Guest comment: Integrate to innovate: making the most of outdoor digital campaigns

As I stand on the escalator each morning on my way out of the tube station, I pay close attention to the ads playing on the digital screens lining the wall. But what happens when I leave the station? I don’t know about you, but by the time I have adjusted to the bright light of day, I have already forgotten them.  Partly because I’m already mentally preparing myself for the day ahead, but also because I’m already being distracted by other adverts!

The information I gathered from those digital panels is still in there somewhere, but I will rarely act on what I’ve seen, thought, and felt, unless there is some additional reinforcement during the day. This reinforcement might come through any number of other channels bought as part of an integrated marketing campaign, but it does not do so as often as it might. The media spend for innovative ads is not always innovatively distributed.

In recent years we have seen a rapid increase in the number of digital outdoor channels available to marketers as media owners have found new ways of monetising their assets. However, being on the cutting edge of DOOH can be a risky business; there have been a number of high profile and costly failures in recent history. But there are a growing number of successful channels and they have won their position on the marketing schedule through collaborating effectively with advertisers and their agencies. Their fast growing success has stemmed from helping generate great media ideas, sharing excellently observed consumer insights and providing rigorous evidence of effectiveness through well thought-out research.

These successes have led the change in media consumption habits, with consumers now getting more and more accustomed to a wide array of different outdoor digital media. And there is already a significant body of research that confirms how favourably consumers look upon this channel of communication. Given these developments, marketers need to increasingly catch up with consumer expectations and must more frequently consider this channel to deliver truly integrated campaigns. 

Here’s why…

DOOH has the potential to work well with other media because it is geared to providing that crucial ‘live’ element to a campaign, whilst also filling a void other media cannot touch. Campaigns on digital screens can be extensively tailored without incurring significant expenses in terms of production and print costs (a huge step forward for outdoor advertising). Many DOOH campaigns can be more closely aligned with an advertiser’s online strategy rather than their OOH plan – think digital, not outdoor.

In 2009 Pizza Hut deployed adverts on ATM screens as part of an integrated campaign which also made use of roadside 6-sheets, phone boxes, online ads, radio, and TV. The cashpoint ads broke towards the end of the month to coincide with payday and promoted the Happy Hour ‘value’ message as people were deciding how much money to withdraw and how to spend it.

McCain took the ability of ATMs to deliver time-sensitive campaigns one step further, choosing to promote their wedges to household decision-makers on hot, sunny days across the last two weekends in August – ‘thermal’ activity designed to target the BBQ crowd. This kind of campaign would simply not have been possible using static outdoor ads. Timing the Pizza Hut and McCain adverts on ATM screens was one way of increasing their relevance to consumers; another saw the ads concentrated on those cash machine screens with the closest proximity to branches of the restaurant chain.

The argument that digital out-of-home as a channel is too city-centre orientated is becoming less and less convincing as digital screens now demonstrably play a big part in our day-to-day lives across the nation. This influence is especially pronounced as more and more FMCG brands use ATM screens to mobilise their campaigns.

Sales promotion, and most specifically the use of coupons, continue to be one of the most prominent tools at a marketers disposal, and all signs point toward their growing use in 2010 (the ISP estimate that the branded goods manufacturer sales promotion market is worth £25.6 billion alone). Some brands have already created a buzz by using wireless mobile technology to send digital coupons to phones entering a specially targeted zone.   Similarly McCain has used cash machine receipts to distribute 50p discount coupons each time a receipt was requested.

For DOOH to work effectively as part of an integrated campaign, it is crucial that media owners are able to provide creative counsel to brands, specialists and agencies on how best to use their space. It is the job of these media owners to help advertisers think of DOOH displays not as the traditional outdoor tools of broadcast and display, but as tools with which they can engage with the customer in the context of their location and encourage interaction and wider discussion that continues long after they have left the screen.

By Justin Stark

National Sales Director

atmAd

www.atm-ad.com

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