Equinix goes for gold in airport campaign

Global data centre services provider, Equinix, launched an airport advertising campaign during London 2012 to raise brand awareness among business travellers. Gemma Huckle reports

B2B technology company, Equinix provides data services to a range of vertical markets including finance, content and digital media, networks, enterprise and cloud. Its data centres provide customers with a number of services, including large ecosystems for B2B connections, creating new business opportunities and presenting the ability to enter new markets.

Equinix launched an airport and train advertising campaign to target senior business people travelling to or from London. The campaign was created to raise brand awareness and broaden its marketing strategy to move above-the-line. By doing so, it hoped to increase its message penetration among key business decision-makers.

Olympic opportunity

Launched in the UK in May 2012, the London Olympics presented the perfect opportunity and timing for Equinix, with its target audience of CTOs, CEOs and COOs commuting through London. Equinix decided that Heathrow airport and its express capital connections, London Paddington and London City airport were the best locations to advertise to drive maximum footfall.

Building recognition of the Equinix brand through the logo, company name and distinctive creative theme, the ads appeared at Heathrow airport. These consisted of 35 illuminated light box sites at terminals one, three, four and five with 35 scroller panels at terminal five arrivals. Further advertising sites included London Paddington and 12 digital sites at London City airport.

Ads slogans included, ‘Make connections wherever you are’ and ‘Data centres that help grow your business’. The call-to-action advised the target audience to visit the Equinix website for more information, and enabled the brand to capture data for potential leads. Further activity included online advertising on key target publications such as WSJE and FT.com.

Commenting on the significance of the Olympics, Tracy Raeside, UK marketing manager, Equinix, said, “2012 is a particularly important year for the UK, with the Olympic Games being a huge draw into London. This seemed like an ideal opportunity to raise our brand awareness, throughout the key airport and train networks.”

Campaign results

This was the first advertising campaign of its kind in the UK for Equinix, which is part of a wider EMEA brand awareness campaign that commenced at Zurich airport in January 2012 in line with the World Economic Forum. The campaign remains ongoing throughout 2012 in the UK, with rollout occurring in timed phases. Campaign success is being measured via traffic to its UK and EMEA country website pages, in addition to prospect and customer recall – based on follow-up by sales reps.

Further activity is planned through 2012 in the UK and EMEA in other key airports, including Schiphol in Frankfurt, as well as business centres. Equinix is also planning to develop further ads, each featuring unique URLs to enable it to track where visitors to the site have seen the ad. This activity will be supported with a variety of C-suite publication online ads – including interactive placements throughout 2012 in the UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Switzerland.

Venessa Wilson, marketing communications director, EMEA, Equinix, said, “This campaign marks a change of marketing focus for the Equinix EMEA marketing team, as this is the first ‘out-of-home’ campaign implemented in such high profile and high traffic sites. We are committed to improve our brand awareness and the airport environment provides us with a unique place to echo our company messages, while targeting business executives who travel often throughout the region.”

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