Luxury brands ‘ignoring’ benefits of premium roadside ads
Combining sites on the Tube with large-format roadside digital screens has incremental impact on brand and performance outcomes, particularly for luxury consumers, new research suggests.
According to Global’s The Great Estate study into the attitudes and behaviours of the “driving elite” in London, putting both Tube and large-format premium roadside OOH on media plans resulted in a 138% lift in brand awareness, 96% rise in brand understanding and 26% increase in driving actions.
This echoed previous Global research that found using a variety of large-format OOH screens in campaigns had a “multiplier effect”.
Very large outdoor formats drive advertising ‘multiplier effect’
‘Untapped’ audience and ‘ignored’ format
Speaking to an audience of luxury fashion and beauty brands, Danielle Klein, client development director for luxury, fashion and beauty, said the research found “an untapped audience” living mainly in west London.
Tom Crichton, director of client development, said luxury brands have been “overlooking” driving audiences, historically focusing on bus and Tube advertising, but that adding the premium roadside sites to plans “turbocharges campaigns”.
He noted that the study revealed London’s largest luxury audience came from within the capital, rather than abroad.
The Great Estate combined Kantar TGI Consumer Data with quantitative and qualitative research from Global and Differentology.
The attitudes and behaviours of more than 250 drivers or passengers living near Global’s 10 premium large-format digital sites were surveyed (called “The A-List” in the study) and compared with more than 380 people in a nationally representative sample.
This was combined with interviews featuring luxury fashion and beauty product buyers of a mix of age, gender and ethnicities.
The TGI data uncovered that one in four of London’s “luxury drivers” spend more than five hours in their car weekly. London was also recently found to be “the slowest city in the world”, with the average time for a 10km journey taking 38 minutes, resulting in a high dwell time for OOH advertisers.
The “driving elite” was also found to be relatively young, with the majority under 45.
The group living near Global’s premium outdoor sites were between 2.6 and 4.3 times more likely to buy luxury products (across categories like fashion, beauty and cars) than the nationally representative group.
Notably, they were more than twice as likely to notice advertising for luxury brands and think more favourably of brands that advertised in premium and upmarket locations.
Advertising also featured more in this group’s decisions around luxury purchases (54%) and putting them in “a shopping mood” (46%), compared with the average Brit in the sample (19% and 13% respectively).
Hayley Fox-Clark, head of insight and innovation, said large-format premium roadside formats had previously been “largely ignored by luxury brands”.
Indeed, Jane Lee, head of outdoor business development, highlighted the gap between what marketers think consumers wanted and what consumers want from marketers.
This was uncovered in last year’s Kantar Media Reactions report, which found marketers preferred digital channels, while consumers preferred in-person advertising experiences.
Lee said Global’s latest research “bridges that gap” by showing how outdoor can have powerful incremental impact for luxury brands and emphasised that highly creative advertising brought four times more profits to brands.
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