Fake outdoor ads on Instagram may pull viewers into a state of digital flow

Fashion brands have found a striking new way to stop thumbs from scrolling: fake out-of-home advertising, or FOOH, in which computer-generated imagery overlays surreal scenes onto real city backdrops. A new qualitative study published in the journal Fashion and Textiles examines what happens when viewers encounter these digital illusions on Instagram, and it concludes that the experience can resemble the psychological state of flow described more than half a century ago by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

The research, led by Mikyung Kim and Eunhyuk Yim, analyzed 115 Instagram Reels from 20 fashion brands alongside 8,794 text-bearing public comments. Using a theory-informed grounded theory approach, the researchers treated Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory as a sensitizing framework rather than a set of predetermined coding categories. Flow, in Csikszentmihalyi’s account, is an optimal state of consciousness in which people become deeply absorbed in an activity, with peripheral concerns receding from awareness and satisfaction arising from the activity itself. The study asked whether manifestations of this state could be observed in how audiences respond to FOOH content.

FOOH is a compound of “fake” and “out-of-home,” referring to virtual outdoor advertisements created by applying sophisticated CGI techniques to real spatial backgrounds. The format was first introduced by digital artist Ian Padgham in June 2021, when he released a short video depicting a train shaped like a wine bottle running through Bordeaux, France. The video attracted widespread attention after the French transportation authority issued an official clarification stating that the train did not actually exist. Unlike augmented or virtual reality, FOOH requires no special devices, and unlike digital out-of-home advertising, it exists exclusively within online media environments.

The commercial stakes are considerable. According to figures cited in the study, the digital content market encompassing FOOH was valued at USD 20.74 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 10.7 percent through 2030. FOOH content is typically produced as short-form video, usually under one minute, and optimized for platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Its deliberately defamiliarizing strategy relocates familiar objects into non-ordinary contexts, producing perceptual incongruity that captures attention and triggers immediate affective responses.

To build the sample, the researchers first searched Google from May 1 to May 31, 2025, using English keywords including “fashion,” “FOOH,” and “fake out of home,” yielding 284 news articles from which 46 unique fashion brands were identified. Brands mentioned fewer than ten times were excluded, leaving 20 for Instagram screening. The observation period ran from April 2023 through April 2025, beginning with an early prominent FOOH case by Jacquemus that recorded 48.9 million views, the highest among the cases examined. Only Reels with at least 500,000 views and 10,000 likes were retained, resulting in the final sample of 115 videos. Data were collected from June 1 to June 30, 2025, and after preprocessing, 8,794 text-bearing comments formed the primary analytic corpus, with 15,542 non-textual comments retained as a broader comparison corpus.

The analysis identified several conditions associated with flow-related engagement. Users’ comments reflected positive interest in novel stimuli and enjoyable experiences, with remarks such as “Unusual,” “Inspiring,” and “Who made this incredible” expressing astonishment, awe, and excitement. Curiosity about production technologies also emerged as a technological condition, with users exchanging hypotheses and answers about whether content was made with AI, CGI, VR, or VFX. One commenter explained, “Guys, this is not AI. It’s CGI art. It’s a very hard process involving tracking, adding 3D objects, texturing, and compositing.” Contextual conditions included users’ familiarity with digital media and the use of recognizable landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Times Square, Tower Bridge, and the Empire State Building as backdrops, which provided familiar reference points for the digitally constructed scenes.

Users’ recognition of marketing intent emerged as an important evaluative condition. Comments such as “Loving the marketing” and “The greatest marketing concept in decades” showed that many viewers appreciated the campaigns’ perceived strategic creativity, although some expressed skepticism when overt commercial messaging raised questions about authenticity. The principal action and interaction strategies identified across the cases included visual shock and fantastical representation of extraordinary situations, concise messaging centered on symbolic objects such as Jacquemus’s Bambino bag and adidas’s Superstar sneakers, and the provision of feedback and prompts for user communication. Brands replied to comments and encouraged participation, with Jacquemus prompting viewers to suggest the next city, and some brands extended FOOH imagery into physical activations, such as an actual Bambino Bag car driving through city streets and a Seoul pop-up store replicating the bag featured in the campaign.

Observable audience responses included enjoyment, reported repeated viewing, comment-based interaction, product interest, and purchase-oriented inquiry, with comments such as “How can I order??” and “Is this available in store now.” Users also engaged in playful reinterpretation, with meme-like wordplay such as “JacqueBus” appearing alongside replies and reactions, a pattern the authors interpret through the concept of playbour, the playful labor of contributing one’s own interpretations. At the same time, critical responses were particularly evident when users raised concerns about authenticity, sustainability, ethical responsibility, or creative originality. A FOOH piece by Nike depicting an oversized mint-colored jersey draped over Tower Bridge drew negative reactions from Chelsea supporters objecting to its departure from the club’s iconic blue. A Vestiaire Collective post showing Times Square piled high with clothing to highlight textile waste drew substantial criticism, and users also criticized environmentally problematic staging choices, with remarks such as “So much plastic. Definitely not a good choice. Outrageous.” Comments like “Copy paste?” and “So everyone just be copying jacquemus now huh” revealed that users evaluated other brands’ content against creative benchmarks set by highly recognizable cases.

At a higher interpretive level, the findings were synthesized across three dimensions: cognitive, multisensory, and affective. The cognitive dimension concerns focused attention and self-directed interpretation, including the suspension of disbelief in which users temporarily defer critical judgment and engage with the narrative according to its internal logic. The multisensory dimension captures the sensory-integrated qualities of FOOH, in which condensed visual and auditory cues, amplified visual exaggeration, and sound design evoking texture and spatial atmosphere invite haptic imagination. The affective dimension concerns voluntary participation and creative enjoyment, with users’ self-directed engagement extending beyond initial viewing into comment threads and creative reinterpretation of brand narratives.

The authors propose an interpretive relational model organizing the empirically developed categories and their conceptual relationships, while cautioning that the paradigm labels used in grounded theory do not imply empirically demonstrated causal effects. The study also carries important limitations. Instagram commenters represent a self-selected subset of viewers, so the comments should be read as publicly expressed responses rather than representative evidence of the entire audience’s psychological experience. The English-only criterion may have excluded culturally and linguistically distinctive responses, automated or bot-generated comments could not be definitively identified despite screening, and the selection of high-visibility, high-engagement Reels means the findings should not be considered representative of fashion FOOH content on Instagram as a whole. The researchers suggest that future work incorporate multilingual data, lower-engagement contrast cases, and complementary methods such as interviews, surveys, or experiments, and they note that the forms of unpaid user participation observed around FOOH content raise broader questions about digital labor and the recognition of user contributions in platform-based fashion communication.

Subject of Research: Digital flow and audience engagement in fashion brands' fake out-of-home advertising on Instagram

Article Title: Digital flow in fashion FOOH content: insights from Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory

Article References: Kim, M., & Yim, E. (2026). Digital flow in fashion FOOH content: insights from Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory. Fashion and Textiles, 13(1), Article 42. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-026-00494-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40691-026-00494-7

Keywords: FOOH, digital flow, flow theory, fashion communication, Instagram, grounded theory, CGI, social media, audience engagement, Csikszentmihalyi, brand marketing, digital labor