Outdoor advertising – A good choice in tough times

Mungo Knott, insight director at Primesight, on why outdoor is well placed to deliver against demanding marketing objectives in these challenging times…

The toxic mix of property debt, government debt and economic weakness have put many companies into a difficult place over the last few years. Whilst we hear cries of ‘not me’, ‘unfair’ and ‘if you think we were bad look at them!’ during the financial inquisitions, we are forced to take the medicine and the latest GDP data indicates it will be a slow recovery.

Consumers employed and unemployed will be consistently reappraising their ‘needs’ and their ‘wants’ creating stormy waters through which to steer business. For many companies this means a difficult customer focussed balance of product price sensitivity and marketing discipline.

The need to communicate effectively with customers is twice as important now. Firstly companies will want to make sure they are positively assessed in any individual reappraisal of desired goods and services, but secondly the resources to do this are under constant pressure, with the latest Bellwether report indicating a further downward revision in marketing budgets for the second successive quarter.

It is therefore important to be clear on the communication benefits delivered by any media platform considered for marketing investment. For most media the primary relationship between it and the audience is clear and self selecting. The audience chooses to interact with the medium, selecting a content to watch, listen or read for which the accepted trade is that they see advertisements. (There is not yet an advertisement only platform selected by consumers).

But outdoor advertising is not as easily pigeon-holed, it defies the boundaries that restrict other media platforms and is the more powerful for it. So how can we describe the variety of ways in which outdoor advertising can contribute to the communication requirements of business?

Firstly, we don’t go out to choose to see outdoor advertising, but every time we go out we see it. The message interrupts rather than waiting passively to be selected. Secondly, outdoor reaches across audience profiles in the most public way generating mass consciousness – with the opportunity to select by geography, proximity and environment type to maximise saliency. Outdoor also showcases content, which can become an iconic sign of our times as seen recently in the campaign ‘Outdoor Hall of Fame’.

The medium also offers great flexibility, utilising the increasing level of digital screen locations to showcase dynamic creative, driving the highest growth in any outdoor sector during 2010 whilst delivering results – revealed by a wide range of powerful case histories encompassing global brands through to new entrants. 98% of the top 50 advertisers all use outdoor advertising at the moment.

All of which is a powerful argument for use of the medium, but there is one more important element which makes a huge contribution to the effective use of outdoor.

Getting the creative right can multiply the power of a campaign significantly. As public conducting our daily lives we filter what we do and do not want to see more of quickly and efficiently, scanning our visual cone for relevant imagery. When our audience scans a poster it is important to get right not just the origination of the idea, but how it is effectively crafted for consumer consumption, because the task is to ‘export vision to the mind’ at which point the process of assessment of ‘need’ and ‘want’ can take place.

At Primesight we believe in creativity and have created a suite of tools, which specifically helps clients consider whether the poster is likely to communicate effectively in the few seconds available. It is proving to be a very valuable check point.

An important ingredient to any investment is of course knowledge and confidence. There is now a new research innovation Primemobile, which will assist brands making the choice for Out of Home communication by delivering awareness by design, with location, time, attitudinal data and reduced misattribution facilitated by using the latest smart phone technology.

So outdoor is well placed to meet a wide range of strategic encounter opportunities with consumers and a powerful design can make a lasting impression. In these challenging times outdoor can deliver against demanding marketing objectives and can help to drag us out of the economic mess that ‘somebody’ created!