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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pladis-owned snacks brand McVitie’s is running an interactive experience to back its ‘Sweeter Together’ Masterbrand advertising and marketing campaign. In keeping with the TV ad, featuring a crane driver, the Sweeter Together Challenge requires two consumers to work together to operate a model crane to grab a giant McVitie’s ‘prize’ Nibble, to instantly win prizes that are ‘sweeter when enjoyed together’.

pladis has appointed promotional marketing agency whynot! think people to deliver the interactive challenge, which will be appearing at Westfield Stratford City between until April 23rd April. It then moves to the Manchester Arndale Centre between April 25th and May 1st before finishing at the Cardiff St. David’s mall from May 4th to 7th. It will also be appearing at key London railway stations, including Waterloo, Paddington, Victoria and Euston.

The activity, which will also see the distribution of 800,000 samples of the  Nibbles product, is part of the re-launch of the McVitie’s brand, which is being backed with a £12m multi-media Masterbrand campaign, exploring the importance of real human connections and showing how the simple act of sharing a biscuit has the power to bring people together. It launched in mid March with the 60-second animated TV ad, titled ‘Crane’, showing a tower crane operator going about his work dozens of metres above the ground. Below him, he sees his colleagues enjoying the camaraderie of a tea break, complete with McVitie’s biscuits. He waves but is not seen.

As the day wears on, the operator becomes gloomy, craving some company – even if it’s only from passing birds. When he is convinced that everyone’s forgotten about him he gets a surprise: the latest steel beam he lifts has been loaded with a cup of tea and some McVitie’s biscuits. He looks down and sees his colleagues waving and smiling at him and his mood instantly lifts. The ad ends with a simple message: “Sometimes the little things are actually the really big things”.

A second TV ad will air later this year. Social and in-store activity also features as part of the integrated campaign.

Sarah Heynen, Marketing Vice President, pladis UK & Ireland, says: “whynot! think people have done an incredible job of bringing both the fun sharing attributes of Nibbles, and our Sweeter Together campaign, to life.  The challenge element physically executes our new brand purpose – enabling everyday moments of real human connections. We are confident that this brand experience will tap into our consumers’ love for our brands as well as supporting our efforts to drive penetration and repeat purchase of our Nibbles range.”

David Ryan, Creative Director, whynot! think people, adds: “Our Nibble twist on the iconic crane game is the perfect fit for a legendary brand such as McVitie’s. The Sweeter Together Challenge brings to life the new brand purpose, not only visually but by bringing people together to enjoy moments of sharing, the sweet spot for Nibbles.”

The Sweeter Together Challenges will be filmed and edited, with content featuring on outward facing TV screens at the events, as well as being used as part of a social media campaign to amplify the activation, extending campaign reach and driving footfall to future events.

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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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Specialist ski airline Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) ran a one-day experiential campaign at King’s Cross station last week, bringing a powder day to London and encouraging commuters to dig out their salopettes and book flights to the Alps.

Designed by creative agency Space, the activation saw an interactive billboard delivering on-demand snow when prompted on twitter with #SnowNow. The experiential campaign targets the typically late-booking UK market, aiming the encourage them to get online to book with SWISS, with the billboard underlining the message that “snow is only ever one click away”.

The integrated campaign featured the specially-designed billboard with a promotional overlay activated by the hashtag. Every tweet triggered a cascade of snow, while all participants received £25 off their next SWISS flight and the opportunity to win one of five pairs of return flights to the Alps.

Activity at the station was promoted by a series of Instagram influencers while a PR campaign provides exclusive competitions in London publications.

Chloe Ravat, Senior Marketing Manager at SWISS, said: “The 360o campaign is a fun and engaging way to attract attention to our brand. The reactive nature of the billboard activity mimics how UK skiers typically book their holidays – online and at the last minute.”

David Atkinson, Managing Partner at Space, observed: “SWISS is the skiers’ airline, with more than 180 flights a day from London and free ski carriage as part of its inclusive fares. The #SnowNow campaign is the perfect conversation starter for SWISS, disrupting the humdrum of the London commute, letting us boost brand awareness and drive traffic online, as well as offering the chance to win a premium taste of the Alps with SWISS.”

Space is an award-winning agency with a client list including Heineken, Arla Foods, William Grant & Sons, General Mills, Eurostar, Sky, Coral, Bundesliga, UEFA, NBA and AELTC.

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Blackjack Promotions, which specialises in airport staffing, travel retail and experiential marketing, has seen massive growth in demand for market research services during 2017, as clients focus on understanding how passengers use airports and their feelings about the service they receive.

In recent months, Blackjack has been awarded new contracts or had existing contracts extended with a number of airports, including Stansted, London Luton Airport and Dubai – the world’s busiest international passenger airport.

Fiona Tindall, Head of Domestic Retail at Blackjack Promotions, says: “Airports can be incredibly challenging locations to carry out face-to-face research. Travellers can be tired, distracted and stressed, while there may be restrictions on how and where staff can deliver marketing activities and what they can say to people, particularly when you’re working air-side, beyond the security barriers.”

