WHY NINE’S FORAY INTO OUTDOOR MAKES SENSE
I noted with interest some caution expressed by a few financial analysts regarding Nine Entertainment’s decision to sell its radio stations and buy outdoor advertising company QMS Media for $850 million. They were not questioning the sale of radio, but more the price paid for QMS.
Time will tell as to the extent Nine makes a decent return on its investment, but the overriding principle of moving into Outdoor for me makes a lot of sense in the ever-challenging world of media.
I’ve long been a fan of what some call “out of home” advertising, from the mega-billboards that light up city skylines to the signage used by small businesses of all shapes and sizes.
The logic is sound, especially when it comes to getting the attention of younger demographics (actually, they’re not that young anymore) who’ve never got into the habit of using traditional media like radio, broadcast TV or newspapers.
As an aside, I am increasingly suspicious that the marketing role of newspapers for many large-scale advertisers (notably whitegoods and furniture sellers) is more about using the circulation network to distribute their catalogues (perhaps cheaper than mailing them). TV, on the other hand, is focused heavily on large-scale sporting codes, and radio is becoming less about live BROADcasting and more about PODcasting.
While those big, bold roadside billboards are expensive, they are especially useful for creating brand awareness, though to really work, they need great creative ideas, not just a logo plonked on a bright-coloured screen.
Critically, they need to be able to encapsulate a message that can be viewed and understood in the 2-3 seconds they might have to capture the target audience’s attention.
I am highly sceptical about the effectiveness of billboard creative that extend beyond 6-8 words with visual imagery that is obscure or messaging that is clever but obscure.
Signage for me is what I would term “glance marketing” – the advertiser gets a tiny amount of the audience’s attention – the only exception perhaps being ads on the back of a bus in front of a motorist stuck in peak-hour traffic.
And speaking of buses, I’m convinced that a lot of businesses miss a trick when it comes to realising the value of the space on their vehicle fleets. A few years ago, I worked with a client in this town who had a fleet of trucks and vans stretching into the hundreds. For some reason, I was struggling to convince them that they were sitting on a goldmine of brand exposure in their vehicle fleet, which was on the road 24/7. In desperation, I rang up a media buying friend of mine, gave her the size and dimensions of their vehicles and asked for a conversion to the cost if my client were to purchase the equivalent space on busy roads via billboards. The figure was staggering. They were essentially sitting on well over a million dollars’ worth of outdoor advertising space. Yes, there was the cost of vehicle wraps, but with an average lifespan of 3-4 years, they were looking at a return on investment in less than 12 months.
I must confess I failed. As is so often the case when pitching promotional campaigns to clients, the short-sighted finance department and management can’t get past the initial investment cost. I noticed with interest that not long afterwards, to bolster brand awareness, they had spent quite a considerable sum on traditional billboards. I sighed and bit my tongue.
The point is, though, that outdoor is an important part of the promotional mix and I think it is one of the few traditional media platforms that has the capacity to make a case against the overwhelming attraction of digital.
That said, perhaps the only challenge – especially if you are targeting commuters sitting on a bus or train – is to get them to look up from their phones long enough to actually spot the sign and absorb its content. No one said it was easy.
For more insights and ramblings on strategic business communications and marketing from JLCA Director John Le Cras, visit the JLCA Journal page.
