Touching Outdoor
Mungo Knott, director of insight at Primesight Outdoor, explains why “marketers who are faced with the allocation of budgets would do well to recognise the powerful position of Out of Home – the medium that delivers the most individual daily advertising hits…”
I walked out of the presentation and back to my office; as I relished a moment of summer sunshine I also noticed two taxis – not booked for me in our more frugal times – a bus, four bus shelter type posters – 6 sheets I believe they are called, and a large billboard. Interestingly, I was still in central London and had travelled no more than half a mile.
My previous 90 minutes had been spent pleasantly enough in the company of many of the advertising industries most influential soothsayers at the launch of TouchPoints3.
Keeping pace with the powerful forces, which we allow to shape the context of our lives, is an intriguing and challenging task and one that Touchpoints seeks to assimilate for those that want to reach out to our diverse population, or more directly to a target audience.
The battle rages between the powerful media providers who want to maintain their ownership of our time and attention and the upstarts of the internet, and that dangerously loose cannon – ‘Word of Mouth’.
Our ‘medialutionary’ progress is rapid and what was only recently seen as media competing for our attention is now being discussed as providing mutually beneficial impacts. We watch TV, whilst surfing the net, and no doubt casting one eye over the paper with the radio on in the background as we tweet about the latest greatest thing we heard exclusively from our best friends mate!
Outdoor Advertising is a peculiar beast. No content drives its agenda, no celebrities sign unmentionable salaries to be a part of it, and you might be forgiven for thinking that because you rarely sit in front of it for hours on end (the odd traffic jam, or missed late night train home excluded) that it was not a part of our everyday media consumption.
It is, however, a simple truth that the poster remains the moment of display advertising that we most frequently encounter with 100’s of OTS per day. It is a platform of choice for creating editorial media coverage, as demonstrated recently at the General Election, and the provoker of comment when ads touch a nerve on the sensitivity of our society, illustrated by the virulent combat engaged by Mum’s net – a campaign run by the outdoor industry itself.
Out of Home advertising is an inextricable element in the fabric of our lives. An advertising vehicle that we make no choice to consume, that interrupts us in our daily journeys, and yet which we enjoy and generally have a positive attitude towards.
Touchpoints3 brings us much interesting data on our consumption of media channels, but marketers who are faced with the allocation of budgets would do well to recognise the powerful position of Out of Home to stand out as a pure, visible and public platform. A true combination of the often cited “last broadcast medium, and one which can deliver a discrete and desired target audience without the restraint of circulation or broadcast area” – harnessing the flexibility of socio-geo-demographics and individual location selection to minimise the waste of those precious marketing investment pounds.
Outdoor may not be a changing social trend, but it is the medium that delivers the most individual daily advertising hits, and that is a great place to start touching your audience each day, even if they are just walking back to the office.