Melody Roberts, with Out of Home Creative, says she’s been working on various businesses who are advertising mainly on digital billboards and street furniture. She provided input on billboard advertising during COVID-19:
“Out-of-home continues to do a tremendous job providing information to the public on COVID-19 updates, restaurants offering pick-up/delivery, in-kind advertising to current clients as well as giving thanks to healthcare and frontline workers that risk their lives every day to save and help others.
Even though the IAB estimates March and April ad spending on billboards declined an estimated 51%, some essential businesses are willing to continue advertising, such as emergency assistance if an appliance, plumbing, car, or health issue arises. There are also positive stories out there to be shared, as shown for Brent Miller Jewelers (below). Many people don’t know if they should continue their memberships or children’s lessons. There are ways to help the public consider keeping up their extracurricular activities by doing them virtually, and sustaining memberships helps businesses stay open (partial campaigns shown below).
Our children are another demographic feeling the affects of this pandemic. Seniors are not celebrating prom or graduation due to schools being closed for the remainder of the year. Through DOOH, our industry has the platform to give these seniors their spotlight in a way they can still feel this is their special moment. I am collaborating with TLA Media on a “Congratulations Seniors” digital project. We are offering families four templates to choose from, one photo of their graduate and no more than ten words. After the digital is live, we are asking families to take a picture of their digital congratulations message and post it to their social media channels tagging TLA Media so that other families can feature their child. This is a gift that most children would not receive at graduation and one they will never forget. We all know this is not something new to our industry, but right now, it feels a little more special for these children to have their moment (partial templates shown below).
We are all going through challenging times, but it is temporary, and we will get through it together. We know clients are hesitant or not willing to move forward with advertising, and many are experiencing cancellations across all forms of advertising. When we get on the other side of this, we will have a big task to help businesses get back on track. Once these businesses are green-lighted to reopen, they will have so much to do. Right now, they’re struggling to stay afloat with their doors closed.
My opinion is to use some of this downtime by getting concepts designed to present to your clients. Discuss with your team how potential businesses can advertise their services or products to help the community and what might be the most effective and strategic way to do it by combining efforts using our different OOH platforms. By doing this, we stay one step ahead for current clients (that will be looking to us for ideas) and new ones who will desperately need to get their businesses back up and running. If you do not know where to start, I am happy to help brainstorm.
An example is AskTriad.com, a 24-hour emergency service for property damage is now advertising they can sanitize offices with CDC & EPA approved products due to COVID-19 to get companies prepared to reopen safely.”
To all out-of-home companies without a designer, if you would like to highlight caregivers on your digital display, I will create a template for free in gratitude for their service. Email melody@outofhomecreative.com .
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