Tag Archives: out-of-home advertising

by | Friday, July 20, 2018 · 7:52 am

Extreme Stunts!

Everyone loves to watch an extreme event. Thrills, chills, excitement! Will it work? Will it fail? Either way – it will be spectacular!

Once rare, extreme stunts have become a valuable marketing tactic for brands to gain the public’s attention and expand a brand’s reach. Unlike a 30-second ad viewed once or twice, a stunt gains valuable viewers and exposure when videos go viral and are watched multiple times.

One of the most memorable in recent years was the Red Bull Stratos freefall jump from space. In that stunt, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner did a 4:20 minute long freefall from 128,000 feet above the Earth, traveling at 1,342 kilometers per hour. The stunt broke world records in longest freefall, highest freefall and highest manned balloon flight! The jump was watched live by 52 million people across online platforms, and has been reviewed millions of times.

Red Bull isn’t alone in using stunts to capture attention and build awareness. One recent event launched the first car into space! Tesla and SpaceX sent a Tesla Roadster (complete with dummy astronaut driver) into space using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket in early February, 2018. The launch logged more than 2.3 concurrent views on YouTube.

Another high-profile of our favorite stunts featured Range Rover’s Sport Plug-In Hybrid as it drove the 99 turns and 999 steps of China’s Tianmen Mountain. The six-minute video resulted in more than three million views, 45,000 likes, and 2,000 comments globally.

Can’t wait to see the next brand’s extreme stunt!

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. Discuss the use of extreme events in marketing as a promotional tactic.
  2. Poll students: What are some of the events or stunts they can recall? Why were these memorable? Did they further the brand’s message?
  3. Show several of the many videos with extreme stunts: Red Bull Stratos: https://youtu.be/FHtvDA0W34I
  4. Tesla Starman launch: https://youtu.be/A0FZIwabctw
  5. Tesla Starman – Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/embed/aBr2kKAHN6M
  6. Land Rover Dragon Challenge: https://youtu.be/EUwzWHD3Htg
  7. Nike Breaking 2: https://www.nike.com/gb/en_gb/c/running/breaking2
  8. Snapple world’s largest popsicle: https://youtu.be/QlZ_QsKYx5Y
  9. Poll students: What brands could make effective use of an extreme stunt as a tactic?
  10. Divide students into teams: Have each team develop a stunt for a selected brand.

Source: Lucken, S. (31 May, 2018). When done right, extreme stunts can catapult a brand into the public eye. Ad Week.

 

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by | Thursday, March 15, 2018 · 7:33 am

Outdoor Ads and Serena Williams

Serena Williams is one of the world’s greatest tennis players of all time. And, as a new mother, her husband and baby girl have proclaimed that she is also the “greatest momma of all time!” (G.M.O.A.T) They made the announcement in a very public way, too – giant billboards!

Using a series of four billboards outside Palm Springs, Calif., the billboards coincided with William’s return to competitive tennis as she competes in her first professional match since giving birth. While the billboards were charming and included photos of baby Olympia, the billboards also lend weight to one of Alexis Ohanian’s (William’s husband) business holdings. Ohanian used an outdoor advertising company named AdQuick to design and place the ads; he has a financial stake in the company.

It’s a lovely, and clever, play as AdQuick brings online tools to outdoor advertising to make the process of buying and measuring easier and more transparent. The company aims to solve two problems with outdoor advertising – getting billboards designed is usually a slow, low-tech process and it can be difficult to measure the impact of billboard campaigns.

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. Discuss the various promotional tactics that can be used for launching a product.
  2. Have students come up with tactics and list all the tactics on the white board (ex: billboards, print, direct mail, etc.).
  3. Discuss the use of billboards and other outdoor advertising.
  4. Divide students into groups to work on this exercise.
  5. For a product of their choosing, have each team develop a creative billboard. Make sure they define the target market, key message, and billboard location.
  6. Note: Look up creative billboards online and show several in class to spark ideas. Many ideas can be found by doing a Google image search for “creative billboards.”

Source:  Nudd, T. (27 February, 2018). Those cute ads with Serena Williams and her baby are also ads for the billboard company. Ad Week.

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by | Wednesday, December 20, 2017 · 6:07 am

Smokin’ Billboards Get Attention

Billboards are probably one of the more overlooked advertising tactics by students, who often view the media as being boring and static. But, they can be extremely effective – especially when the fog machine gets rolling!

This fall, billboards designed for Associated Bank’s Green Bay Packers checking program showed photos of popular players Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb. However, the billboards also were outfitted with an additional eye-catching special effect – fog machines. The design is similar to the look of the Green Bay players when they exit the tunnel onto their home turf, Lambeau Field. Definitely eye-catching!

The problem was that the billboards were a little bit too eye-catching at first. Dozens of local motorists called 9-1-1 and local police to erroneously report what they thought were burning billboards! (The billboards did comply with local ordinances and laws.)

Here are a few guidelines for a good billboard campaign:

  1. Use six words or less.
  2. Get noticed.
  3. Be smart.
  4. Don’t just say it – show it.
  5. Keep it simple.
  6. Have a story.
  7. Be bold and colorful.

These billboards scored extra points for creativity.

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. Discuss out-of-home advertising and the various forms it can take.
  2. Also discuss key elements to designing billboards in order to capture the drivers’ attention.
  3. Poll students: What billboards can they recall seeing in the past few days?
  4. Show the video of the Green Bay Packers billboard results: http://fox11online.com/news/local/fog-mistaken-for-smoke-on-billboards-leads-to-911-calls
  5. Divide students into teams. Have each team design a billboard for a local company or service.

Source:  Nudd, T. (2017, Oct. 31). These Wisconsin billboards are so hot, drivers think they’re on fire. Ad Week.   

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