Exploring OOH: why outdoor is the perfect medium for travel campaigns.

A summer holiday is commonplace with a lot of people each year, with travellers jetting off to many different destinations in search of sun, sea and sangria, and travel companies are vying for as many customers as possible.

 

However going on holiday isn’t a new trend. Some of the earliest travel advertisement posters date back as far as the 1870’s, encouraging people to travel by railway for pleasure, and The British Travel and Holidays Association ran their famous ‘Come to Britain’ campaign in 1929 for an impressive 50 years.

 

Fast forward to the 1950’s and the advent of the package holiday. Package holidays helped revolutionise travel with factors such as chartered flights and reduced travel times from journeying via plane. Around this time the shift turned away from railway posters and instead to more glamorous airline travel, causing a big change in advertising. Although package holidays were born out of the 1950’s, it was really until the 1970’s the world saw the advent of mass tourism, with Britons spending more on overseas holidays than those at home for the first time ever.

Travel continues to be an enormous industry which is growing, especially in the UK in which £64.2bn is expected to spent this year on consumers taking holidays. In particular, spending on package holidays taken by UK residents overseas was estimated to have reached £21.1bn in 2023.

 

With such a big market comes big audiences and as such, golden advertising opportunities. A study by Aviva found that nearly three quarters of people (73%) say that it is important for them to go on holiday.

• OOH can help increase brand awareness. It is common knowledge that OOH reaches a large volume and broad range of audiences every single day. By utilising the medium, travel brands can get in front of audiences they never have previously.
• Proximity targeting. Adding OOH to a media plan can assist in targeting specific locations for campaigns. It is important to note that seeing an OOH advertisement is commonplace in most peoples daily routines. OOH can help brands target areas with high pedestrian numbers or long dwell times.
• Emotional advertising. Picture this, you’re stuck in a traffic jam or on your commute to work on a dreary day. You see an advert that shows a sun-soaked destination which immediately transports you back to your holidays and then want to book your next. Playing on emotions and creating a sense of wanderlust is easy to do with OOH.
• Creative possibilities are endless. Whether immersing the viewer helping them to ‘experience’ the destination, making use of 3D capabilities or simply taking advantage of a large format canvas with high impact visuals, with OOH creativeness knows no bounds.

 

It’s clear to see that advertising using OOH is more than just putting an ad on a screen, it is speaking to and connecting with an audience, which is key when looking to win customers.

Finally, what are some key recommendations travel brands should be considering when adding OOH to a media plan?

 

• Make sure your campaign is innovative enough to cut through the rest of the advertising noise and connect with your target audience.
• Make the most out of the many choice of outdoor locations by utilising high traffic, pedestrianised or travel-orientated locations.
• Make the most out of creative possibilities with high-impact imagery or messaging.

Sources: Mintel, Aviva, Finder.com, Emarketer, insightooh.com

 

To learn more about how OOH could work for your campaign, contact jamie.fisher@openmedia.uk.com