Another notable campaign was Canwest’s Global News. The Canwest Global campaign focuses on increasing viewership and awareness of Global National News evenings at 5:30 pm.  A cross section of 6 venues types hosting digital out-of-home screens were optimized in select markets.  Multiple cities in multiple provinces were identified as priority markets where media reach was not maximized.  With the use of its hyper-targeting capabilities, ADCENTRICITY was able to fill the gaps in order to extend more audience reach in these important markets to enhance awareness and influence viewership of Global News.

Below you will see the creatives from returning clients GM and Heart & Stroke as well as new client’s Janes Chicken and Scotiabank. These campaigns are playing on thousands of screens and venues throughout North America targeting their chosen audiences.

Stay tuned for our February flights!

Below you can see the great creatives from American Express, Samsung and Amtrak which are currently playing on hundreds of screens across North America reaching people on the go!

Digital OOH advertising strategies are delivering these types of results. Case in point, Evian, Danone’s leading bottled water brand is the latest innovative marketer to join in on an emerging trend of “digital where you are” – digital out-of-home advertising and merchandising programs within the store, just when a consumer is looking to make a planned or unplanned purchase.

Using brilliant digital creative, Evian has tapped the digital OOH medium alone in launching its new “Live Young” campaign, extending the reach of their viral creative with point-of-purchase media – the ultimate in Shopper Marketing. The new global creative, developed by France’s BETC Euro RSCG, is intended to reach cosmopolitan 25- to 49-year-olds making $75,000 or more, leveraging Internet and Social media tactics including bloggers, YouTube and Facebook.



Only days after being in the public domain, the creative spots have spread like wildfire, having been viewed over two million times. If the water cooler talk on Twitter is any indication, it’s a hit. As one user said:

Did Evian take to TV and stay with traditional media to guarantee their viral success?
Not a chance! MPG Canada approached ADCENTRICITY to execute the only advertising vehicle used to “spread the good word” – a first ever, national initiative promoting the creative on in-store digital out-of-home screens in convenience stores and grocery chains. Michael Thouin senior brand manager for Danone Waters North America said:

“It really allows us to get our creative in a place where consumers are making their purchase decisions. This is the first time we’ve done this and we’re really excited about it.”

ADCENTRICITY executed the digital out-of-home strategy for Evian with MPG Canada and is very excited to see the performance results of this fantastic creative – which is sure to capture consumer attention.

There is no price point or special offer associated with the creative, however measurement success will likely come in 3 forms – Brand lift, Web activity and in-store sales lift.

Not all digital out-of-home advertising needs to be based on Direct Response or pure sales lift during the course of a campaign – it’s of course the ultimate end goal but only one part of a multi-faceted marketing and consumer strategy as consumers make decisions and buy when, how and where they want. Digital out-of-home media simply allows you to develop programs that enable you to be around your consumers instead of in front of them, the latter of which angers today’s customer. The fact remains that in-store capabilities are evolving and brand product decisions can be influenced in-store and on the path to purchase.

There are so many important approaches to digital OOH strategies and just a few digital out-of-home benefits include:

o Gaining customer attention
o Increased sales
o Product feature education and benefits
o Increased shopper experience
o Decreased perceived wait time
o Extended sales voice
o Loyalty program promotion
o New revenue streams
o Staff education and screen-cast training

Using digital out-of-home screens in a retail environment has capabilities that simply cannot be achieved by static displays and signage – including tripling the consumer’s attention at the point-of-purchase and enabling instantaneous communications about the value of a brand or service. Whether campaigns are intended to build a brand, influence customer purchase intent or influence brand decision choices, the dynamic, visual experience created by digital out-of-home screens in-store show a high correlation with sales increases and propensity to purchase – whether your brand is served in-store or not! Multiple research studies have returned incredible results:

o 88% lift in sales has been measured / 18% lift in sales volume 1
o 90% agree it has a positive impact on their shopping experience 2
o 84 percent of 18-to-34 year-olds finding sale or product programming to be helpful 3
o 81% awareness of screens in-store 3
o 68% more likely to buy products displayed on a screen in-store 3
o 23% Increase in employee brand awareness 3
o 30% of shoppers make un-planned purchases 3

I’ve been marketing for many years and these figures continue to impress me.

For additional information about the information contained in this work or questions about how digital OOH will benefit your efforts, contact your ADCENTRICITY representative.

*The new Evian campaign has also been featured in Marketing Magazine and MediaPost Out-to-Launch.

Jeff Atley
VP Marketing & Business Development
ADCENTRICITY Inc.

1 Point Vision 2 Roper/NOP 3 Arbitron

I’ve had this conversation with many after recent announcements have come out on the mobile marketing front. I’m very cautious when talking about mobile and where it will go and how we need to be cautious in its introduction into the culture and execution of digital OOH’s success.

Case in point? Look at the Internet.  While Internet advertising has grown by leaps and bounds and makes lots of people very rich, the fact of the matter is, because it went to a “success is a click-through” model (aka direct response) as fast as it did, it leaves 100s of millions of dollars on the table as click throughs rarely actually lead to the execution of a “sale” that is trackable.  As today’s Ad Age article from Hernan Lopez details on a statement from Randall Rothenberg:

Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has called for a “creative renaissance” on the internet, which he said has been “an unthinking hostage to a direct-marketing culture and tradition that devalues creativity and its long-term effect on brands.”

