Projection advertising is a video projection system that displays advertising product and brand messages on outdoor structures, primarily buildings. Indeed, projection advertising is fast becoming an alternative medium through which to conduct street-level advertising in major metropolitan markets. Projection advertising has found a niche in “event-driven” marketing, where it can be focused on fulfilling the needs of short-term, specialized, and transient users such as attendees at trade shows, product launches, image advertising, sports events and tournaments, special promotions, campaigns and political rallies.
Projection advertising is also being used to illuminate the nightlife in downtown areas across the country. Vendors such as GoGORILLA Media use projection advertising to place TV commercial spots on building walls in busy metropolitan market nightlife districts of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Atlanta, Seattle, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Product images, brand messages, and/or full motion video are projected onto multiple buildings in each city every night, creating thousands of impressions. Outdoor video projection can include interactive elements such as texting, video games and Bluetooth broadcasts.
GoGORILLA’s projection advertising is part of the so-called guerilla advertising movement, where more street-savvy marketing strategies are employed to reach consumers economically. For example, GoGORILLA is emerging as an American innovator in the practice of hand stamp advertising, in which club-goers allow the back of their hands to be stamped with an ad logo or promotion as they ingress or egress a night spot. Hand stamp advertising can also be used at fairs and festivals for branding and promotion activities. GoGORILLA says that the “temporary tattoos” are monochromatic square imprints that measure about four square inches (2”x 2”), and can include a logo and a website or promotion. They can also be aggregated with other media such as cocktail napkins, branded bar glasses and restroom ads, to name just a few.
Guerilla advertising is also being expressed through water stenciling (chalk adverts professionally stenciled on sidewalks), wall art (custom painted wall murals using the client’s creative) and peephole advertising (shadowbox viewing apertures cut into construction barriers, plywood walls, etc.) For example, one vendor successfully used peephole advertising to promote a Time Magazine campaign. The vendor installed shadowboxes in New York City, Boston and Chicago. Questions were written on the outside of each shadow box concerning historical events. When passersby looked through the peepholes for more information, they were greeted with backlit interior creatives that illustrated the answers.
Projection advertising scales the physical product up quite a bit from 2” x 2” hand stamps (projected adverts are typically sized at 10’ x 15’ to 200’ x 300’), but the underlying concept of guerilla warfare remains intact. That is, using quick, cheap, out-of-the-box strategies to compete with traditional advertising and marketing mediums. Nevertheless, projection advertising industry leaders such as GoGORILLA, Alt Terrain and Kinetic Lighting utilize traditional metrics to judge the effectiveness of their campaigns, including response and profitability analysis, cost-per-sale, recall, etc. However, given the relative novelty of the projection advertising business, comprehensive ROI metrics are not yet available.
Fees charged by the larger vendors are competitive but vary quite a bit depending on the specific service. For comparison, GoGORILLA charges $2,500 to $4,200 per night for standard projection projects, while Alt Terrain and Kinetic Lighting charge between $3,000 and $5,000 per night.
Projection advertising technology is pretty straightforward. Projection equipment (usually weatherized projection subsystems) consists of a projector, an environmental control system, a monitoring camera and a computer. The components of the projection equipment are monitored and controlled by a computer. The computer is networked to a central computer (such as a laptop) remotely situated from the projection subsystems and which can control and monitor the functions of the projection subsystems. This is especially useful when projected images are spanned across several adjacent buildings.
Previous installments of The USIM Gazette® have expanded upon the current and futuristic use of buildings for outdoor advertising. For additional insights, see Tomorrow’s Technology Now? TRENDS SHAPING TOMORROW'S MEDIA TECHNOLOGY TODAY - PART 1 in the September 2008 edition of the The USIM Gazette® and Digital Signage and Consumer Recognition - One Step Closer? in the December 2008 edition of the The USIM Gazette®.
By Darrell Woody
Gazette Staff Writer