Billboards Grow Up

Out-of-home promotional messages are an American tradition as old as the Republic itself: Handbills posted in Boston in 1773 told citizens that tea with import taxes on British ships “never should be landed in this province” in a pointed paragraph that led to the celebrated Boston Tea Party.

Fast forwarding to more modern commercial signage, in 1941 Camel captured consumers' imaginations in New York City's Times Square with the image of an American aviator appearing to puff on a cigarette. That steam-powered sign endured through various permutations for 25 years. And while the Camel sign has faded into commercial history, Times Square signage persists today with a mesmerizing mélange of pulsing electronic promotions.

Clear Channel Spectacolor is one of the major players in the Times Square corridor, which extends from 42nd Street to 47th Street along Broadway and Seventh Avenues. Its most innovative space is the CNN billboard at 47th Street, which carries a CNN news crawl in the bottom third of the space and a sequence of 30-second and 15-second spots in a large HD display that dominates the screen.

The sign is used, in part, for an interactive word game called Jumbli, which AT&T sponsored during a two-month campaign last fall. Positioned adjacent to the refurbished Duffy Square and equipped with a set of red Plexiglas risers that light up at night, the campaign generated 300,000 games played via wireless handsets and on a Facebook page during the activation period, according to Harry Coghlan, president of Spectacolor.

Coghlan thinks it demonstrates the potential power of a campaign that integrates diverse media.

“If you're playing when the game is live in Times Square, your words are shown in Times Square. It was a very powerful message on how to combine the Web with home and mobile.”

The CNN scrawl includes a call to action for passers-by, who can text in through cell phones to hear the cable news channel's audio feed. And the Duffy Square risers enable PC users to access audio of the electronic messages online through the WiFi network that Spectacolor maintains in the area.

“The dwell time increases the opportunity to see the ad spots run,” Coghlan says. “It becomes a very effective opportunity for an advertiser.”

That's particularly true for movie studios, which recently plugged “Pink Panther 2” and “Quantum of Solace” in the space.

While out-of-home advertising showed marginal year-to-year gains during the first two quarters of 2008, revenue fell 6%, to $1.62 billion, in the third quarter, and produced flat results of $5.45 billion over the first three quarters of the year.

The bright spots in the third quarter were a 17.5% rise in restaurant ads, fueled primarily by fast food restaurants; a 13.8% increase in political ads driven by the presidential election campaign; and a 10.8% increase in media and TV ads.

Media ads dominate Times Square, where ABC, NBC and MTV all maintain a presence with screens promoting their programming with video clips. Van Wagner used NBC's prominent street corner screen to activate a campaign last year underscoring the network's relationship with Sharp Electronics.

“Out of home constantly reinvents itself as engaging and entertaining. It's there 24/7 and can't be zapped,” says Hollie Friedland, Van Wagner group marketing director.

Van Wagner's current Pepsi “spectacular” billboard's “Refresh Everything” message of hope and change aims at resonating with passers-by.

“It's an excellent example of effective creative and it taps into the mood of the time,” Friedland says.

At the south end of Times Square, Walgreens has created an electronic display above its store to boost the brand and tout new products and seasonal specials.

“It's a national and international branding opportunity for Walgreens. As we expand our presence in New York, it serves as a beacon,” says Walgreens spokesperson Tiffani Washington.

The store has been one of Walgreens' top performers since its opening with the sign last November.

In lower Manhattan's East Side, Van Wagner mounted a text-to-vote campaign for A&E's “Gene Simmons' Family Jewels” series with a billboard inviting passers-by to vote on whether Simmons had been faithful to his wife.

It also devised a phone kiosk stunt for JP Morgan Chase during last fall's US Open Tournament, inviting callers to send a text message for a shot at tourney tickets; the process also demonstrated the bank's text response system and directed consumers to its Web site.

“The presence of out-of-home promotion is important because with media no longer in silos, it's an excellent vehicle to move consumers to action,” Friedland says.

MEASURED RESPONSE

Promotions that prompt responses provide one reliable metric to measure the impact of outdoor marketing.

Next month, the Traffic Audit Bureau, with the support of Clear Channel, CBS Outdoor, Lamar Advertising and others, will be implementing a $25 million Eyes On Impression system in 200 markets that will gauge the number of people passing in vehicles or on foot who look at a particular sign. It will combine full-motion video detection technology with destination surveys in 15 markets. Detailed surveys in the top-10 markets nationwide will also use GPS or computer-assisted interviewing to cull information.

“In an age of major fragmentation, we're still able to reach whole segments of the DMAs,” says Jodi Senese, executive vice president of marketing for CBS Outdoor. “Because of the amount of time people are out of home these days, we are a high-frequency medium.”

Movie promotions continue to be a strong category for billboards as part of larger, integrated campaigns, according to Senese, who says there has been erosion in the traditionally strong automotive and banking categories. She adds that CBS Outdoor is currently launching a Web-based system called Wannabillboard.com, which will enable local businesses to get primers on the medium, find locations of CBS Outdoor's 500,000 signage sites nationwide, and view agency templates for their respective product categories.

As players in the big-signage arena employ more sophisticated technology approaches, smaller guerrilla out-of-home campaigns have also sprung up.

“Surprising people, putting things where they don't belong, is part of what makes it effective,” says Matthew Glass, CEO of Grand Central Marketing.

GCM recently ran a campaign to promote HBO's “Eastbound and Down,” an original comedy about a former Major League pitcher reduced to substitute teaching in his hometown middle school. GCM street teams pasted 10,000 clings looking like a baseball embedded in shattered glass and carrying the legend, “Kenny Powers was here, motherf&@#ers,” in sports bars in New York and Los Angeles to promote the series.

Last year, GCM turned Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall into a virtual Africa experience to promote an issue of National Geographic, with oversize photos and a live webcam from a watering hole in Botswana randomly transmitting images of gazelles or rhinos.

Attack Marketing recently ran a campaign for Morgan Hotels in New York and Los Angeles that played off the current economic chaos with posters reading, “Hey Downturn, Up Yours.” Attack also used 10-by-10-foot projections on walls near hot night spots with the same message.

“It speaks louder to an urban audience,” says Attack account supervisor Ivan Barnes. “During this downturn, people are looking for something that's outside of the box, and cost-effective.”