Business travellers are an easy target to reach at airports but media
buyers appear stubbornly unconvinced. David Reed investigates what must
change
Airports, by definition, have nearly 100 per cent reach of the
international business traveller audience. For that reason, advertising
within airports has become an increasingly important medium for
business-to-business campaigns. Compared with duty free ads, which have
long been the dominant form of airport advertising, these may not
currently be delivering massive revenues. But the marketplace is
developing, especially as business clients look to flood their
audience’s environment with messages.
The opportunities for advertising at airports are closely linked to the
growth of business travel. Some 1.3 billion passengers passed through
the world’s airports in 1995, 65 per cent of them ABC1s. While mass
tourism accounted for a sizeable chunk of that volume, the business
traveller was not far behind. According to a spokesperson for
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, 40 per cent of its 25 million passengers
in 1995 were on business flights.
For the media buyer, it is a target profile that is easy to understand.
As Michael Segrue, international director of the specialist buyer,
Poster Publicity, notes: ‘The majority of people buying this medium are
the very people who are the profile of the business traveller.’
What is less clear - and what is preventing greater use of airports as
an international business medium - is how travellers are affected by the
advertising. The absence of joint industry or independent research makes
comparative buying difficult. Add to this some of the ‘Spanish
practices’ that still typify international airport advertising, and it
becomes clear that the medium is going to have to work harder to build
on its existing position in buyers’ schedules.
The impact of airport posters ought to be immense. After all, travellers
can be in front of the medium for anything up to two hours. But as Guy
Cheston, managing director of the Havas-owned airport contractor, Sky
Sites, which holds the BAA franchise for seven UK airports, including
Heathrow and Gatwick, notes: ‘We don’t really sell on opportunity to see
[OTS]. A lot of short-term campaigns go for frequency, for example,
using 50 panels for one month. The OTS is massive, however - you can
walk down a pier on your way to a gate and be hit by the same message
over and over again.’
He notes that there is no syndicated research to verify what posters
achieve in this environment - discussions are still being pursued with
the Outdoor Advertising Association in the UK for their inclusion in the
Postar survey. The likelihood of getting airports included in the
European Businessman’s Readership Survey or the International Airline
Travellers’ Survey is remote.
Cheston does point to bespoke research which Sky Sites has carried out
into effectiveness and awareness for specific clients, such as BT and
AT&T. ‘Those advertisers using creative relevant to the environment and
the people they are trying to reach, for example, using images or words
relating to travelling, airports or flying, achieved much greater
awareness and recall than those just lifting the press ad,’ he says.
What media planners and buyers can get hold of is what Dennis Sullivan,
chairman and chief executive of Portland Outdoor Advertising, calls ‘a
deluge of information’ from concessionaires on international and
domestic passengers and their profile. On the duty-free side, that
includes must-stock lists and shelf-take data. The harder work of
identifying positions within terminals and grading them is done by the
specialist buyers and contractors, such as Portland and Posterscope
International, who physically visit the 100 to 150 key airports around
the world on a regular basis, grading each panel.
Sullivan says such research is critical to using the medium effectively.
And he warns that clients who deal directly with contractors - a
practice encouraged by the latter - are taking a real risk. ‘They have
no real control over positions. It is one of the pitfalls. The disparity
between a good and a bad site might only be pounds 1,000 a year, but
where there is no great price difference, the difference in quality is
huge,’ he says.
The problem is confirmed by Frances Dickens, managing director of
Zenith’s specialist airport division, Meridian Outdoor. ‘Airports are
changing all the time. To the airport, the revenue from advertising is a
pittance. It couldn’t care less if it takes down your panel, which cost
pounds 10,000 to produce, and leaves it sitting in a corner,’ she says.
In the context of airport revenues, advertising is tiny. Total spend in
the UK is estimated at around pounds 20 million, and probably only
reaches double that figure for the whole of Europe. The UK is
disproportionately important because of Heathrow, which handles 625,000
passengers every week. BAA is spending pounds 1 million a day on
refurbishment and redevelopment. Compared with that, international
business-to-business advertising is complementary peanuts, the seven-
year contract to sell airport ads netted BAA dollars 235 million (in
1993) - 5 per cent of its total concessions revenue.
This can lead to a dismissive view of the medium by its owners, which
Iain Jacob, international director of Motive Communications, says may be
passed on to contractors. ‘The medium is held back by its sales
operations, particularly outside the UK. People buy the right to be the
concessionaire from a monopolistic owner and then have to make money.
