DTC brands are increasing out-of-home marketing

OOH tied to retail expansion

DTC body care brand Curie tried its hand at OOH advertising for the first time in August, Founder and CEO Sarah Moret said. The brand’s outdoor media buy includes seven trucks wrapped in Curie branding circulating around large Walmart hubs such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth and Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart is headquartered. The positioning was intentional, as the brand recently rolled out in many of Walmart’s stores.

“In talking with other DTC brand founders, we’ve heard how important it is for a brand to support its wholesale operations with marketing—which is why we decided to support our Walmart rollout with our first out-of-home brand awareness campaign. To date, we’ve relied on digital advertising—but the timing felt right to make a big splash in real life,” Moret said in an email.

Curie allocated 10% of its marketing budget from August through the end of this year to the OOH campaign, she added. Curie handled the creative in-house and teamed up with Adgile, the media agency, to coordinate the trucks.

“Out-of-home is such a perfect complement as a channel to support a retail opening or existing store openings because you can be hyperlocal, you can target around the store,” Rappaport said. 

Christina Kao, co-founder of DTC manicure brand Le Mini Macaron, said that her company started to include OOH advertising in its marketing mix when its products hit stores such as Target in early 2022. Now, Le Mini Macaron puts “anywhere from 15-25% of total marketing spend against OOH” when it runs a campaign, she said.

“I believe for a brand that goes from DTC to offline, it’s really important for consumers to start to see your brand in physical spaces (beyond just digital, social and influencer spaces),” Kao said in an email. “It makes sense if the brand is in hundreds of points of sale (physical store locations) for the advertising to be physically present outside.”