Looking more like a trendy resort than the giant waiting room that it is, Heathrow’s newest addition – Terminal 5 – which opened at the end of March to cancelled flights, long queues and 15,000 pieces of stranded luggage, has been accused of placing style over substance. With VIP lounges to rival the chicest boutique hotel; champagne and cocktail bars; an Elemis Travel Spa; hydotherapy area; Swarovski glass chandeliers, a kinetic cloud sculpture and work and entertainment zones providing Wi-Fi and PCs for free Internet access, Heathrow is one of a clutch of international airports that is trying to take its design and facilities to another level in an attempt to cater for – in particular – its premium and business customers.
Attempting to make its passengers feel good is one aim, (albeit one it hasn’t yet succeeded in), but Heathrow has another agenda with its new terminal: that of attracting big-name brands to take advantage of its advertising space. Touted as marking a new “generation of airport advertising,” Terminal 5 was built with media in mind. According to the director of media at BAA, Duncan Tolson, the “placement of outstanding media opportunities was a significant feature in the original architectural brief. It represents what brands seeking a luxurious advertising environment can expect from Heathrow Airport.”
Travel on the up
This bodes well for business brands looking to spend a chunk of their marketing budget at the terminal. Every year, 74.5million passengers pass through Heathrow, 42 per cent of whom are business travellers. Although business brands have always taken advantage of this captive audience, passenger figures look set to rise and by 2010 over 160 million people are expected to be travelling through BAA’s London Airports, with 90 million using Heathrow. Fifty per cent of that figure will be business travellers. That’s a substantial number of bored businesspeople waiting for flights. Plus, research undertaken by JCDecaux confirms that passengers at airports are in a heightened state of alertness, ideal for interacting with new brands and messages. Business-to-business airport advertising has never looked so good.
The advertising space has been designed with a ‘less-is-more’ philosophy. “Positions have been placed to capture the audience in their journey through the airport,” explains Richard Malton, marketing director of JCDecaux Airport, which has been working with BAA to design the advertising sites. “They have been built into the fabric of the building (for the first time at an airport), aiming to reduce the clutter. We feel it’s all about having a number of high profile sites, so the advertising will be easily eye-catching.”
Opportunities range from sites such as the Global Gateways (four giant lightboxes that dominate the ticket presentation channels) to Skyscrapers, (six hanging banners that are the first sites to greet passengers as they enter the building) to Digital Airport Panels (DAP).
The digital panels – of which there are 280 – enable advertisers to display creative on screens in lounges, flight information displays, on walkways from check-in to main retail areas and en-route to business lounges. “They will reach the business audience at all points of their journey. The creative can be updated as often as required and the screens can display moving as well as static images,” adds Malton. Brands can target audiences by location or time as well as target the arrival or departure of particular flights or run language-specific messages welcoming people attending a particular business conference for example.
International reach
Of course, the type of brands that can afford space at Terminal 5 are global names, and so far companies such as Vodafone, Crowne Plaza, Visa and Nokia have already booked areas throughout the terminal.
Andrew Ward, CEO of Ad-Air, says that for a brand wanting to get across its global status, an airport is an ideal place.
“It’s always been the case, but now there are even more reasons for B2B brands to advertise at airports. With more business people travelling the globe than ever before, brands are able to use airports as a truly global medium – like advertising in an international magazine,” he says. “It’s not only about tactical campaigns now – like offering 20 per cent off at Duty Free – airports can be used to fully connect a brand’s message around the world.”
HSBC for example, executed a clever airport campaign that demonstrated its worldwide presence, but also showed that it understood its local markets too. A run of posters showed images with two opposing words underneath. For example, a moon featured the words, ‘scary’ and ‘romantic’; while tattooed and henna’d people juxtaposed the words, ‘trendy’ and ‘traditional’. The strapline was, ‘Everyone looks at the world from a different point of view.’ “The message is that this is a global brand, but operating in local markets,” adds Ward. “This is becoming a key trend in the world’s major airports.”
Mike Greenup, Crowne Plaza’s EMEA brand director, agrees that this is a key reason behind its decision to buy space at Terminal 5. It has committed to 12 months of advertising and will be using the seven double-sided hanging banners in the departures area to feature three of its EMEA properties – London, Geneva and Dubai. “All of these highlight the prime positions our properties occupy within major gateway cities across Europe and the Middle East. The key message we hope travellers will take away from the banners is that Crowne Plaza is an international hotel brand with contemporary design that can be found in major cities across the region.”
Samsung is taking its presence at Heathrow one step further. In addition to its advertising on four large lightboxes on Wayfinding beacons in the main departure areas, as a partner to the Terminal, it has supplied its large format LCD screens to use as Flight Information Display screens, as well as TV screens in the lounges. “This isn’t just about putting up a billboard in the traditional way – we are promoting Samsung as a leader in the UK B2B market,” says Anthony Marsella, chief marketing officer at Samsung.
“We want business travellers to think about Samsung when they’re travelling and what better way than to create a full, working showcase that really tells the full Samsung brand story? It gives the target audience a 360 degree experience of how our products work. And as a sponsor of the 2012 Olympics, Heathrow T5 is a prime gateway for travellers to the games. It means they can see a fully-functioning example of what we can do.” He adds that the brand will also be creating a case study to use in its business sales plan. “It can work as a good communication tool for us in this way.”
Captive audience
Being able to see how a product works in the flesh can play a key part in getting across a brand’s message. Research by JCDecaux Airport demonstrates that whereas messages during check-in need to be short and simple, passengers with plenty of time on their hands in departure lounges are actually more than happy to try out new products or interact with experiential marketing events.
For example, airport retailers reported a 33 per cent uplift in airport sales of the Sony Vaio laptops as a result of a promotional stand at Heathrow Terminal 1 – the Dixons in the terminal actually sold out of Vaio laptops completely.
An experiential zone has been created at Terminal 5, which at 9sqm, is the largest experiential area of any airport in the UK. “The experiential zone will be seen by over 75 per cent of the Terminal 5 audience,” says Malton.
“Airports benefit from huge audiences who have time on their hands in a captive environment and who are in the right mindset to interact with brands. Our research into experiential campaigns at other Heathrow terminals has demonstrated an uplift in sales and passengers welcome the entertainment and opportunity to trial products.”
Ward agrees that there will be more interactivity with people at airports. “Brands will engage on a one to one basis with their audience, in a more physical way – that seems to be the way business marketing is going, and particularly at an airport, it cuts through the clutter.”
Bird’s eye view
Another way in which B2B marketers can cut through the clutter and take advantage of a captive audience is when they are literally strapped in their seats.
In October last year, Ad-Air unveiled its first site – a 20,000sqm ad for Sorouh Real Estate situated on the ground at Dubai Airport. Sites are also due to launch in the US and Europe, including Heathrow.
The company’s CEO, Andrew Ward, says, “We carefully map the land to make sure that the ad is in the best position for when the plane comes in to land – once we’ve done that, it’s not hard to get the audience’s attention. Their seats are upright, the window is up, the plane is going slower and there’s not really much else to do except look out of the window. We’ve worked out that dwell time is about 15 to 20 seconds, which is high. It can really stand out from the rest of the advertising that is thrown at them when they’re actually on the ground.”
Placing an ad at an airport isn’t what it used to be. As airports become ever-more sophisticated and the number of business travellers remain on the increase, brands are being presented with new ways of advertising to their travelling audiences.
Of course, the very nature of airports gives most brands a head-start – with nowhere else for your audience to go, and not much more to do than wander around waiting for their flight, it’s an ideal time to get your message across. The big question, as travel moves into the 21st Century, is how.
