Clear Channel Outdoor Unveils Digital Advertising Panels
Clear Channel Outdoor UK’s Create division has partnered with Esprit Digital to develop digital advertising panels at bus shelters across the UK.
The displays will feature a two-month Bacardi digital campaign at locations in Brighton, Leeds and Edinburgh.
The panels, which went live on June 18, feature bespoke content that ties in with the Bacardi brand’s new product-focused campaign.
The ‘High Bright’ screens, made by Esprit Digital – who also developed London Underground’s digital escalator panels – incorporate Esprit’s ImageFlow technology.
Simon Wardell, head of Create at Clear Channel Outdoor, said: “We are always looking to push the boundaries of outdoor advertising at create and on this occasion we have worked with Bacardi, Kinetic, Universal McCann, Rainey Kelly, Grand Visual and Esprit to deliver a stand-out, long-term campaign on a new digital platform that we will be looking to develop further in the future.”
James Brenner, development director at Esprit Digital, said: “The creation of the screen and fast turn-around of the project marks the start of an exciting period of development for Esprit and our portfolio of products.
“We are delighted to be partnering Clear Channel Outdoor, the market leader in six-sheet advertising, and we believe that the improved visual offering to advertisers will result in a massive change in the way the traditional six-sheet is utilised.”
The Bacardi campaign will also run across other outdoor formats, print, TV and digital, including www.bacardi.com.
At MediaTel Group’s recent ‘Future of Outdoor’ seminar in London, the high profile panellists from the industry expressed differing views on digital outdoor advertising.
Some panellists claimed that the formats were the way forward and others vocalised concern that the industry was adopting technology for the sake of it.
Tim Bleakley, managing director of CBS Outdoor, believed that digital outdoor formats would “attract advertisers and convince people to spend more time with us as an industry and as people in how they achieve their objectives in the market place.”
He said: “Digital is a shop window for the industry and it will attract new advertisers not just into digital but into the medium full stop where they can start to use multimedia campaigns and use other formats – some will be static some digital.”
Meanwhile, Barry Sayer, UK president of Clear Channel Outdoor, was of the view that digital was the way forward and that outdoor and digital would one day become one and the same.
“All poster sites will eventually get replaced with digital screens because it will just be another poster panel,” he said. “The only difference will be that the digital panel will be far more flexible. The industry should be moving this way.”
However Roy Jeans, CEO of IPM, expressed some concern. Whilst admitting there was a trend to increasing digital spend (from 2% last year to a forecast of around 4% or 5% for this year), he said he was not convinced that digital was the root of all solutions (see Digital Outdoor Debate Sparks Mixed Views).
Clear Channel: 020 7478 2928 www.clearchannel.co.uk