Remaining unchanged in media is like placing one foot in the grave. So why does outdoor advertising still exist?

Outdoor advertising has a lot of catching up to do.

When billboards first appeared in the 1830s, they were made of poster paper and slapped where passersby couldn’t help but notice them—and today, that’s largely unchanged. Sure, the brands and campaigns are more modern, and yes, there are more places to display ads. (Think gas pumps and grocery check-outs.) But for the most part, advertisers are still just hanging posters outside—static message and all—hoping their ads will resonate.

Now, in an age where mobile technology is taking over our attention, does that approach still make the cut with on-the-go consumers?
“The era of interrupt-and-imprint advertising has gone the way of the industrial age,” says Adam Ronich of Hall & Partners, a brand engagement and communications research agency headquartered in New York City.

Why? We have more distractions than ever. On buses, we read Kindles and iPads. In cars, we watch built-in DVD players and GPS screens. While walking and waiting, we pull out smart phones to play

games, write e-mails and update our Twitter status. In other words, we’re not paying attention to a giant sign above our heads that says “Drink Coca-Cola.”

No, this doesn’t mean brands will stop spending $6 billion a year in out-of-home advertising. Nor does it mean the nation’s billboards, bus shelters, and train cars will go blank. But if advertisers want to continue capturing the attention of consumers outside their homes—where they now spend 27 percent of their time, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA)—they’ll need to find more interesting ways to do it.

Interacting With Consumers, Outdoors

Consumer participation. We all know it’s essential to branding, but how can you expect people to interact through a largely impersonal medium, the outdoor ad?

In 2008, the San Francisco Zoo got it right. The organization was suffering extremely low attendance at the time and hired advertising firm BBDO West to launch an outdoor campaign called “Critter Quest.” The ads, posted on bus shelters across the city, displayed posters of oversized butterfly wings, moose ears, and peacock feathers, and when someone took a picture in front of the ad, they’d end up looking like that animal.

The ad asked people to post their pictures at OurSFZoo.com, and the most creative photos would be chosen for the zoo’s next round of print advertisements.

The campaign was a wild success, winning a 2009 OBIE award (like the Oscars for outdoor advertising) and helping the zoo exceed its attendance goals by about 25 percent.

“Creating interaction with the brand gets people excited,” says Richard Laermer, marketing columnist for The Huffington Post and author of the book “Punk Marketing.” “This personal interaction feeds the participation culture we live in.”

New technology is also making it easier to give freebies to outdoor consumers and gain their immediate attention. Where an outdoor ad previously directed consumers to a Web address for a coupon or extra information—requiring people to remember the URL once they

got home—texting codes and two-dimensional barcodes now allow passersby to immediately download content onto their smart phones.

For example, New Yorkers who walked past a billboard for the Broadway musical “In the Heights” could text the word “heights” to a five-digit number and receive a video message from the musical’s main star. The campaign, which ran last year, achieved a 24-to-1 return on investment, according to Targeted Marketing magazine.

In the Denver International Airport, Colorado-based First Bank displayed ads with two words, “free books,” and a two-dimensional barcode. Using a smart phone app that reads these codes—which

look like fuzzy black and white squares—travelers could take a picture of the code and immediately be connected to a Web page that lists several free e-books for download. Other First Bank ads gave away free crossword and Sudoku puzzles—all part of the brand’s “helpfulness” campaign.

“Connecting people through outdoor advertising electronically is about the simplest thing you can do right now. It’s cheap in many respects, too,” Laermer says.

And some brands are starting to integrate outdoor campaigns with social media, the ultimate place for consumer interaction. For example, an outdoor campaign launched last fall by environmental law firm Earthjustice prompts riders at San Francisco transit stations to “check in” at its billboards on Foursquare. The billboards exhibit environmental-themed messages, such as “Use your cell phone to drill the oil industry,” and every time someone checks in on Foursquare, a major donor gives $10 to Earthjustice.

Arguably, none of these campaigns would have had the same effect if they had simply said, “Come to the Zoo,” “See Our Musical” or “Help Fight Climate Change.”
“While one could make the argument of a brand’s ubiquitous

presence affecting subconscious processing of the information,” says Hall & Partners’ Ronich, “[outdoor advertising’s] future value is in participation, not passive communication.”

Less Labor-Intensive Strategies

Consumer participation is all well and good, but there are three other, less labor-intensive strategies that are helping to keep the outdoor industry alive: hyperlocal marketing, press coverage, and digital billboards.

