A lesson from the agencies: creating successful DOOH content

Kinetic used Olympics-related creative at key high-traffic locations, such as airports, last year to promote Visa during the Games

Kinetic used Olympics-related creative at key high-traffic locations, such as airports, last year to promote Visa during the Games

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) offers innovative ways in which a brand can engage with customers. But this engagement has to be increasingly clever and provide added value for people to stop, interact and recall the campaign. What do agencies have to bear in mind to make successful content for this medium?

“To create awe-inspiring campaigns, agencies need a brilliant idea, to find the right location for the ad to reach the target audience, and use the technology available for best results,” comments Nick Mawditt, global director of insight and marketing at Kinetic. “Our studies show that companies that embrace new technology for their advertising get a more favourable perception amongst the audience. DOOH messages are increasingly event-led; this could be a celebration, such as Easter, or current news.”

Will Awdry, creative partner at Ogilvy, recalls the success of the agency’s Olympics 2012 campaign for BP featuring Jessica Ennis. “We ran pre-emptive DOOH messages (‘Go Jess Go’) the night before her big event, which then became a congratulatory piece when she secured the heptathlon gold medal. This was carried out pretty much in real time with London Underground signage. Off the back of it, Twitter and other social media sites were on fire and the conversation was live.”

Liam Boyle, managing director of Monster Media, considers: “The role of technology is to aid the brand in communicating its core objectives relating to its platform and positioning in unison with its planning schedule across the full marketing mix. There are a variety of tools that can now be accessed to further drive above-the-line campaigns all the way through the line.

“Immersion is the future and the now,” Boyle continues. “Creating brand experiences through DOOH leverages the convergence of the experiential and advertising models. These are powerful channels on their own, but even more potent when mixed together. Technology is the binding agent that allows brands to converse directly with their desired demographic and facilitate a more valued, quantifiable and quantitative, connection.”

All the agency representatives interviewed agreed that campaigns can undergo meticulous planning but they also need to be able to grow organically. Sophie Burke is head of marketing at Zoom Media, which claims to be the UK’s largest digital media network in health clubs. She adds: “The media planning cycle is generally quite lengthy and requires a great deal of thinking ahead. However, the majority of truly successful and innovative media campaigns involve an element of spontaneity – whether it’s copy which can be adapted dynamically based on real-time data, or an interactive component which allows the consumer to get involved.”

But not any old interaction will cut it. Mawditt says that, in Kinetic’s experience, direct touch rather than gesture-controlled interaction makes the engagement and recall more powerful. “If you touch a screen, you are engaging in a more personal and private level, even if it’s in a public space. With gesture, the engagement is brief and people can feel self-conscious.”

Campaign content needs to be timely but also allow for user-generated content; it is in this area where social media comes into play and facilitates the call to action. Real-time campaign metrics need to be aligned to marry the technological capability of the screen with other live information, such as online engagement, as demonstrated with Posterscope’s campaigns that use Liveposter, a dynamic content scheduling and distribution product.

Posterscope’s Adam Cherry talks about the McDonalds London 2012 Olympics photo exchange exercise, which gave the brand a 73 percent positive perception boost. The campaign consisted of a real-time creative exercise: photographs submitted via Facebook were matched with custom straplines and delivered to hundreds of screens nation-wide. This was then fed back into the protagonists’ Facebook timelines to be shared with friends, prompting them to join in and create a snowball effect amongst fans.

“Social is a very powerful tool,” says Boyle. “We’re big believers in the potential to integrate and give brands the opportunity to converse directly with their audience after the initial point of engagement. Giving consumers the chance to engage through interactive digital and brands’ CRMs, and data as a result, will be a benefit to both in the long run.”

Posterscope’s Cherry forecasts: “The future will see DOOH scheduled and traded in new ways, focusing much more on the impressions delivered rather than number of screens bought.”

Where DOOH is concerned, advertising content is increasingly featuring social media to drive customer engagement and provide valuable data back to brands. But, in order to make those objectives successful, it’s time for the creatives to get creative.

