Retrace your journey to work and try to focus on the ads. If you travel by tube or rail there’s a good chance you saw business ads for O2, HP or the inward investment scheme Yorkshire Forward, if you drive to work you may have passed billboards for Nissan Commercial Vehicles or LDV. Maybe you’ve been at Heathrow Airport or Birmingham International recently where Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Vodafone target business travellers or perhaps you hailed a cab in central London or Manchester and the exterior was branded by Hendersons, Cisco Systems or IBM. And when you get around to filling out expenses you may find that the crumpled taxi receipt is also branded.
B2B is doing well outdoors – there will no mention of the words ‘cousin’ or ‘poor’ in this feature because in many ways business-to-business advertisers are leading the way. Companies such as 02, HP, IBM and DHL are experimenting with new formats and techniques; they are the avant-garde of outdoor, making it more interactive – a medium that engages rather than interrupts.
In the 2004 list of the top 20 outdoor advertisers, O2 was number three with a £14 million spend – with three major outdoor SME campaigns it’s fair to say that a not insignificant portion of that went on B2B activity.
Like any other medium choosing the correct space to reach the target audience is critical, but unlike choosing between the FT and The Economist there’s much more to consider in outdoor – where is the audience? What are they doing – walking, waiting, running, driving or zooming past on the train? Using that space to maximum effect in terms of the creative, the tenure and how it’s supported by other mediums is also crucial.
Some fine examples
The outdoor sector can be divided into four categories: roadside, transport, retail and ambient. The latter two are typically used by the consumer sector while B2B ads are rampant in rail stations, underground systems, airports, taxis, trucksides, and on roadsides. These locations are in context: the target audience may be travelling to work or going to a meeting. Conversely advertising in a supermarket trolley or on a beer mat might reach this audience but in such environments few will be interested in the message.
As such there’s an abundance of business advertising at train stations and on London Underground. HP’s piece de resistance in outdoor or its ‘Adaptive Enterprise’ campaign is currently running on the Waterloo & City Line Trav-o-lator at Bank tube station. Sally Frost, HP’s enterprise marketing communications manager, comments, “I had my eye on Bank for some time because this is commuterville for the City of London, key decision-makers that work within the square mile pass through here everyday. The footfall is on average 391,000 per month of which 80 per cent are ABC1 and 90 per cent work in the key City area.
“There’s a storyline that people can follow as they go up, they’re travelling at around five miles an hour so you have this captive audience for 30 seconds,” she adds. The creative has been running since July and spans the 80-metre long Trav-o-lator.
DHL did not have the benefit of 30 seconds dwell time when it decided to advertise alongside the M4. Donna Murray, marketing communications manager at DHL, comments, “We used a multi-storey building on the M4 just as you’re driving out of London – it was a very big site. The message was simple ‘More reach’.” Although this ad was alluding to when DHL was taken over by Deutsche Post and its increased offerings as a result, it stripped all of this out and served up a big dramatic image with the trade mark colours. Essentially it became a brand message that could be assimilated by the AB businessmen driving past at 70 miles per hour.
To communicate a more specific message about the take-over DHL used cross-track activity in London Underground stations. Murray adds, “People are standing on the platform waiting and they tend to read the ads across the track.”
With 02, the challenge is less about communicating a specific message and more about brand awareness, and with a multi-million pound budget for outdoor advertising it doesn’t do things by halves. When it decides to target business commuters it takes the ubiquitous approach at key stations like Waterloo, Charing Cross, Liverpool St and Birmingham New Street. Last summer Waterloo station was almost obscured by every known sheet size for the ‘O2 Business Zones’ campaign. Richard Murfitt, head of advertising at O2, explains, “It’s a commuter strategy which targets business people. We are mostly at central London stations but we are looking to change that in the coming months by following the entire customer journey [to suburban stations].”
Finding your audience
You may be wondering how HP and 02 know that their target audience are standing on these platforms and taking the Trav-o-lator at Bank Tube. Well the simple, slightly petulant, answer is that everyone who leaves the house is exposed to it – there’s no need to turn it on, tune it in or turn over the page: it’s just there and it’s free. Transport, specifically, is so popular because research finds that 84 per cent of adults travel daily for an average of 1.7 hours (source: media agency PHD). The results don’t indicate whether that’s commuting to and from work, but common sense suggests as much.