While I’m a big proponent of Mobile in digital OOH -warning: registration required- (actually I’m a proponent of its use in many places with the right solution and thought process behind it), I’m very hard on the idea that it be used for any form of true “measurement” in the space.  This is for a couple of reasons:

1.    It takes the all of the onus off the need for a quality product and brand strategy around the product and puts it on the digital OOH medium.
2.    It takes all of the onus off of creative agencies to understand how to use our medium and execute quality creative strategies that attracts consumers in the first place
3.    Calls to action and value to the consumer are typically terribly weak even when #1 and #2 ARE addressed, further putting the onus on digital OOH to perform better for potentially crappy products with bad creative AND add no value to the consumer experience
4.    I’ve already seen this happen in the Internet ad business who decided to move to click based measurement ALONE and they never got out of that funk and it is now affecting their ability to be considered anything but “DR”

Don’t get me wrong.  Mobile can be used as an INDICATOR of success, it’s just that it should never be considered the SOLE test of a digital OOH’s campaign’s success if we value long term growth of a successful new medium. i.e. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

ADCENTRICITY, was actually founded on many of Erwin Ephron’s theories and comments – hence our approach towards Path-2-Purchase and Point-of-Purchase based continuity programs and strategies.  Erwin is considered the founder of recency theory who, as Hernan stated in the article in answering an advertising paradox:

Consumers act on ads for products they’re ready to buy and ignore the rest. That called for a shift in scheduling, from flighting to continuity; being off the air was “like being off the shelf.

Basically, you never know when someone is going to be ready to buy your new tube of toothpaste so you have to have continued, targeted advertising in order to best support ongoing sales and profits as consumers become more receptive as they become more prepared to make a purchase.  In the digital OOH world, this also means that if a consumer is not ready to buy a product and the call to action is weak then they definitely won’t engage with you via mobile, further downward skewing mobile measurement.

I especially liked one of Hernan’s supporting comments on this front:

Advertising can work in subtle ways. It can boost profitability, even for large brands in developed markets, which are normally sluggish and rarely see sustained sales increases. Advertising is not as weak as it seems, just difficult to measure.

Unfortunately, in today’s world to many, something that’s difficult to measure, is too difficult to sell to the new CMO…the CFO – the guy who is willing to pay for something he can see today – not down the road.

Fortunately, there are studies like those referenced in the article from comScore, that are showing display ads online (not clicked) with real world purchases.

We as an industry are not quite there yet.  Much more research has yet to be done on this front to prove this type of behavior, although we’re already seeing these forms of results.  What I will say, however, is don’t be so quick to abandon all of the other forms of success measurement (3rd party brand/recall based studies, sales lift, campaign activity lift, etc, and most importantly CASE STUDIES) in favor of a medium measurement solution that could significantly harm your agency or network efforts going forward.

Mobile will be a very important part of our medium going forward and help shepherd in an era of consumer behavioral grooming and brand loyalty and connectedness, you just have to know how to use it and when in order to effect the results – both short and long term – that you want.

Last point that Hernan referenced in his article was one on the creative front to make ads in mediums work for you best.  I wanted to address these in lieu of my earlier comments on creative and strategy in the medium:

1.    They are entertaining and amusing;
2.    They are visual rather than verbal; and
3.    They say something important and meaningful about the brand being advertised

More recently, he added the expression “rational arguments enclosed in emotional envelopes”

Choose your mobile strategy wisely!

The Samsung Omnia campaign launched two weeks ago in several convenience store, entertainment, grocery, hospitality, office buildings and personal care locations throughout Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. The creative is a great promotion of consumer electronics by demonstrating the user experience and features within 13 seconds.  Samsung has really been a leader in using digital out-of-home (OOH) and, as evidenced by the results from their case study (49% increase in unaided brand recall using JUST digital out-of-home), are reaping the rewards.

Another recently launched campaign that has good use of creative is the Vaspar Paint campaign running within convenience store, entertainment, health care, hospitality, office buildings and personal care locations.  A relevant ad spot was created by utilizing components of Valspar’s existing broadcast TV spot and applying some good After Effects features to static brand assetts to bring together the 15 second ad. The client simply provided us with the assets and a sketch – a quick conversation about their vision and we were able to provide them with a really nice looking spot for modest budget. This is a great example of using different sources of creative (broadcast, static) paired with experience in the medium and an understanding of working with shorter captive periods to create great visual content for digital out-of-home advertising. Broadcast creative is not always an option but it this case worked very well and the relative costs were extremely efficient.

Campaign Entries: Best Branding Campaign
Agency: n2: a digital media solutions company
Client: The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research
Campaign: Team Fox

Agency: Moxie Interactive
Client: Verizon
Campaign: V CAST Entertainment

Agency: ADCENTRICITY
Client: Samsung
Campaign: Samsung Instinct product launch.

Campaign Entries: Best Campaign: Local
Agency: Horizon Media
Client: Cadbury Adams/Stride Gum
Campaign: Non-Stop Mint

Agency: Captivate Network
Client: McDonalds
Campaign: McDonald’s introduces new McCafe and speciality drinks

Agency: ADCENTRICITY
Client: Barack Obama
Campaign: Change” Barak Obama, Presidential Election Campaign 2009, Ohio Primary

Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, GEICO, Cadbury Adams, Walmart, AT&T, Sony, and many more were amongst the field of entries. I understand that there were more than 200 entries for the awards. Congratulations to all of the participating digital out-of-home companies for executing great programs with some of North America’s leading brands.

See you in New York on the 22nd for the Digital Out-of-Home Forum & Expo