Tarp for Tent

The Outdoor Media Advocacy Group (OMAG) recently donated used billboard tarpaulins to the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC), for distribution and use at the various evacuation centers for typhoon refugees. The OMAG has setup a collection center for used tarpaulins from its members so that it can help provide shelter material for areas affected by typhoons and other calamities. Photo shows Mrs.Susan Tutaan, head of the AFP-HQ Relief Operations Team, receiving and sorting out the used tarpaulins, assisted by her crew and Ms. Ivy M. Gonzales, who represented the OMAG at the turnover, last October 2.

Life comes at you fast

Advertisers today are not just looking at traditional media but an all-encompassing, well-rounded media plan and better user experience to reach and engage their target audience. Outdoor as a business has piqued interest in a campaign and facilitated response that is effectively transposed to a wider audience. The added benefits are measurement and accountability, hitherto out-of-home's (OOH) key challenge – communicating a large amount of information – by providing an extended platform with outdoor media to conduct ad distribution.

As we examine the massive potential of outdoor signage, let's start with some basics. Two forces are propelling the growth of signage. First, marketers want to access consumers closer to the point of purchase. Although e-commerce is growing, enabling people to buy as easily from bedrooms as from store aisles, there are many marketers who are not – and possibly won't ever be – e-commerce enabled. The next best thing for them is to prompt consumers using technology at locations where consumers can already buy.

Second, technological advances, coupled with rapidly declining costs of that technology, are making digital signage more practical and affordable. The economics of outdoor business make more sense everyday. Consequently, more digital signage is getting into stores, malls and other venues.

The coupling of demand (to get close to consumers) and capability (the availability of cost-effective outdoor solutions) is spurring its growth particularly in the face of declining consumer attention to traditional media. To date, research results seem to indicate that advertising at points of sale is having an important impact on product selection. As products (like media) continue to proliferate, the “war for attention” will intensify, encouraging outdoor signage to help spur consumer action.

There is another big plus on the side of outdoor: it can't be turned off like television, turned out like radio, or discarded like newspapers and magazines. It's there all day, every day, and the person traveling to and from work or shopping will see it every day. The job of a billboard is to create a quick impression and to remind the viewer that a product, a service, or a business exists. That is all that can be managed in a 7-second reading time by passing motorists, under the best of traffic and weather conditions.

Most shoppers will not stand in an aisle to watch a 15 to 30-second TV commercial. Marketers need to use shorter, punchier, action-oriented messaging. This means a
combination of direct marketing, activation and sale enablement techniques to craft appropriate outdoor content. Good outdoor content will direct the consumer – for example, prompting shoppers to inquire about a new product – will be more akin to a point-of-sale than brand advertising, and should be treated as part of the sales-closing process.

Depending upon the location and capability of the signage (namely, whether it's two-way or not), marketers can develop local area marketing strategies. For example, you can tailor directive messages to build traffic to individual store outlets. Effective outdoor advertisers do this already, to a degree, but experts say they lack the ability to dynamically serve new content to traditional outdoor signage. Crystal ball gazing about the new applications of new technologies can be fascinating. However, the technology is likely to unfold in ways that will create digital signage in more formats than just flat screens. This will lead to more interesting and engaging uses of digital.

The scene of Tom Cruise in Minority Report arranging information on an electronic board with hand gestures isn’t science fiction. It's already there at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, terminal 3, courtesy of Accenture. This is the potential future of digital signage as consumers choose to rearrange displayed material to incorporate their own information in a digital signage mash-up. Another Minority Report you might recall is the talking billboard, which uses iris recognition to identify customers. While we don't know of a billboard doing this (yet), iris recognition is in routine use at airports and border crossings.

Outdoor media can (and should) fit into the plans of most marketers – especially those that have a large retail presence. Outdoor signage can be used effectively to cater to the different traffic patterns and different neighborhood locations of a marketer's various stores or outlets. Marketers will increasingly be able to use response and loyalty technology in order to maximize the potential of outdoor signage to act as more than one-way screens.

Source:
Manila Bulletin
October 26, 2009

Outdoor advertisements level the playing field for small businesses

Outdoor advertising provides a cost-effective medium that reach targeted consumers as they travel from their homes to their daily destinations.

