Smart Furniture: What it Means for Brands and Audiences

As the world becomes more urban, cities are competing by providing the best environment for their citizens. And with OOH innovation this means smarter services and advanced street furniture. But what does this evolution mean for advertisers and how are consumers habits affected? Typical smart furniture features might include connected furniture,

data integration and Dynamic messaging, interactive screens or enhanced imaging and augmented reality. Does smarter OOH mean smarter brand campaigns? Of course, different brands and product categories have different marketing objectives, which means that they use OOH differently. Let’s have a look at how three major product categories use smart OOH to optimise their campaign effectiveness. 

Fragrance and Cosmetics: Mobile and Drive-to-Store

OOH Goals:

• Product sampling and product experience
• Drive-to-Store

Fragrance and cosmetics choices are deeply personal therefore sampling is at the core of purchasing decisions within this category. OOH is the only medium that puts brands directly into the hands of the consumer and allows real-life engagement via for example experiential or voucher and sampling campaigns. However, the key strength of OOH that these brands especially benefit from is being on a “podium” and building brand fame – something that is paramount to brand building among luxury products.

Lately, fragrance advertisers have been using smart furniture to make their campaigns go a step further – moving from a brand awareness and brand building directly to drive-to-store. New mobile connectivity solutions give brands the possibility to link more personally to their consumers, relaying the ad between OOH and mobile.

Fashion: Interactive Screens and Virtual Stores

OOH Goals:

• Awareness of new collections, brand fame
• Simplify the purchase process

Like fragrance, the key goals for fashion brands is to build awareness of their collections and of course, drive store traffic and sales. Fashion advertisers normally use OOH for its fast cover and mass reach but also to build fashion stories at different locations.

Smart furniture can transform an OOH campaign into a virtual store. For example, interactive screens provide new possibilities for displaying products where consumers can try different product combinations. Alternatively, they can even try items on through augmented reality solutions. Going a step further, connected panels allow advertisers to directly drive sales by incorporating e-commerce into their DOOH campaigns.

Michael Kors allows travellers to browse the collection and find more content via QR and Facebook integration. JCDecaux Hong Kong.

Tech: Smart Technology Delivers Smart Messaging

OOH Goals:

• Educate about product features

• Highlight innovative solutions

One of the key ad challenges for tech brands is to accurately and succinctly communicate the normally complex product features and to make those features instantly recognisable by their target audience. Tech brands rightly use OOH to reinforce their overall campaign brand messaging, ensure brand fame and brand association with certain features (think best phones for camera or storage).  In addition, no other medium allows consumers to play and experience the product first hand like they can with an experiential OOH campaign.

Samsung Note8 is big and bold, and so is this domination campaign in Waterloo featuring a giant digital wall and a chance to experience the device and VR and photo editing on the spot | JCDecaux UK