First published 22 March 2013 – Output

In the near future: the rise of NFC

 

 

Is near field communication heading in the right direction, or is it in danger of falling by the wayside? (© Fotolia / Ben Chams)

Is near field communication heading in the right direction, or is it in danger of falling by the wayside? (© Fotolia / Ben Chams)

Near field communication (NFC) and QR code capabilities provide the opportunity for advertisers and consumers to interact with brands on the go using just their smartphones. However, the market has not yet decided what is the best way to provide potential customers with the ultimate consumer experience. So what do industry experts think is needed for these technologies to realise their potential?

The leading media owners have already shown their interest and support for NFC, with Clear Channel launching 10,000 NFC and QR code-enabled Adshel panels and digital roadside panels across the UK this year.

In 2012 JCDecaux and Kinetic ran their ‘Test the Near Future Project’ – the largest trial of NFC-enabled poster sites in the UK. The four-week trial was held in the affluent commuter town of Reading and drove a high number of interactions on advertising from top brands including Unilever, H&M, Morrisons and EA Games. The content on offer included movie downloads, previews of TV shows and games, a chance to win a driving experience, supermarket vouchers and links to the brands’ social media channels. The results of the trial showed that 3,000 people in Reading scanned the poster sites, the equivalent of a million people nationwide. There were over 6,000 interactions across the four weeks and NFC take-up grew by 15 percent over the four weeks as people grew used to the idea of interacting.

“The study found that the brands that elicited the most positive interactions did so through a combination of relevance, dynamic content and a strong call-to-action,” notes David McEvoy, marketing director at JCDecaux.

Nick Mawditt, Kinetic’s global director of marketing and insight, says that there are no real barriers to entry for media owners. “Clear Channel and JCDecaux have both launched the capability for NFC interaction via their national networks of six-sheets, and other media owners including Primesight and Admedia have NFC capability in their panels. Any barrier currently is in consumer awareness and adoption.”

Mike Baker from the Outdoor Media Centre agrees: “The main barriers to date are poor sign-posting, poor site labelling, conflicting technology standards, consumer unfamiliarity and the lack of pre-loaded software on the devices.”

“QR codes are cheap to put in print media but poor at user exchange (UX),” warns Mark Selby, a mobile technology expert who is currently visiting professor at the University of Surrey, home of the new 5G Innovation Centre. “Some argue print is dying: I disagree. Consumers value a slick UX. If your media is low budget and UX is not important, go QR.”

There is also the mobile device giant Apple refusing to include NFC in its latest devices. “I must say I was surprised that the iPhone 5 didn’t have NFC capabilities,” observes Ocean Outdoor marketing director Richard Malton. “I think once Apple is confident enough to include NFC in its own locked system then I wouldn’t bet against NFC taking off at a massive rate. Apple is too good at getting this type of thing correct.”

New campaigns are being launched to reap the benefits of NFC. In September, Nestlé ran the first nationwide NFC-enabled campaign on roadside sites where chocolate bars were fitted with GPS trackers, by which means the lucky winners were found and given a cash prize. Sony used shopping malls and roadside spaces last October to offer consumers the chance to download an exclusive music track by swiping their smartphone on the touch point at the advertising site.

“There are going to be different ways of offering consumers connectivity and purchase points,” says Tim Bleakley, Ocean Outdoor’s chief executive. “NFC is more suited to close proximity small-format outdoor than the large digital spectacular formats that we specialise in. I still wonder exactly what is the value of NFC in a world where consumers are becoming used to visual imagery and photography on the move as a way of life. This may, in the end, disable NFC – just my view. Also, the wide-spread connectivity options offered via WiFi might affect the need for NFC.”

Baker concludes: “Experts forecast 75 percent penetration of smartphones in the UK by the end of the year. My prediction is that there will be a tripling every year for five years on the number of campaigns and revenue involving NFC.”

First published 24 January 2013 – Output