Travel hubs offer fantastic spaces for a full spectrum of promotional activity ranging from sampling to immersive experiential activations, says Andrew Bodwick of SpaceandPeople

Travel hubs, like airports and train stations, offer a fantastic platform for a full spectrum of promotional activity ranging from sampling to immersive experiential activations. There has been an evolution in these venues recently to be more than just pure transport hubs, but rather retail destinations which has increased dwell times and customer engagement. The potential of these venues is relatively untapped but when used strategically can garner impressive results.

The opportunities in airports, for example, are broad and with the detailed demographics available, brands can be extremely targeted in their approach. Airports offer significant dwell time (2.5 hours with 70 to 80 minutes on average in the departures terminal[1]) which provides brands with a captive, relaxed and receptive audience, typically with a high socio-demographic profile.

If the passengers are going away on holiday, the excitement level is already high with the prospect of having a break and people are therefore more happy and eager to speak to retail staff and brand ambassadors, as they see it as part of the holiday experience. Being in a positive mood leads to impulse decisions and people are more open to discovering new brands they may not have otherwise considered.

Airports also offer the opportunity to target large groups of each sex going on holiday, such as stag and hen weekends.  These groups tend to be of a young, tech-savvy demographic with a high disposable income and little, if any, domestic responsibility. Likewise, a high proportion of professional couples seek refuge from their daily lives with city breaks and getaways in foreign lands. Other identified passenger groups include baby boomers who no longer have dependants and are enjoying rediscovering life with a higher disposable income and less responsibilities.

The above demographic profiles obviously focus on leisure travellers, but many airports also have an equally high proportion of people travelling for business purposes.

Airports offer unique opportunities for experiential activity as it is one of the only environments where you can be sure where consumers will be at any particular time, predict how long they will be there and where they will go next. It enables brands to be very specific in their targeting; from sampling festive related products to people going on holiday to Lapland, to giving them some home comforts on their return from a long-haul flight from Australia or creating an experiential activation for business passengers for a technology product.

Many air travellers over-index on buying core tech products, motors and media, and they tend to be early adopters of technology and are often influential within their network of friends and colleagues. Brands can therefore ensure the awareness of a specific product is raised within a specific geographical area, on a pre-defined route or time (e.g. first flights to all London airports in the morning).

Aside from airports, train stations have proven to be excellent locations for experiential and face-to-face marketing activity.

They have historically been used as sampling pods due to their high, consistent footfall; however, the recent trend has been to incorporate sample distribution with an experiential element to consolidate the brand messaging.

Lucozade Zero, for example, complemented a major sampling campaign last year targeting high footfall locations such as London King’s Cross Station by collaborating with fashion retailer Missguided and opening a ‘Zero to Pay’ nail bar, offering Lucozade Zero-inspired complimentary nail art (see picture). This not only increased brand awareness and trial with their target audience but also generated a social media buzz that would not have been possible with just pure sampling. Similarly, belVita installed a giant radio within a number of train stations at the end of 2017, offering commuters a live music performance and a sample of their recently launched soft filled belVita biscuits.

Train stations also offer a platform for PR launches and one-off events. Recently, a number of film PR stunts have taken place at central London train stations including an interactive mural for the film mother! and a shoe shining service for the latest Kingsman movie. Stations can also lend themselves well to specific seasonal or event activations, from Valentine’s Day promotions by tourist boards to a giant Thomas and Friend’s chocolate train over the Easter Weekend and a huge festive hamper activation by Waitrose looking to reach people travelling home for Christmas.

The latest technology is also being employed by many brands, with Augmented Reality being hugely popular, especially for products and services that are not necessarily that easy to get engage potential customers with.

Travel hubs have evolved from being places which people go to in order to to go somewhere else to become places where people want to spend time. The different mindsets of people, depending on their journey purpose, destination and travel means, enable brands to adopt a very targeted approach. All of these factors combined mean that although travel hubs were not necessarily considered for anything other than sampling stations previously, they are now increasingly popular for larger and more complex experiential campaigns today.

Andrew Bodwick is Head of Brand Experience at SpaceandPeople. The SpaceandPeople Group is a leading international destination media specialist, present in the UK, Germany and India, representing over 350 UK venues with a weekly footfall of over 45 million. The Group markets, sells and administers space in high footfall venues (including shopping centres, garden centres, retail parks and travel hubs), matching brands, promoters and retailers to the venues and footfalls that are right for them.

[1] Why Airports? Primesight

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Zipjet, the leading on-demand laundry and dry-cleaning service company in the UK and Europe, is running a face-to-face leafleting campaign focused around key London transport hubs and other locations where the brand’s target audience – 25-40 year old time-poor business men and women – can be found.

The activity, created and managed by specialist experiential staffing agency StreetPR, kicked off in mid-January and will continue for the foreseeable future, covering locations including Oxford Circus and the West End, Kings Cross, Liverpool Street and the City of London. StreetPR will be recruiting and managing teams of brand ambassadors in branded Zipjet clothing, who will be handing out flyers promoting an offer of £10 off an initial order.

