Brand storytelling has a significant role to play in the customer experience. Before and during interactions with your company, audiences want to know who you are, what your principles look like and what values you are offering.
For this reason brands must continue to invest in fresh, distinctive marketing opportunities and outdoor advertising represents a momentous chance to engage with customers in the real world.
Out-of-home (OOH) media marketing opportunities begin the moment a member of your target audience steps out their front door. It doesn’t matter where they’re headed or what type of transit they’ll use along the way, consumers will come into contact with the billboards, signs, street furniture, digital ads or other media types that tell your brand’s story.
Although OOH may use certain familiar marketing techniques, they represent a chance to share messages in very unique ways. Here are a few examples:
- Reach younger audiences: With an average of eight to twelve seconds attention time period respectively, Generation Z and Millennials are a complex audience to engage, but outdoor advertising allows you to stand out to younger audiences. An eye-popping wallscape or interactive digital OOH experience is often enough to make Gen Z and Millennial audiences look up from their phones and engage with your brand.
- Interact with the environment: Capitalize on different opportunities by using outdoor ads and messages that are aware of their environment. It all depends on context: A billboard over a parking lot might advertise dashcam technology to protect unattended vehicles, while a kiosk outside a convenience store might call attention to a sale inside.
- Be present throughout a customer’s day: Cypriots spent time traveling from town to town for work or traveling approximately 1.2 hours a day. Combined with time spent dining, shopping and recreating outside the home, this presents numerous occasions for your brand to be present in a customer’s life.
- Benefit from flexible costs: OOH marketing has no minimum ad spend, allowing you to focus your time, money and energy on the customizable scope of your campaign.
Outdoor advertising allows you to take advantage of elements that other marketing techniques, like social media advertising, radio advertising or TV commercials, may neglect. It also creates an expansive canvas upon which to share your message. One message that uses different types of outdoor ads to emphasize different parts of your brand.
Best types of ΟΟΗ for brand storytelling:
Transit Advertising
Rather than paying to park at an airport, this example consumer may choose to use public transport. This gives you a chance to catch their attention at the very beginning of their journey, when they might be excited, energetic and looking for new products or services to try along the way. If they’re catching a bus they’ll see this messaging while they wait.
Airport Advertising
Rectangular billboard mockup under a departure and arrival display board
Mock up of an advertisement in a bus stopOnce the traveler reaches the airport, they’ll be in a new stage of their journey. They’ll likely have more time to search for a meal or wait for their flight, so your advertising campaign can be a bit more complex with longer messaging or interactive digital displays. When their plane lands, your brand will be ready to greet them, offering recommendations or ideas for how to spend time and money in what may be an unfamiliar city.
Billboard Advertising
Whether they rent a vehicle or use public transit, the traveler is now busy exploring their destination. This means they’ll likely be paying attention to roads and scenery which, in turn, gives you a chance to get their attention through a well-placed billboard ad. Depending on the type of advertisement and the sign structure, you may be able to choose between dynamic and static billboards for your messaging.
Before designing an OOH marketing campaign, there are a few important things to consider, including:
- Market
- Target Audience
- Budget
- Timing
- Messaging
By reviewing these elements, you can make more informed decisions on the types and locations of your outdoor ads, as well as the length of your OOH campaign.
