You may notice as you go through your day that advertising is even more prevalent than in the past – ad messages are popping up anywhere from your coffee cup sleeve in the morning to your Chinese takeout container at dinner. This article focuses on Alternative Outdoor, the fastest growing segment of the Out of Home (OOH) industry: What is it? What trends are driving its growth? And, most importantly, how do we sift through all of these opportunities to focus in on those that can truly help your bottom line? Empower’s take is this: the same time-tested strategic media planning principles apply: learn your target, seek them out in the right environments, and get your brand in front of them in a meaningful way.

Alternative OOH - What is it?
The simplest explanation of Alternative OOH is this – anything except billboards, transit signs and static signage. Alternative OOH is an engaging medium that capitalizes on reaching people in contextually relevant areas. It includes video networks and digital displays in stores, malls, office buildings, transit environments, cinemas, stadiums, airports and a myriad of other place-based “consumer hubs.”

Alternative OOH also encompasses experiential marketing – events, word of mouth, guerrilla and street marketing – which allow brands to have meaningful contact with consumers in a more engaging way.

What Trends are Driving the Growth?
The same trends that are challenging traditional media – consumer control, audience erosion, advertising accountability and new digital technologies – are fueling the growth of Alternative OOH advertising. Alternative OOH is predicted to grow 28-31% in 2007.

• Consumer trends – Americans are spending more time away from home: commuting to work, waiting in transit stations, walking in urban areas, and shopping at retail outlets. One beneficiary of these shopping trends: in store and place-based advertising. A recent BrandWeek article states, “Despite the growth of Internet commerce, 70% of Americans still shop every week. The retail industry is the last mass media market.”

• Advertising trends – We’re seeing a growing body of research indicating that alternative OOH media provide high engagement and recall. In the continual quest to break through the clutter, alternative OOH’s engagement, lifestyle and psychographic targetability, and proximity to point-of-sale are becoming increasingly valued. And, as advertising effectiveness is measured less on media planning metrics and more on results, advertisers are becoming more open to media metrics beyond traditional GRPs and CPPs.

• Technology trends - New digital advertising platforms improve advertising flexibility and impact, allowing advertisers to interact with people in out-of-home environments in ways that haven’t been possible in the past few years. Digital outdoor vendors can now rotate multiple ads, daypart messages, and offer lower production costs vs. those of traditional outdoor printing. Not far down the road is Bluetooth-enabled signage; while this is much more developed in the UK, the US mall advertising company JC Decaux is working to soon enable mall shoppers to download content by turning on their phones’ Bluetooth function.

How do we sift through all of these OOH options?
To quote a recent Ad Age article about consumer routines, “However set in stone our routines may be, there are always opportunities for clever marketers to infiltrate rituals and seek out moments when they may be disrupted.”

Traditional planning disciplines, and Empower’s media research tools, help us identify smart opportunities for our clients’ brands to stand out in the cluttered media landscape - and build solid OOH media recommendations.

1. Develop a deep understanding of your target and their activities outside of the home. Simmons, MRI – and Scarborough on a local level – are powerful tools to identify our key prospects’ propensity to engage in “targetable” activities as they move through the day. Routines like stopping by a coffee shop en route to work, or relaxing at the cinema on the weekend, provide opportunities to work our clients’ brands into those experiences.

A sampling of recent examples for Empower clients include:

• Reaching b-to-b decision makers during their commute with drive-time dayparted ads on digital bulletins, and via the Captivate elevator TV network in large office buildings
• Targeting young travelers with regional cinema ads for Cincinnati USA
• Seeking out over-the-road truck drivers with digital ads in travel plazas for 5-hour Energy Drink
• Providing brand messages for prospective Mederma consumers as they wait in dermatologist offices – or, for Aloxi in oncologist offices.
• Reaching credit-challenged consumers with ads in laundromats, check cashing locations and gas stations for Cincinnati Bell
• Deploying brand ambassadors at client-sponsored happy hours to engage with early adopter young socials, driving to a branded photo gallery online

2. Apply media planning disciplines for the most strategic spend, from using Empower’s MAPS® to determine the best markets, to estimating buy impressions and negotiating placements on CPMs. While Reach and Frequency measurement for Alternative OOH are not as sophisticated as those for TV, Radio and Magazine (Telmar, Nielsen and Arbitron are starting to get in the game), Empower’s delivery tools do allow us to create custom media, to mix OOH advertising initiatives with other media in local market campaigns.

3. Build learning and measurement into the plan. Crafting the media plan to test Alternative OOH options in select markets, then evaluating performance based on ROI and/or ROO is the ideal approach. And, whenever possible, The OOH Team at Empower works within the integrated media strategy team to incorporate measurement elements into Alternative OOH campaigns – e.g. driving traffic to a microsite, to provide a more in-depth product sell or further engage prospects, and gauge performance of the OOH at the same time. For larger campaigns, Empower’s KII (Knowledge, Information & Invention) group can implement pre- and post- ad recognition studies to further evaluate programs.

4. Track and react. As with traditional media plans, refining campaigns based on learnings, in-market results and return, is critical.

It’s true that the array of OOH media available today can be dizzying, and it will only continue to grow. But at the end of the day, Empower’s approach of applying sound media planning and buying strategies – starting with the target and refining plans based on results - is the key to putting these new options to work for your brand.