The face-to-face flyering campaign is part of an integrated marketing strategy which links the company’s online marketing with its offline activities, which also include bus and train ads.

Cory Egitton, Zipjet’s Marketing Manager for the UK market, says: “We are trying to connect our online advertising to direct interactions with potential customers. We’ve used face-to-face marketing in the past – we find that direct contact with potential customers is a huge boon to our brand. With face to face contact, we’re able to answer questions in real time, engage with people and really emphasise what Zipjet is all about. By using face-to-face flyering – concentrated in high-footfall areas our target groups are known to frequent – we’re able to relay our message directly to the consumer.”

Dorian Payne, Head of Operations at StreetPR, observes: “We’re delighted to be working with Zipjet on this ongoing campaign – as we’ve demonstrated with a number of other on-demand tech-based companies like Deliveroo, Uber, UberEats, Urban Massage and Chariot, experiential and face-to-face marketing can help bridge the gap between the screen and the street and introduce a human face to an online brand.”

Zipjet’s marketing emphasises how the brand is built around its customers and their needs. It offers competitively-priced and flexible laundry and dry-cleaning services, including pick-up and delivery times to suit customers anytime from 6.00am to 9.00pm and an Express service with a 24 hour turnaround. There is a minimum charge of £15 for consumers, and the company also offers a corporate service, plus services for restaurants and airbnb hosts.

Consumers download the Zipjet app, choose their collection and delivery times and place their order. They get two laundry bags when they register, one for individual items like shirts and dry cleaning, and the other for bulk, everyday items. Once they have booked collection, they hand over their laundry to their Zipjet driver and it will be cleaned, ironed and delivered back to them within 24 to 36 hours, depending on the level of service selected.

Zipjet was founded in London in 2014 and is backed by German high-tech start-up incubator, Rocket Internet. The startup has since expanded to Berlin (2015) and Paris (2016). Zipjet’s says its mission is to revolutionise the way laundry is done, liberating consumers from tedium and enabling customers to unlock extra time. It is now the leader in its market across Europe.

Launched by entrepreneur James Rix in 2012, StreetPR is the biggest individual supplier of staff to London’s competitive nightlife industry and in recent years has expanded to supply promotional staff and brand ambassadors to gyms, hotels, restaurants, event and festival organisers, retailers, sports and event stadia, the public sector, FMCG brands, telecoms and tech companies. More recently, it has won significant business from online services providers including Deliveroo, Gousto, Hello Fresh and Hassle.

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Danish online start-up LuggageHero, which allows tourists to drop off their luggage at local shops, pubs and other retail outlets so they can make the most of their holiday time, has launched in London with the help of brand ambassadors from staffing and experiential providers StreetPR.

LuggageHero was set up in Copenhagen in 2016 and became an overnight success, offering tourists to the Danish capital a more flexible, more widely available and cheaper alternative to traditional station and airport left-luggage depots and storage lockers. By recruiting shops and other retail outlets with spare storage space around Copenhagen, LuggageHero quickly built up a network of local outlets in convenient locations.

The concept – dubbed “the Uber of luggage storage” by the Danish media – has now come to London and has already signed up more than 60 locations around the UK capital. Launching at the start of May 2017 with a major leafleting campaign handled by StreetPR’s brand ambassadors, the concept is already proving extremely popular with tourists arriving at key transport hubs such as Victoria Coach Station and mainline rail stations.

Retailers have also been eager to sign up, with some brand ambassadors saying they have been chased down the street by shopkeepers wanting to find out how to get on board.

Tourists pay an initial fee of €2 and then €1 per standard bag per hour. Insurance cover of up to €670 per item is included in the fee. Retailers get half the fees collected, with the rest going to LuggageHero.

Travellers can find the most convenient location for them on the company’s website and then book storage online. Payment is automatically collected online once items are picked up, so people only pay for the hours used.

Jannik Lawaetz, founder of LuggageHero (pictured at a Copenhagen retailer which is member of the scheme), says: “LuggageHero has rethought the way luggage storage works in larger cities. Local shops have the capacity as well as the desire to welcome tourists and their luggage. We’ve tested and fine-tuned the concept over the past six months in Copenhagen, and we’re now ready for London. We’ve been recruiting shops and cafes here in London with huge success over the past few months. They are really keen on the idea and the extra traffic LuggageHero will bring to their store. Being the biggest luggage storage provider already is a great accomplishment and start for us in this new and very important market.”

Dorian Payne, Operations Director at StreetPR adds: “LuggageHero is a brilliant idea which is going to revolutionise the left-luggage business and will also bring in incremental revenue for retailers, pubs and restaurants – not just from the fees but also from the footfall. Every tourist who comes in to drop off or collect luggage is an opportunity to sell.”

Launched by entrepreneur James Rix in 2012, StreetPR is the biggest individual supplier of staff to London’s competitive nightlife industry and in recent years has expanded to supply promotional staff and brand ambassadors to gyms, hotels, restaurants, event and festival organisers, retailers, sports and event stadia, the public sector, FMCG brands, telecoms and tech companies. More recently, it has won significant business from online services providers including Deliveroo, Gousto, Hello Fresh and Hassle.

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