As the world came to a halt back in 2020, everything was impacted from the way we live and interact. As the world shifted from outside to online, even digital marketing saw a dramatic increase in usage. The pandemic dealt a severe blow to traditional out-of-home advertising as a result of less time spent commuting to offices or strolling the high street. In fact, research from the WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) found that out-of-home ad spend was down by 49% for the first half of 2020.
Now in 2022, 77% of consumers are noticing their physical surroundings more now than pre-pandemic, and 70% are noticing OOH ads on road trips. According to Aviv Bar-Oz, Brand Marketing Professional Lead at monday.com, while there has already been a shift in the industry of adapting to consumer’s digital-first preference, OOH campaigns need to modernise their approach to capture new audiences and data can greatly support this venture.
Back in March 2022, we launched our second OOH campaign in London; a market that is very important to us both for growing our customer base, partnerships, and building our employer brand. To ensure the success of the campaign and maximise ROI, we put data at the heart of our strategy to ensure the concept was focused and applicable to our target audience. So how did we embark on this journey and what did we learn as a result?
Understanding your why
In November 2021, we opened our first London office acting as our EMEA headquarters. With 13,000 customers already in the UK, a campaign tailored to this market was an important step for us in the UK. Firstly, to choose the right impactful locations and formats for creative placements, we created a portrait of our current customers.
It helped us better understand what kind of customer we wanted to attract with the new campaign: a commuter in mid-level management roles between the age of 25-54 who works in a team of 10 or more. Based on an internal client survey, we knew this audience would have some sort of impact on business transformation decisions within their respective companies.
We also knew that investment into such a campaign had to have a significant impact on wider business goals. This campaign was not only being rolled out to increase the usage of our platform for both the short and the long term but also to support both reactive and proactive sales efforts.
Analysing the target audience
Out-of-home campaigns still hold great power in reaching our audience’s attention. As brands continue to fight for their space in the digital world, ads on your commute to work can have a lasting impact, especially if seen at numerous points within a week. However, we wanted to find data that would support this approach and prove it would generate the desired results.
We surveyed hundreds of Londoners about their work models, commuting habits and routes and found that the majority of respondents worked in the office to some extent. As a result of this, we allocated our efforts for the physical campaign in the tube and National rail accordingly.
The results
After analysing the results, we decided to place creatives inside the London tube trains, and on key office streets such as Liverpool Street. The results saw an increase in people responding on whether they’ve seen a monday.com ad in the last 30 days among the target audience from 9% to 23%.
There was also a 260% increase in new visits to the monday.com website. These are incremental visits coming on top of the regular visits from the city. To track them, we created an A/B test, comparing London to similar cities that behave the same and using them as a control group.
In launching this campaign, the team has undergone a huge learning curve and we’ve recognised the importance of knowing your location and target audience. We tried to launch a similar campaign in Chicago utilising our insights from the work in London and we saw an opportunity to deploy the campaign across the most popular train lines.
Whilst gearing up for launch, we realised that this wasn’t the right strategy for this market as our research highlighted that train wasn’t a popular way of commuting compared to other countries.
What have we learned?
Launching an OOH campaign is no small task and as the world continues to evolve again with hybrid working practices changing globally, and most people taking a digital-first approach to everything, there are a series of key takeaways we’ll be applying to future ventures. This includes:
- Conducting a detailed survey prior to launch – When entering a new market, you need to have a good understanding of local habits and preferences as this can influence how the campaign is rolled out
- Visit your locations – It is essential to visit the sites you plan to deploy your campaign to understand how it will be perceived in reality. This can then further determine the type of media you chose and the location
- Match your messaging to location – Having a greater understanding of a local market means you can map locations based on their suitability for your target audience and therefore drive home the right messaging
- Data-driven decision making – You should review and learn from your insights, then apply them from one campaign to another
As we plan for Q4, we’ll be applying those insights to our strategy. The world may look completely different again in a few months, however, with these learnings, we can adapt them to our next campaign and produce work that is effective in reaching our target audience, and can be retrofitted for multiple markets, with minimal effort.
