well with a Londoner walking past. It had to be quirky and fun, not too serious. Google's Consumer Marketing Director Graham Bednash describes it as being "like a physical version of the Doodle". "I think there's a lot of affection for Google when they do things like that," he told Wired.co.uk. "You're trying to do it with a little bit of humour and charm. The Doodles you see, it had to have that quality to it -- a little smile at the end of it.

Google is doing something quite cute and generous in the city, rather than being in your face, telling you what to do. "There's that complexity but you have to make it beautiful and simple."

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R/GA London worked closely with Google's own writers to nail that tone, and make sure it sounded like a friendly bit of assistance rather than a travel guide. It helps that the team has secured so many spots around the city. It means that wherever you go, if you come across another one the story is likely to be very different from the last.

It's easy to tune out traditional advertising, we are so used to seeing variations of the same images, messages and stylings being displayed in the digital space. There was a lot of excitement around the DOOH displays when they were first launched. But that felt short lived as another series of scantily clad women and drinks brands began to dominate. Google is well postioned to do deliver something novel in that space.

I think people have had some bad experiences in the past with voice on other platforms Graham Bednash, Google


Like the displays, voice is also a relatively new technology.

And although Bednash says downloads of the iOS Google Search app have been great, like any other new technology it is taking time for people to get used to making the most of it on a regular basis. "Everyday the technology gets better," says Bednash, "and I think we're at that tipping point now where people are moving more toward voice. The search app is focusing on voice to give people an interesting way into it. I just think people have had some bad experiences in the past on other platforms and they haven't really tried it -- we just want to show them it's out there, give it a go."

While the project is only due to run for a few weeks, if people find it to be truly valuable Google might consider continuing with it or expanding into other cities (London was deemed the most digitally ripe spot to trial it). One day we might even see it with voice capabilities of its own. Altough it's hard to see how that could ever work in a noisy city, we have the technology. It's just a matter of changing the status quo, and that's what Google is trying to do with this campaign.