Delta Airlines is serving as an example of how impactful digital out-of-home media can be when used as part of an integrated digital media campaign. Earlier in the year, the airline and its ad agency, Digitas, ran a brand-awareness campaign for Delta’s international travel services using digital out-of home screens combined with traditional media.
Last week, the results of the DOOH portion of the campaign were announced and were highlighted by the fact that “awareness of Delta as an international carrier increased by more than 28 percent.”
Edison Research surveyed consumers prior to the launch of the DOOH campaign and again during the campaign to measure how effectively the messages reached Delta’s target audience and whether awareness was increased. The results indicate that Delta’s goals of reaching the target audience and increasing awareness of Delta as a preferred international carrier were accomplished.
Specifically:
• Awareness of Delta as an international carrier increased more than 28 percent.
• Among business travelers, the perception that Delta “flies to the international destinations you want to go to” increased 26 percent.
• The percentage of people “very likely” to recommend Delta to friends, family or colleagues increased 61 percent.
• Of those who noticed the screens, 32 percent fit Delta’s income demographic.
• Those who noticed the screens were frequent travelers who had an average of 5.2 business trips a year.
• Overall awareness of Delta increased by 15 percent.
The campaign ran between late February and mid-June 2009 exclusively in New York City. Delta's specific goal was to raise awareness among business travelers about it’s international flights to and from JFK airport.
Digitas not only wanted to reach this demographic, but also to continue to push the Delta message to its audience at different times of the day.
“We wanted to build a ‘surrounding’ media plan to basically have an inescapable program where the people that we are trying to reach would see Delta’s message at every point of their day,” said Pat Connolly, vice president and group director of Digitas.
To make sure the digital ads reached the proper audience, Digitas used SeeSaw Networks’ DOOH aggregation service, SeeSaw Ads, which allows marketers to run ads on specific screens depending on the intended audience.
Digitas also used a SeeSaw service called Life Pattern Marketing, where the company identifies when and where a certain demographic will see DOOH ads and then assigns ads to networks along that demographic’s daily journeys.
For example, in the case of Delta, ads were placed on screens rotated over five digital networks including on RMG Networks screens at cafes, the WHEN network at health clubs, cardio machines on the NetPulse network in health clubs, ferry terminals through the Affinity Network and PumpTop TV at gas stations.
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A Delta ad on RMG Networks at a Subway Restaurant in New York, N.Y. |
“The Delta campaign on SeeSaw’s national network demonstrates the power of place and how place-based digital advertising delivers business results by intercepting a specific audience across multiple touch points during their daily routines,” said Suzanne La Forgia, president of the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB).
Furthermore, Digitas created four separate sets of creative to promote Delta’s service to Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. These rotated on a weekly basis over the course of the campaign.
“The net impact of this campaign really tells us three things,” said Peter Bowen, “One, place-based digital advertising is effective at reaching audiences in their daily lives. The second is that aggregation provides advertisers a way to reach a large amount of people. And third, this media can be highly targeted to reach a specific audience.”
