Repeat after me. If the consumer is in control, then we can't f'in cram advertising down their throats! Either they're in control, or they're captive. The can't be both.
Travelers at Heathrow Airport's new terminal will be able to sip champagne at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant or eat doughnuts at a Krispy Kreme outlet. One choice they won't get: avoiding ads. (Emphasis mine)In a major expansion of the world's busiest international airport, Heathrow owner BAA Ltd. is scheduled to open the airport's fifth terminal next month -- with more advertising than almost any airport in the world.
From giant billboards overlooking security lines to television screens in the underground train station, the ads have been positioned in ways BAA hopes will make them impossible to avoid. There are 333 billboards or posters and 206 flat-screen TV sets, which can change ads to target specific flights. By contrast, Los Angeles International has 34 advertising TV sets in the entire airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International has 40, according to JCDecaux SA, a Paris-based specialist in outdoor advertising that was hired to design and sell the new Heathrow ad space to marketers.
To map where passengers would walk, Decaux hired researchers with video cameras to follow people around other terminals as they checked in and waited for flights. The researchers also monitored passengers' pulses: The average business traveler's heart rate was 91 beats per minute, they found, compared with 70 beats for a relaxed person.
"Highly aroused people are receptive to messages," says Kevin Miller, Decaux's head of research on the project.
Typical Terminal Five visitors will see between 50 and 120 ads, depending on whether they arrive at the airport by car or train and whether they fly domestic or international flights, says Julie France, U.K. managing director of J.C. Decaux Airport. That's at least one ad every two minutes and 55 seconds, based on the two hours and 26 minutes an average traveler spends at Heathrow.
They are captive for sure. Any measure of recall? At the airport I am either hurrying to my gate, talking to an associate, on the phone, on the computer, reading or sleeping.I can't remember any ad I saw at Midway or Columbus airports last.Are we our own worst enemies?
Posted by: Kent Larsson | February 15, 2008 at 09:59 AM
What a missed opportunity! Airports are places where people are literally starved for information...now, we get so many new signs at Heathrow, and not one of them will tell us anything we need to know! If 'relevance' matters so desperately in the one-to-one online media experience, it certainly should matter when the messaging of one billboard is supposed to engage the consciousness of many passers-by. This announcement is yet another example of brand absolutism over the demands of reality...and yet it could be used to such benefit, both to businesses and information-starved travelers.
I've pondered it at bit at DIM BULB if you'd like to check it out: http://dimbulb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/tell-me-about-m.html
Posted by: Jonathan Salem Baskin | February 18, 2008 at 09:49 AM
What a missed opportunity! Airports are places where people are literally starved for information...now, we get so many new signs at Heathrow, and not one of them will tell us anything we need to know! If 'relevance' matters so desperately in the one-to-one online media experience, it certainly should matter when the messaging of one billboard is supposed to engage the consciousness of many passers-by. This announcement is yet another example of brand absolutism over the demands of reality...and yet it could be used to such benefit, both to businesses and information-starved travelers.
I've pondered it at bit at DIM BULB if you'd like to check it out: http://dimbulb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/tell-me-about-m.html
Posted by: Jonathan Salem Baskin | February 18, 2008 at 09:50 AM