Phantom Blog

The lemonade stand has a long history dating back 130 years.

A symbol of entrepreneurship, and undoubtedly delicious refreshment on a hot summers day.

The idea instantly conjures feelings of warmth, excitement and refreshment and sums up the emotions that come with summer, call it a vibe.

When we think about posters, we can all pin-point a thought or feeling and are transported to a time in our minds.

For some, it may be a bedroom wall, rock gods, sporting legends and fashion icons cover bedroom walls the world over. When we take posters outside, the feeling doesn’t change, only the audience. They’re still communicating a message.

Powerful, thought provoking creativity is what sets apart the good from the great, and while posters have a power of their own, when combined with outside-the-box creative elements, magic can happen.

In a sea of visual stimuli, a creative poster stands out and grabs the attention of viewers.

Whether it’s through bold colours, striking imagery, or unique design elements, creativity ensures that the poster doesn’t blend into the background, but stands out on the street.

As consumers, we don’t want to be marketed to.

Times are changing, we want and need to feel a part of something.

We’re tired of being bombarded by cheap deals, discounted offers and skippable ads blowing up our digital feeds at every opportunity.

We want connection, authenticity, driven by creativity to deliver something engaging memorable and exciting.

Long White delivered.

Weigh the Eiffel Tower.

That’s how much paper our Auckland team recycled last year.

Phantom runs one of the country’s largest printing operations. Every week we fire up the presses to print enough posters to fill more than 6,500 frames. Then we do the same the following week, and the next one too.

It’s a helluva lot of paper when you add it up over the year.

How much, exactly? Well, last year we recycled 10,208 tonnes of paper and cardboard from our Auckland operations alone.

That’s roughly the same weight as the Eiffel Tower and equivalent to 95 adult blue whales.

Weighing up the impact.

Phantom’s partnership with Oji Fibre Solutions means all the posters from our northern operations are collected when campaigns are completed, along with the other waste paper from our business.

Oji Fibre Solutions then ensures the waste is reincarnated as new paper products.

Diverting this paper from landfill has multiple benefits. Not only does it reduce pressure on forests, but the planet is spared the climate-ruining methane produced as paper breaks down in landfills.

And of course, there’s less pressure to open new landfills in Aotearoa’s precious countryside.

While we currently only have recycling stats from our Auckland operations, we’re working on compiling the equivalent numbers from our Wellington and South Island teams. We’re pretty confident we’ll be adding a few more blue whales to the total.

Watch this space.

Committed to Carbon Zero and beyond.

Recycling paper is just one of the ways Phantom is delivering on its promise of sustainable outdoor advertising. We also use plant-based inks and submit all our operations to rigorous auditing.

In 2021 we first achieved net Carbon Zero certification from the extremely meticulous auditors at Toitū Envirocare. This audit process is being repeated in 2024, and we look forward to sharing the results with you

Keen to find out more about how we all work together to make outdoor advertising a better deal for the planet?

Get in touch.

The Takeover Winners: Part 2 – Auckland.

With the continuing rise of the digital age, one thing we can all agree on is that we are bombarded by potential scams, daily.

If your inbox is full, check your texts. Full there too? Ring ring, scam incoming…

Enter The Takeover winners: Part 2 – Auckland City.

Re:scam by Netsafe pitched us a detailed look at an insane campaign, utilising our super-sized street level frames, neons, and creative design that showcased their AI Chatbot communicating with multiple message headlines from genuine scammers.

Taking the form of multiple humanoids, the face of the AI chatbot sits centre stage with a clear and important message, ‘Keep Scammers Busy’.

Using neons to communicate the ever-present streams of messages that we have unfortunately become accustomed to receiving, Netsafe doubled down on the messaging behind the campaign, visually highlighting the sheer volume of noise entering our brains.

The clickbait headlines with spelling errors and all are far too familiar.

So, what does Re:scam do?

Simple.

When you get a scam email, forward it to me@rescam.org, and a bot sneakily disguises itself as a human and strings the scammer along on a realistic journey. How good.

High-impact location, insane idea, epic execution.

Re:scam has proudly wasted over 5 years of scammers’ time.

