Campaigns

When Glasgow’s real women became quiet icons on OOH

This campaign executed across Ocean Outdoor screens in Glasgow, UK, featured works by Scottish contemporary artist Gerard M Burns, who painted 15 women from across Glasgow under an exhibition he called Mother Glasgow.

Published

March 9, 2026

M4G Bureau

For the past five months, large-format portraits of women have been quietly appearing across Ocean Outdoor’s screens in Glasgow. No brand logo. No campaign tagline. Just striking, photorealistic oil paintings, and if you were walking past one on a Tuesday morning, coffee in hand, half-present, you would have had no idea what you were looking at or why it was there. You might have glanced up, seen a painted portrait staring back at you. Not an ad. Not a product. Just a face. And for a second, stopped.

That was entirely the point.

The works are by Scottish contemporary artist Gerard M Burns, who painted 15 women from across Glasgow under an exhibition he called Mother Glasgow, after the city’s unofficial anthem. Gerard wanted, in his own words, to tell the stories of the women shaping Glasgow today. The women come from all over, a violinist leading the Royal Scottish National Orchestra who moved from Japan, a nurse from Nigeria who arrived three years ago, an Iranian engineer, a Spanish language school owner with over 250 students, a Catholic nun running a hospice in Clydebank, a Chinese trade liaison at Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. Real people, real lives, painted in oils and put up on commercial screens like they belonged there.

And here is the thing they did. Gerard ran these portraits for five months without explaining them. No context, no countdown, no reveal. Just faces appearing across the city, in between the usual stream of ads and promotions, asking nothing of the people walking past. Most campaigns cannot resist telling you what to feel. This one just showed up and waited.

This campaign really stands out because of its simple, disarming act of putting a human face on a commercial screen and daring people to look at it properly. By the time the full gallery exhibition opened at The Glasgow Collective on International Women’s Day on March 8th, Glasgow had already been living with these women without knowing their names. That gap between seeing a face and knowing the story behind it is what made people actually want to show up.

It is a good reminder that sometimes the most interesting thing you can do with a big screen is not the flashiest. No anamorphic effects, no dynamic triggers, no QR codes. Just a painting, and enough faith in the audience to let it sit there and do its work.