13 May 2013 | Steve Smith

Marrying out-of-home and mobile

Starcom MediaVest’s Steve Smith takes a look at the union between out-of-home and mobile and explains why it’s so important that brands optimise their mobile platforms.

Starcom MediaVest London’s CEO, Stewart Easterbrook, took part in a panel at a MediaTel event last week, ‘The union of out of home and mobile‘.

Over half of UK adults now own a smartphone, and just under nine in ten smartphone owners regularly go online via their phones (86%, Ofcom 2013). This, together with the fact that out-of-home has the second highest monthly reach behind TV, means that 16% of adults report using their mobiles to search the web partly as a result of out of home ads each month (Outdoor Media Centre).

Clearly, search and brands’ sites need to be mobile optimised. Given smartphone penetration, you would think this is a given. Yet I find it astonishing that only 57 of the UK’s top 100 brands have mobile optimised sites (IAB).

Brands without mobile optimised sites need to take mobile more seriously or they run the risk of losing opportunities and custom to competitors. Thirteen per cent of adults report buying products within a given month because they have been influenced by out-of-home advertising (OMC).

People who are most likely to do this are young, mobile, affluent, connected and urban individuals. Just under half of 16-24s report having made purchases because of out of home media exposure (44%, OMC). This will increase when brand owners incorporate mobile elements to out of home experiences in ways that people find relevant and deeply meaningful to them.

To facilitate this, the mobile activity and destination needs to be easy and quick to get to. It really isn’t surprising that few campaigns which have used QR codes have shown signs of success because barriers to use are simply too high. People are more likely to manually search on their phones instead. Yet given the overheads to search as well highlights the importance that people find the proposition to be emotionally impactful, persuasive, and stimulating.

Is it desirable? Will what they discover add to their lives in some way? What needs do they have that you can meet?

When people do get to their mobile destinations, any calls to action should be simple and shareable – such as single click purchase, showing local stockists and deals, downloading coupons and sharing content.

I really like the recent partnership between Boots pharmacy and Weetabix Oaty bars, who ran a TV ad that encouraged people to take a photo of the ad and then go into a Boots store to get a discount. This could easily be done out of home, and people should be encouraged to upload the image to social media so other people in their personal communities can use the photo.

Out of home also needs be about how people can use mobile to discover and share more emotionally immersive content as part of a longer brand story. Our own research shows that strong positive emotions can increase brand equity, conversations across people’s personal communities, and brand actions.

The partnership between Bing and Jay-Z to promote his autobiography is a good example of how this can be done, with people using mobile to discover and share further extracts from the book dotted around New York.