Here in New Zealand we’ve been working with some insanely talented artists to create one-off murals that support our clients’ campaigns.

It’s been fascinating to see how New Yorkers are getting in on the act, too.

American shave brand Harry’s absolutely smashed its sales targets with their recent, award-winning collaboration with monstrous artist Kevin Lyons.

So what’s the appeal of the HPA format, and how do you create a showstopper?

The clue is in the name: Hand-Painted

Whether you’re selling shave kits, an indie film or a beer brand, Hand Painted
Advertising (HPA) is about bringing a human touch to the world of commerce. You need accomplished artists to bring these ideas to life. (Spoiler alert: Phantom knows where to find them.)

Then you need to give your artist a canvas – which is another way of saying, a public space with the scale and visibility to capture a lot of eyeballs. Phantom has a selection of super sites that will get you tens of thousands of views per day.

But if you stop there, you’d be missing a trick.

Smart marketers leverage the impact by connecting their HPA installation to other touch points, from product merch to social media. That’s where Phantom’s poster frames add to the story. They complement your mural, and you can use them to carry the more specific details and value-adds that turn awareness into action.

In the case of Harry’s New York campaign, the custom artwork on the wall mirrored their capsule collection’s packaging. Then there was a QR code that sent viewers to the brand’s online store.

Here’s how it all came together, courtesy of US ad publication The Drum:

“This campaign is an example of how place-based OOH can be leveraged to generate powerful metrics in the digital sphere. This single-wall, content- driven, artist-collaboration campaign garnered significant engagement on-site and online, ultimately resulting in the limited-edition set selling out completely and becoming a collector’s item.

“This campaign outperformed social media metric expectations with a 7.3% engagement rate on a mural campaign recap video, reaching 7,500+ accounts, garnering 8,000+ views, and securing 500+ post engagements. And that was all from Colossal’s Instagram metrics.”

Like the look of those numbers? We do too.

‘Flora for the concrete jungle’ is what Phantom is all about. With our brand and creative partners, we bring art to walls, and deliver the sales that make everything viable.

If you’ve got a big idea for your brand, we’d love to take it to the street.

Late last year, we launched a one of a kind competition.

Nope, not the data harvesting, Instagram sharing kind that we’ll all unfortunately been accustomed to.

Something a little more celebratory, something bigger.

Little old Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud, at the edge of the world, boasts way more than good food, good wine and good people. Whilst the epicentre of creativity can often be linked to London and New York, New Zealand undoubtedly holds in own.

As a nation, one thing we don’t always do well is to celebrate our wins, a la Tall Poppy Syndrome.

We wanted to change that, with 100s upon 100s of epic brands and businesses based out of, and producing in New Zealand, we wanted to give them the opportunity to showcase their brands on our network. Labs style.

The rules?

Be an NZ owned business and pitch us your dream campaign idea that would feature in large scale, as part of our epic Labs builds.

We were inundated by entries, from all industries.

Small to big, the ideas we saw took us days to work through. Multiple full scale team meetings ensued, fuelled by coffee and passion and a few heated discussions.

In the end, we came up with 3 winners. Hand picked by the team.

The judging criteria came down to this; which entrant took what Phantom Billstickers does, and implemented their idea seamlessly onto our network.

Christchurch Winner: Garage Project.

Garage Project provided us with a detailed pitch, focussing on our network in Christchurch.

They showed a clear understanding of how best to utilise what Phantom does best.

With the focus on the growing market for their brand in Christchurch, they took full advantage of proximity mapping (we put you where your target audience is).

Audiences, and marketing aside. They came in HOT with the creative. Utilising all aspects of the Manchester Street site to work together in unison to convey a clear message.

Using the landscape billboard up top to feature what can only be described as one of your mates pouring out a cold one, they blended the bottom frames, utilising clear, on brand typography and an image which has us grabbing the nearest beverage to quench our thirst.

As a final touch of magic, and really bringing it all together, GP utilised our recyclable pop-out material to showcase the beauty of the pour from the can, adding both impact and depth to the overall campaign.

Job well done GP, this ones a beast.

Heading to the nearest GP dispensary to grab a 0% thirst quencher.