That leads to a particular type of sales policy, often short term, even
though the contracts between advertisers and contractors are for three
months.’
Control over airport advertising is highly concentrated within each
market, but with little regional or international co-ordination. In the
UK, Sky Sites is the biggest concession with seven airports, followed by
Posterscope, Airport Advertising (Europe), which sells Luton, with
Manchester selling on its own behalf. Sky Sites’ French sister company,
AP Systeme, has sole rights over all 90 airports in France. Schiphol and
Frankfurt operate their own sales houses.
Across the globe, in fact, there is a patchwork of directly sold and
concessionary opportunities which make planning and buying hard work. As
Dickens says: ‘It is not for the faint-hearted and lazy. That’s why it
is crucial to have buyers who are totally resourced, with a decent, up-
to-date mapping system.’
She does not believe it is multiple buying points that are inhibiting
the growth of airports as a business medium. Neither does Sullivan, who
notes that, ‘it is not so fragmented compared with roadside. If you look
at China, in the city of Guangxhou there are 1,300 poster contractors
and only one for the airport.’
Moves are afoot to make buying on multinational campaigns easier - Sky
Sites, AP Systeme, Rome, Frankfurt and Schiphol are discussing
introducing standard sizes on a 100-panel package. Cheston says: ‘One of
our corporate goals is to make the medium easier to buy - it is number
one on the list.’
A common European size - the Trisign - was introduced before, but it
failed to catch on. This may have been due to the fact that it was only
available in ten airports. But Dickens is wary about any attempt to
parcel up airport ad sites: ‘Packaging is always a bitter-sweet thing -
you get some very good sites, but there is a downside.’
What she sees as a more fundamental problem is the recent establishment
by Avenir Havas of an outdoor buying point, Airport Media International.
Since Havas also owns Sky Sites in the UK and part-owns AP Systeme,
Dickens notes: ‘It is trying to be a seller and a buyer - that must be a
conflict of interest. From a business perspective, it doesn’t affect me
much, otherwise I would be seriously worried about the precedent.’
Price is also an ongoing concern for media buyers. Airport sites are
notoriously expensive, with a showcase at Heathrow likely to cost more
than pounds 4,000 per square foot per year. In the absence of verifiable
audience figures, cost per thousand justifications are impossible. In
any case, for standard panels, position may be a more significant
factor. ‘Pricing is fairly uniform in the marketplace, which means some
clients are getting reasonably good value, while for others it is very
bad,’ Jacob says.
So far, airports have not had to worry too much about the concerns of
business advertisers and their agencies. The duty-free market has given
them relatively easy money. According to Schiphol Media, just 20 per
cent of its revenues are derived from international business campaigns.
The ending of duty free in Europe in 1997 will make a serious dent in
that income. Much of the development by airports has been designed to
keep people shopping, even when they’re not making huge savings. If
marketing opportunities for business travellers can be identified, media
owners may start to take note.
Shaun McIlrath, joint creative director at Impact FCA, believes it is
agencies who should be creative about the possibilities. ‘Airports are
the perfect opportunity for demonstrations, which I am surprised are not
used more. For example, what about Apple Power Book demos in the
executive lounge?’
Increasingly, airport advertising has been used in a support role by
international corporate brands as part of an exercise in tracking the
audience through the day. Spots on CNN, press ads in the International
Herald Tribune, roadside billboards, airport panels and inflight
magazine insertions can deliver the same target repeatedly, both inbound
and outbound.
The medium can also be used to give a brand a perceived international
impact which its actual status does not merit. Measuring the uplift of
using airports remains problematic, however. ‘Brand perceptions are
totally influenced by their profile in the traveller’s country of
origin,’ Dickens says. ‘You can get a very wide range of response if
someone is coming from a country where the brand has a high profile,
compared with a different person from a place where it is low. What I
would rather see is research into the effectiveness of one large site
versus three small panels.’
For the time being, the future for the medium looks good. Predictions
are that global travel will almost double by the year 2000, and new
airports are coming on-stream at a rate of one every six months. This
means more opportunities for advertisers to reach the elusive target of
the international business executive. The challenge is for media owners
and contractors to begin to address this marketplace more responsively.
Segrue concludes: ‘The demand for airport space is increasing.
Contractors and concessionaires do few favours for buyers. They have to
decide if they want to increase their medium’s reach by being more
flexible. They could just put up their prices to make bigger returns but
I think they will have to be more subtle. Airports could be the last
block in an integrated media strategy.’