Postar was set up in 1996 to provide outdoor advertisers with audience data. To date it has classified 120,000 roadside sites and is currently working with media owners Maiden and Viacom on London Underground and National Rail data. Following this it will focus on buses and taxis.
Though it’s not just a case of mass exposure: there’s also evidence that suggests people like outdoor ads. The Advertising Standards Authority found that the public has a very positive attitude towards outdoor as it is seen as colourful, informative and a vehicle for introducing humour and fun to our lives.
Which leads us to the reigning debate in B2B: how to appeal to the brain’s right hemisphere when the message is about software, sea freight and mobile phone tariffs?
Creative trail blazing
This is where B2B has proven its marketing mettle: HP with a Fender, Jimi Hendrix music and bus shelter six-sheets and O2’s ‘Best Network’ campaign which uses ‘Illuminate technology’ on 48 and six-sheets in London Underground. The HP ad used a high-profile customer – guitar maker Fender – to demonstrate how its technology can be used to increase business efficiency and productivity. Instead of just saying that with an image and some copy, HP encased real Fender Stratocaster in JC Decaux bus shelters around London and played Jimi Hendrix music from hidden speakers. The O2 activity takes the idea of the signal bar and mixes it with high-rise office buildings to give a corporate feel and then puts a light behind the poster so it looks like the signal is building up. Murfitt of O2 adds, “Anything that drives more cut through and demonstrates to customers that we’re innovate is what we want.”
But is it enough to stick a Fender in a bus shelter or drape an old building with a giant image – can outdoor work as a stand-alone medium? Alan James, CEO of the Outdoor Advertising Association, thinks not, “Outdoor is best when it’s used in conjunction with other media. If it’s used with radio it can work well.” The practitioners held a similar opinion. DHL’s ‘More power, more reach’ campaign was supported by a national press and DM activity.
An evolving medium
Outdoor hasn’t always been such an integral part of business-to-business advertising. And who can blame practitioners for giving it a wide berth as not so long ago outdoor meant filthy, peeling billboards and the Marlboro man. A lot has changed since then and the best proof of outdoor’s new place on the advertising pecking order is evident in its 10 per cent share of media spend, that’s five per cent more than 15 years ago.
This increase is attributable to outside influences – people spending more time outdoors and the fragmentation of other media channels – but it’s also attributable to the media owners. Murfitt of O2, comments, “Outdoor as a medium and an industry has got its act together. There’s more innovation and better quality.” Murray of DHL agrees: “There’s more choice now with the variety of sites, and billboards are generally in better condition. If a site is shabby looking no company wants to be associated with it.”
As Murray points out there’s more choice with sites and this is particularly true at rail stations, the undergrounds as well as the increasing trend for covering buildings that are undergoing restoration with huge ads.
But this begs the question how much outdoor is too much? Sally Frost of HP, comments, “You can whack up sites left, right and centre but is that right? There is a case for wider debate on this, a need for a gentleman’s agreement, if not something stronger.” Last year at the Outdoor Conference in Barcelona, this subject was broached by Jean-Francoise Decaux, co-chief executive of JC Decaux, “We are shooting ourselves in the foot by not having self regulation. Let’s act before it’s too late.”
The future of outdoor
Outdoor executed properly can be a powerful weapon in B2B. Unlike other medias where audience figures are falling – in March ITV had a 12 per cent drop in ABC1 viewers – very few people can avoid rail stations, airports or the roadways. So one media’s difficulty has become another’s opportunity and outdoor is poised to take as much spend as it can. Last year the industry’s total revenue according to the OAA and Poster Publicity was £841 million and its now aiming to reach revenues of £1 billion by 2007.
From a B2B perspective this is testament to its growing sophistication and creativity as, this time, it’s not a case of ‘outdoor has taken off, it’s time for B2B to jump on the bandwagon’, instead it’s ‘outdoor has taken off and B2B is in the leading pack’. What’s more, it looks set to overtake the B2C contenders – how many Fenders have you seen in a B2C ad recently? Outdoor features heavily in the future of advertising and B2B’s trail-blazing is indicative of its increasingly influential and formative role on the marketing landscape. Who knows, sometime soon we could apply the ‘poor cousin’ tag to our consumer brethren – it’s not unlikely, it’s karma.
