Sprite Endorses DOOH

Can an outdoor ad win over Generation Z? With this challenge ahead and taking advantage of the return of people to the streets, Sprite launched the first DOOH campaign via DV360 in Mexico.

In this article, Luis Pedro Estrada, Media Consumer & Shopper Director of the brand, describes how he managed to obtain the metrics of this offline channel and thus make it part of his omnichannel strategy.

Why today, when digitization is crucial, should we allocate a part of the marketing budget to an outdoor advertisement?

That was the question we asked ourselves at Sprite when we planned a strategy to reach and build a relationship with younger audiences in Mexico.

We know that the advancement of technology has completely transformed the buying journey of consumers and that today, in the complex digital ecosystem,the best channel is the one that works best for the consumer. And here's a key: this omnichannel map includes, of course, offline channels. Especially since people were able to return to the streets. This milestone not only impacted visits to physical stores, which continue to be essential for sellers and consumers, but also revived the importance of sharing unique moments in real spaces.

So, we conclude that outdoor advertising plays an essential role in the end-to-end connection that we seek to have with our consumers. Above all, since the classic fixed signs were added to the digital ones or DOOH (from English, Digital Out of Home) thatcan be implemented via programmatic purchase from DV360 and bring a more experiential perspective. Not only at the impact level or impressions as before, but also interactive. This valuable exchange can be achieved, for example, by incorporating a QR code. You might be overwhelmed by the idea of ​​integrating yet another channel into your marketing strategy, but after launching our first DOOH campaign via DV360, we discovered 3 reasons why you should consider adding it to your plan.

1. It allows you to generate a truly omnichannel strategy, which considers the contact points offline and online.

As I mentioned before, our goal was to innovate to reach younger audiences. When designing the strategy, we discovered a key factor: mobility in Mexico City had increased by almost 25% in October in 20221 and, according to a Nielsen report, at least 62% of consumers had noticed the billboards digital advertising during November 2022.2 We also saw that the return of concerts was one of the most valued meeting points for Generation Z. For this reason, in addition to running the campaign on video cross exchange, Display and YouTube, we allocated 24% of the budget to test the impact of our creatives on 100 top digital screens on public roads in Mexico City. By being able to divide the number of screens –instead of making a reserve purchase screen by screen, as before– and including the pieces in carousels, this marketing channel allowed us to be present in several strategic outdoor spaces. This is how we take advantage of the return of people to the streets and, at the same time, the benefits of centralized media buying through theplatform DV360.

2. You can measure the impact of the channel in real time and make adjustments on the fly.

Until now, billboards, whether digital or not, were a way to reach a broad audience,but they did not allow us to know the real impact of the offline presence. How could it be achieved? That was the challenge that led us to innovate. In partnership with ClearChannel, Magnite, Mediacom and Google, we created a contest with a very simple message: scan the campaign QR code and win the chance to meet Daddy Yankee with Sprite. In this way, we were able to transform the outdoor screens into a quantifiable channel by being able to measure registrations for the contest in time, which reached 5 thousand, and make adjustments if necessary.

3. It is an opportunity to generate leads and first-hand data.

We know that as online behaviors change,consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy. For this reason, the great challenge faced by 51% of brands in Latin America is to make effective use of their customers' data.3 And this is what we achieved with this innovative strategy: once users scanned the code, they were redirected to a website where they had to register to participate in the contest. In this way, we were able to measure the impact of the action and, in addition, collect first-hand data voluntarily provided by the participants.

“The results were incredible because we were able to understand how to generate traffic from traditional media,” says Rodrigo Gayón, Real Time Amplification Manager. “We managed to bring almost 5% of the general traffic through DOOH, a relevant number for a channel that traditionally seeks to generate awareness. In this way, we can generate audiences that help us impact our clients in a more effective way through formats that make sense during moments of consumer mobility.”

We hope that our case will serve to illustrate how important innovation is for a marketing strategy to be successful in a dynamic environment. For us, allocating a budget to explore this new channel became an opportunity to innovate. In doing so, we discovered how to quantify an offline channel to design a true omnichannel strategy and thus capitalize on the return of people to the streets.