The Challenge

Ordnance Survey is iconic amongst their loyal, older audience who have a strong affinity with their paper maps and the OS brand. BUT…

This was the brand's relevance 20 years ago - I mean who buys paper maps?

Worse still, this audience is (quite literally) dying off.

So, we needed to break out of our echo chamber in order to build a new emotive connection with a whole new generation or risk losing our relevance altogether. Oh, and without alienating our heartland (who actually buy stuff).

Key Insight

Gen-Z don’t listen to brands, are chronically online and more indoorsy. However, they do listen to their favourite influencers, and respond to content that is more fun.

We needed to shift the brand away front their traditional marketing funnel, so we gamified the outdoors; using influencers to inspire a new audience to take a break from their devices.

OS says Get Outside. Gen-Z says Touch Grass.

Touch Grass | a figurative expression to suggest that someone should spend time outdoors, disconnect from technology, and engage with the physical world, specifically by being in nature or getting fresh air.

The Big Idea

To get this to work, we needed to make a whole new Gen-Z audience sit up and take notice of OS, and get our core audience to come along for the journey.

Meet the insiders. Our new target - chronically online, and disgruntled by the older generation.

We used this generation and mindset difference to our advantage:

- It’s two worlds colliding.

- It’s the generation gap.

- There's plenty of tension.

But the beauty of the Great British outdoors unites and transcends. 

Keeping Campaign Momentum Beyond The Content Series

Following the commercial success of our new strategy and creative, we were allocated additional budget to extend the summer campaign.

Building Physical Availability

Trig Points are the perfect OS currency - they actually own them, and they are everywhere! They were used by the Ordnance Survey in order to determine the exact shape of the country and are now a good marker for walking routes.

The majority of people joining the livestream on TiKTok don’t have a clue what a trig point is or that they even exist, but they will now. 

In reality, it's a big old boring lump of concrete.

That’s what made the campaign so perfect. Turning something so mundane into valuable content and an entertaining challenge. This format is a huge trend for our new Gen-Z audience, whilst the Outsiders are Trig point experts.

Insiders can use their digital detective skills our Outsiders (just like our experts in the Touch Grass Challenge) will feel empowered by sharing their knowledge of OS and Trig points. Watch this space for the final content!

We need to stand for something with a confident voice and lead the category.

We can’t just tell people who we are, we need to live it. The media landscape has changed, so, we need to shift from a ‘brand to consumer’ model, to a ‘member to member’ approach.

Our challenge is to build a sense of belonging amongst our core audience and a reason to buy into the brand for a new generation (not just a collection of products) -The Outsiders were born. 

Celebrating a group of people who obsess over a route to make sure it ends with the perfect pint. Being nowhere is a good thing, especially when it’s with the people that matter. Trips and slips are fine because we can laugh about it later. Sleeping bag baffle scores matter. Blisters are a mark of honour and cool is a winter wild swim.

Lead Strategic & Creative Agency (all in house)

Brand Toolkits

Strategic Positioning

Social-first Content Creation

Product Photography

AV Production

Influencer Campaigns

E-commerce Strategy

Brand Toolkit

Content Playbook

YouTube, Meta & TikTok

Corporate Comms