James Byrne, marketing manager, PML Group with this week’s Out \ Look on Out of Home.
2023 Holiday Plans
As part of PML Group’s ongoing iQ research series, we partnered with Ipsos to examine Dubliners’ holiday plans in 2023. Of those who intend to travel 51% intend to take a holiday/staycation in Ireland while 86% intend to holiday abroad. 37% of holidays makers intend to take breaks both at home and abroad.
45-54s holiday makers are the most likely both to be staycationers and travel abroad at 59% and 92% respectively.
Separately, 11% have no holiday plans while 13% don’t know yet whether they will take a holiday.
Our recent Seasonal Shopping study found that the busy summer holiday season is a big occasion for retailers, with over half (51%) of the sample and 60% of females reporting event spend.
Deloitte’s State of the Consumer Tracker reports that half of Irish adults plan a hotel stay in the first quarter with 37% likely to fly internationally for leisure purposes. Both metrics have more than doubled since the first wave in May 2020.
Advertising effectiveness benchmark highlights OOH recall triumph
Our 2022 WATCH review showed an increase of 6% in display value for top advertisers and categories vs 2021. This growth reflected a confident sense of continued investment in Out of Home as the turbulence of years prior continues to dissipate.
Adding to the positives of this growth comes a recent benchmark report from the OAAA which points to Out of Home advertisements as being generators of significantly higher consumer recall when compared to other digital and classic media formats.
Produced in tandem with US consulting house Solomon Partners, the study measures ad effectiveness based on recall comparison across the 5-year period 2017-2022. Publicly available studies on television, audio, online, OOH, and print recall based on an aided on unaided basis were analysed and aggregated to form the dataset. The results highlighted OOH printed adverts as ranging from 38 – 86% effective in terms of recall, while DOOH adverts ranging from 46% – 84% effective.
By comparison, linear TV generated a range of 20% – 60% effectiveness rating, while streaming ad supported streaming services placed higher at 28% – 72%. In audio, podcast advertisements placed highly with a 59 – 77% recall rating, notably ahead of radio ranging from 11% – 46%.
The research reflects similar findings from OAAA-Harris Poll research in late 2022 which showed that nearly half (49%) of adult consumers were noticing Out of Home more than compared to 2021.
“This analysis affirms out of home’s critical role in the media mix,” noted Anna Bager, President & CEO at the OAAA, in the firm’s press release, “As the fastest growing media channel in 2022, this analysis from Solomon Partners is yet another proof point of the value that out of home brings to marketers at a time when people are fully re-engaging in their pre-pandemic lifestyles. Ad spend forecasts for 2023 reveal out of home will continue to outpace total media growth overall.”
Public Transport Journeys at 2019 levels
The CSO has reported that the number of bus journeys in Dublin for the week beginning 21 November 2022 (week 47) nearly matched the number of journeys in the same week in 2019. The same trend can be seen for weeks 44, 45, and 46 in November, showing passenger bus journeys have returned to pre-COVID-19 volumes. The number of bus journeys outside Dublin exceeded 2019 figures by 13% in week 47.
Rail journeys for week 47 had 810,472 passengers which is only slightly lower compared with 851,347 passengers in the week beginning 02 March 2020 (pre-COVID-19 levels).
Luas journeys for the week commencing 21 November 2022 (week 47) was nearly in line with the same week in 2019. Week 47 for 2022 had 69% more passenger journeys when compared with the same week in 2021 and 325% higher than the same week in 2020.
Dublin Airport sees 231% increase in passengers in 2022
More than 2.5 million passengers used Dublin, Cork, Knock, and Shannon airports in December 2022, 97% of the number of passengers handled in December 2019.
Just over 28.1 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport in 2022, representing a 231% increase on 2021 activity and an 85% recovery of 2019 levels.
The revival in passenger numbers following the Covid-19 pandemic continued to accelerate as the year progressed, with passenger levels in the final three months of 2022 totalling 7.1 million – the equivalent to 96% of numbers in the same period of 2019.
During the month of December 2022 alone, a total of 2.2 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport – an increase of 1 million passengers compared to 2021 and 95% of the passenger numbers seen pre-pandemic in December 2019.
And, finally….
Time travelling through OOH posters rewards McDonald’s consumers
Combating inflation is a present top-of-mind concern. Not wanting to deprive the public of more hard-earned money than needs be, McDonald’s Sweden have come up with the most extraordinary way to aid consumers in cutting on costs through innovative OOH: time travel.
…wait, what?
Planned with Nord DDB, McDonald’s Sweden’s newest campaign offers people a way to travel back in time to find older deals not impacted by inflation.
By capitalising on the most recent update to Google’s Street view platform, which allows users to revisit geo-locations throughout history, the fast-food brand have cleverly gone back through the books to figure out when and where promotional ads featuring lower deal prices were featured on OOH panels.
Dating as far back as 2009, these ‘deals stuck in time’ locations are marked in the present day by new Out of Home ads running in those same locations, effectively acting as ‘time portals’ to better deals than can be found currently. The ‘time travellers’ who locate these deals from the past can then bring the deal back to the present via McDonald’s site for the campaign and apply it in the McDonald’s app.
“McDonald’s have had good prices and many good offers over the years,” says Staffan Ekstam, marketing director at McDonald’s Sweden, “We thought it was a good and fun idea to revive old McDonalds offers and allow for ‘time travels’, especially at a time when price is discussed more than ever.”