The role of advertising in commerce is irrefutable. Without it, businesses would simply die.

But advertising doesn’t come cheap. The current average spending budget per brand is estimated at 30 Million pesos (or more). That means a large multinational company which carries several brands may spend more or less a billion on advertising alone.

So how can a small company penetrate a market with cutthroat competition?

Embracing outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising levels the playing field by presenting an alternative medium for small and medium companies that have limited advertising budget.

Outdoor Media Advocacy Group’s (OMAG) Norman de Leon explains that the cost of outdoor advertising is just a fraction of the current rates

of TV and radio placements. “Outdoor advertising maximizes the advertiser’s selling potential by giving them the advantage of selling more while spending less,” says de Leon. The OMAG is the advocacy group of the Outdoor Advertising Association of the Philippines (OAAP) and other leading industry practitioners.

Outdoor advertising can also serve as an effective medium for public awareness of certain issues, like this LED TV located at EDSA Guadalupe area. This billboard was part of the cleanliness advocacy campaign of the Outdoor Media Advocacy Group (OMAG).

Case in point: Boy Bawang manufacturer KSK Food Products reported that in 2006, it spent an average of 1.2 Million pesos per month for about 14 billboard sites in Metro Manila and Luzon. The same amount would barely cover the cost of 10 30-seconder placements on primetime TV.

Outdoor ads also proved helpful for companies who had to slash their advertising budget during bearish times. “We used to do just tri-media ad

vertising. There was a year, however, when we had to cut down our advertising and promotions budget specifically TV which takes a big percentage,” recounts Gigi Tibi, a seasoned brand manager of fashion lines.

This pushed them to try outdoor advertising. “There were three reasons for this venture: first it allowed us to showcase our product collection in larger-than-life proportions,” Tibi reasoned. “Also, more and more people spend more time traveling to and from their homes to their destinations. They include the rising number of working wives. Lastly, the outdoor ads offered constant repetitive exposure at very low costs.”

Businesses are not the only ones that enjoy this economic benefit; it runs across different industries like non-government agencies and charitable institutions. World Vision Development Foundation, Inc., (World Vision) an international humanitarian organization, for one, utilizes outdoor advertising to generate awareness and support for their causes.

“[The campaign] is called “My World Vision. It is a bandwagon campaign that aims to build awareness for World Vision and get the public involved. We want people to sign-up and be sponsors,” relates World Vision Director for Publics-in-Ministry Boris F. Joaquin.

World Vision relies on outdoor advertising for their campaigns. “We didn’t do TV ads because of budget limitations. Billboard helped the campaign because of the frequency of impressions generated from our prospective sponsors who are regular motorists in EDSA, SLEX, and other major thoroughfares,” he added.

High reach, frequency, and retention

Nobody can underestimate the vast reach of tri-media ads but the impact that outdoor media generates is also consequential. People traversing a regular route get to see a particular outdoor ad at least once a day. It directly targets working people, the so-called decision makers in a household because of their purchasing capacity, who usually spend a lot of time on the road.

Another advantage of outdoor advertising is that it is larger than life. When a company has billboards, it adds to the prestige or brand image of the client. Many clients have mentioned this benefit. It's like when they have a billboard, it helps their brand to be perceived as stable, not as fly-by-night.

“Before we utilized outdoor advertising people didn’t really know a thing about us. They are more aware of us now and they look at us with credibility. The traffic in inbound phone inquiries increased because of that. And people really call. When we ask how they knew about World Vision, they would say that they saw the billboards,” enthuses Joaquin. “We also have a website where you can log on and sign up. Outdoor advertising also contributed to the number of hits in websites.”

The OMAG adds that outdoor ads help consumers develop wise buying decisions. The messages work on the advertising principle of frequency. Since most messages stay in the same place for a period of a month or more, people who drive by or walk past see the same message a number of times.

Outdoor ads have no viewership barriers. Everyone sees them. People can't switch them off or throw them out. They are exposed to it whether they like it or not. Unlike other media where you can easily flip pages or switch channels, you cannot turn-off a billboard because in outdoor advertising, the medium is the message. In this sense, outdoor advertising truly has a captured audience.

Source:

Manila Bulletin

September 25, 2009