Blackjack has a large database of experienced brand ambassadors who are security cleared to work ‘airside’, in the areas beyond the security gates and passport control.

Tindall adds: “It’s vital that brand ambassadors working within the airport environment understand how travellers think and how to approach them in a way that reduces stress levels, rather than adding to them. Staff need much higher levels of diplomacy and general customer service skills than they would need, say, in a traditional retail environment, public space or festival or event.”

At Stansted, Blackjack staff worked over the summer (the airport’s busiest period), monitoring the quality of user experience, including queue lengths, passenger traffic flow, congestion points and other issues relevant to the journey through the terminal. This is the second year running Blackjack has delivered face-to-face research services at Stansted.

At Luton, Blackjack was appointed in 2016 to provide field agents to support an airport quality survey programme. London Luton Airport (LLA) constantly monitors all aspects of the passenger experience and was also keen to understand how passengers feel about its redevelopment programme, launched in 2016. That contract has now been extended for three years.

At Dubai, Blackjack was appointed to deliver research services during 2016 to understand more about the passenger experience and how they could improve passenger satisfaction. The data delivered by this initial programme was so useful that Dubai has extended it to run until May 2018, and has also added a ‘mystery shopping’ function.

For Dubai, Blackjack had to source multilingual research staff to cover 32 passenger interaction points across four terminals, 365 days a year. Staff have to have airside access. They input questionnaire responses onto tablets and upload the data in real time for Dubai Airports to access.

Blackjack Promotions is a leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist. A subsidiary of US company ABM Industries, a global provider of facilities management services, Blackjack is based at Heathrow, where it employs approximately 1,000 staff, in addition to its database of 8,000+ field staff. Blackjack is a member of the IPM agency.

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Samsung has been supporting the launch of the Galaxy Note8 with experiential and Out-of-Home take-overs of key locations in some of the world’s busiest cities, including London’s Waterloo Station.

At the end of September, Waterloo Station was decked out in eye-catching images of the device encouraging commuters to “Do bigger things.” Waterloo is the busiest rail station in London with a footfall of 4,196,748 every two weeks, and contains the largest indoor advertising screen in Europe in the form of JCDecaux’s 40 x 3 metre Motion@Waterloo.

Commuters and other visitors to Waterloo were given the chance to have their image displayed on the station’s digital screens or have it emailed to them to share on social. They could also enter a competition to win the new tablet device.

Cities including Berlin, Rome, Paris, Singapore, Milan and New York have been the backdrops for a global campaign which communicates the creative possibilities powered by Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone through immersive Galaxy Note8 signage.

The campaign follows a similar one held in New York City’s Times Square on September 15^th. The iconic entertainment centre and tourist destination , which sees an estimated 380,000 visitors every day, was illuminated with S Pen-embellished portraits, animated illustrations and whimsical images of the Galaxy Note8 across 43 screens.

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Team GB gymnast Nile Wilson, Britain’s Got Talent finalists Twist and Pulse and ballet star Alessia Lugoboni have teamed up with Lucozade Ribena Suntory and Transport for London to promote an offer for commuters of free journeys on the London Underground, using ‘contactless’ Lucozade Energy bottles.

From May 30 to June 2 at Oxford Circus Station during ‘Whoosh Hour’, Lucozade brand ambassadors will be handing out thousands of limited edition Lucozade Energy bottles with contactless chips, like the ones found in TfL’s Oyster Card, embedded in the base. Lucky recipients will be able to use the bottles like Oyster Cards for one free Underground journey.

Lucozade Energy also enlisted Wilson, Twist and Pulse and Lugoboni to help promote the activation with three films featuring them using their talents to get through the station to their tube trains. The contactless bottle give-away and the videos are in support of the brand’s ‘Find Your Flow’ campaign message. The Lugoboni film has been posted to YouTube.

Whoosh Hour is a fully integrated campaign with support from integrated agency The Big Kick, shopper marketing agency Valenstein & Fatt (formerly Grey Shopper), event agency TRO, media agency MediaCom and PR agency Frank PR.

Lucozade Ribena Suntory is putting a considerable marketing budget behind the various offshoots of the umbrella Lucozade brand at the moment. A week ago, it launched a new campaign for Lucozade Sport featuring an on-pack promo offering consumers the chance to win more prizes the more active they are, including fitness trackers, gym memberships, tickets to events such as the FA Cup Final, England football matches, the Tour de France, an Adele concert and holidays to Australia, the US and the Middle East.

At the beginning of April, Lucozade Zero and fashion retailer Missguided announced a collaboration, ‘Zero To Pay’, which was brought to life through on-pack promotion and experiential marketing. The on-pack promotion offered consumers a range of discounts which could be unlocked through codes on mini cans of Lucozade Zero. Targeting city centres, train stations and shopping centres, a sampling campaign offered bespoke miniature cans featuring unique Missguided discount codes. The activity was bolstered at high footfall locations with a ‘Zero to Pay’ nail bar, offering Lucozade Zero-inspired complimentary nail art.

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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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