Welcome to Mediaweek’s CMO Spotlight.
This time, we catch up with oOh!media veteran, and Chief Product & Marketing Officer, Bel Harper.
It’s been a busy 12 months at oOh!media, where Bel has overseen the launch of the ‘Summer of oOh!’ and navigated a landscape where screens are everywhere, yet attention remains a finite currency.
We dig into her belief that creativity remains the biggest lever for ROI and how the industry is wrong to count classic billboards out.
The brand identity
Mediaweek: What’s the piece of work from the past 12 months that best captures how your brand wants to show up right now?
Bel: Without a doubt our ‘Summer of oOh!’ campaign. It captured exactly who we are as a business and how we want to be seen – playful, relatable, and impactful.
The oOh!media team leaning into the visual language
Our brilliant team pushed the brand into a new gear, dialling up our signature brand codes, leaning into a more expressive visual language, and creating a presence that wasn’t just seen, it was felt. We showed up in the moments that mattered most for our clients where they shopped, where they travelled, and where they played.
It was a campaign built around real human movement and real summer behaviour, perfectly aligned with our retail strength heading into Christmas, our airport dominance during peak travel, and the launch of our Beaches Network.
MW: Where is your marketing budget working hardest today?
BH: On moments of education, inspiration and connection. I have an incredible team who instinctively know how to make our customers feel something special while inspiring them with the possibilities of what Out of Home can do. It’s the extra and thoughtful touches that create the magic and build the deepest connections.
oOh!media claimed airport dominance during peak travel
Balancing brand and performance
MW: What’s changed most in how you balance brand and performance?
BH: As an OOH and B2B business, brand and performance are inseparable. Our content is the advertising. Our role is to inspire action while staying deeply connected to our customer’s needs. For agencies and marketers, our brand shows up in the experience we deliver and NPS is the clearest signal of whether we’re landing it. Performance metrics are ultimately market share outcomes.
MW: Which channel, platform or partnership is currently over-delivering for you?
BH: Our content partnerships with news and live sport are absolutely over-delivering. They give brands a unique way to connect with audiences in high-value environments, and the results we’re seeing are unprecedented for both brand and performance.
In office towers, across lobbies and lifts, we have high-frequency, high-attention moments with business decision-makers every single day. Content and utility make these environments incredibly sticky.
oOh!media makes its mark in high-frequency, high-attention moments
In Qantas Lounges, the impact is next level. We’re engaging with some of the most influential, high wealth decision-makers for more than 40 minutes, at scale. It’s a powerful combination of context, quality and time and brands want to be part of it.
The role of creativity and tech
MW: What role does creativity play in your commercial strategy right now?
BH: Creativity is the most under-leveraged opportunity in OOH right now. The formula is simple: context, simplicity, bold colour and unmistakable branding, yet too often we are given a still from a TVC that’s ill-fitting to the OOH format, with copy you can’t read and little testing behind it.
Creativity accounts for more than 40% of a campaign’s ROI, and when brands get it right, the impact is immediate. That’s why we continue to invest in our creative innovation hub, POLY, who are the most trusted experts in OOH creative, to help guide clients toward work that earns more attention and delivers stronger results.
MW: How are you using data, tech or AI in a way that genuinely improves the work?
BH: As the largest OOH media company, we have seven different formats and multiple customer segments, so tech and AI are critical enablers in simplifying our workflows. We are applying it to guide our frontline teams and speed up how we deliver to meet our customers needs. It’s making OOH smarter.
Data from Coles 360 and Westpac Data X is mapped to every oOh! location and indexed against hundreds of category buyers. It’s the smartest way to plan, and by targeting category buyers it’s twice as effective as demo targeting.
We’re using AI in creative testing and in developing tools that streamline how we respond to briefs. I’m excited by what we’re building. Anything that makes us simpler, faster and smarter ultimately lifts the work and the outcomes for everyone involved.
Industry outlook
MW: What does a ‘good agency partner’ look like for you in 2026?
BH: One who focuses beyond cheap reach and blunt metrics. One who cares where and how their client’s brand shows up. They care about quality, context and creativity, the formulas of OOH success.
MW: What’s the toughest call you’ve had to make as a CMO?
BH: I’ve only been in this role for 12 months, but saying YES to four major events in four months. Our inaugural CMO regional retreat in Daylesford and the Summer of oOh! series – Travel, spend and play was a huge undertaking. We wanted to showcase why we are not just the biggest, but we’re the most valuable partner for our clients. It pushed our in-house resourcing to the limit, but it was worth it.
MW: What’s one misconception about your brand or category that your team is actively trying to unpick through marketing?
BH: That classic billboards are dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. Brands are rediscovering the power of 100% share of time and the long-term performance that comes from owning a location, a moment, or a piece of real-world real estate your competitor can’t take.
CMO Bel Harper says classic billboards are well and truly alive
Classic OOH delivers durable, compounding impact. It builds memory, it builds mental availability, and it builds brand. The world’s biggest and most successful marketers know this, just look at Apple.
MW: Looking ahead, where will your next big marketing bet come from?
BH: With product, data and creative expertise at the core, we’re laser-focused on the fundamentals that drive performance: high-quality assets, data-led targeting and creative that’s built for attention.
The landscape is shifting, and as the largest OOH operator we have a major role to play in investing what drives performance, not just what can supplement audience decline. It feels less like betting and more like doubling down on a solid and proven recipe.