For starters, the rising popularity of hyperlocal marketing has given rebirth to outdoor ads, which have always been hyperlocal by nature. (Where else can you advertise right down to the block?) And

cutting-edge advertisers are catching on—no longer trying to be all things to all people, but sending a more meaningful message to smaller, targeted groups.

At the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field, where Budweiser and Old Style have a virtual monopoly at the beer stands, Miller Lite was looking for a way to get more visibility among Cubs fans. So the brand erected a billboard just outside of the stadium that pokes fun at the visiting team. When New York came to town, the ad read “In a Wrigleyville State of Mind.” With the Cardinals, “Hey STL, Too Bad You Can’t Brew Wins.” The ads have become a fan favorite, and more importantly, sales of Miller Lite in the Wrigleyville area increased 13.6 percent after the billboard’s first year at Wrigley.

The Miller Lite billboard also created a lot of buzz, another of the strategies that will help keep outdoor relevant. “When creativity in outdoor gets press, and people talk about it with their friends, that’s what sells product,” Laermer says.

Indeed. In Mobile, Ala., Foosackly’s Chicken Fingers restaurant caused quite a stir with one of its billboards in 2008. At the time, Boeing Co. had issued a series of complaints to the federal government regarding a potential Air Force tanker project in Mobile, thereby eliminating thousands of promised jobs in the area. So,

along with local advertising firm Red Square Agency, the restaurant paid for space on a billboard that read, “We would like to offer Boeing a finger,” accompanied by the restaurant’s logo.

“[The restaurant’s owner] had the guts to say what everybody else was thinking; so it’s not a surprise hours after the board went up the calls flooded in,” says Rich Sullivan, president of Red Square Agency. The billboard received coverage by CNBC.com, The Seattle Times, Advertising Age, and other national outlets. As for the restaurant, it saw its website visits jump 89 percent and experienced a boost in same-store sales during the campaign.

Digital billboards are another innovative, yet largely ignored development in the outdoor world. Right now, only 0.4 percent of the nation’s 450,000 billboards are digital, which allows a message to change every four to 10 seconds. (Though building them costs about 10 times more than traditional billboards.)

“The thing about digital is that it’s not new, and people don’t use it right,” Laermer says.

Digital billboards have been around since 2005, and many advertisers use the same copy and visuals from their static ads. Instead, they should be taking advantage of their ability to change this message on the fly. For instance, Fox 35 in Orlando, Fla., uses its digital billboard to showcase the headline of its lead evening-news story,

So what’s the problem?

Although all of these campaigns and strategies are incredibly creative,

outdoor advertising is still behind the times. The technology to interact, integrate, and digitize is out there, but most outdoor advertisers are not using them.

So, is outdoor advertising destined to remain in the Stone Ages?

Though he may be biased, Stephen Freitas of the OAAA, says it most certainly is not. “The outdoor ad industry has spent millions on innovation, especially during the recession, to become more competitive,” he says.

Freitas points to EyesOn, a new technology that is revolutionizing the way the outdoor industry gathers impressions, or the number of people who see an outdoor ad. EyesOn actually captures the physiological measure of eye contact, giving extremely precise information down to the age of a person who sees the ad. Eventually, each ad space will have its own demographic profile, which Freitas says will make outdoor the most sophisticated, credible vehicle for targeted advertising.

He also points to the shortening attention span of the American consumer. While one would think this works against advertisers, he says outdoor doesn’t need the luxury of time.

“You see an outdoor ad for a few seconds at a time,” Freitas says. “And that’s what we do—provide short bursts of information.”

Although these technological advances are promising, currently outdoor advertising still lags other forms of consumer interaction. Both Laermer and Ronich cite several reasons.

First, integration—between outdoor ads and the Web, smart phones and social media—is more complicated than it seems. Brands often hire separate agencies to perform their marketing tasks—Web design for one, social media for another, mobile marketing for yet another. Being able to coordinate an effective campaign among all these agencies is questionable.

Second is the institutionalized process of advertising. “If an ad

agency can’t make a commission off something, they won’t suggest it to their clients,” Laermer says. “These new ideas take time, energy and investment.” Ronich agrees, saying the “structure of the way we do things right now” mostly benefits the advertising industry, not the clients.

And finally, thin research contributes to outdoor advertising’s slow modernization. Although many campaigns achieve measurable success, new ideas must be proven on a large scale to get advertisers on the bandwagon.

“The hardest part about change is proving [to brands] that it works,” Ronich says. “We’re taking these light steps, but everyone wants the precedent before them.”