In an age where everyone is swiping their screens, why have wall advertisements become the new favorite of brands?

In the eyes of many people, wall advertising may be the "rusticest" form of advertising, and even a little bit unrefined. However, it is precisely this kind of tacky advertising that is becoming more and more popular with brands in today's era of ubiquitous Internet. When traditional media represented by television and newspapers have almost all fallen, wall advertising alone has remained enduring and ever-lasting.

From agricultural supplies, electrical appliances, and communications in the past to automobiles, electric vehicles, fast-moving consumer goods, and e-commerce today, the business scope of wall advertising is constantly expanding, and the content of the advertisements is becoming more trendy and popular. Nowadays, when walking between cities and towns, you can see e-commerce slogans everywhere, such as "Get rich through hard work, and manage your family frugally with JD.com", "When fellow villagers meet, go to Dangdang for shopping", and "If you want a better life, go to Taobao", which have changed the old-fashioned image of the past.

The author recently visited a professional wall advertising production company, Henan Dayin Culture Communication Co., Ltd., and its general manager Si Liubo told the author that the rapid development of wall advertising in recent years is mainly due to two aspects: one is the saturation of the urban market, and the other is the huge consumption potential shown by the vast third- and fourth-tier cities and rural areas. These two factors have prompted more and more brands to place their future development strategies on channel sinking, and wall advertising is the only way to enter these grassroots markets.

"One of our partners is Coca-Cola. International beverage giants like Coca-Cola used to look down on wall advertising. This is a very important indicator," said Si Liubo. The popularity of the wall advertising industry is also confirmed by the development of Dayin Communication. The company was established at the end of 2015. In just one year, its sales exceeded 20 million. This year's target is 50 million. Many big brands are its clients, such as Great Wall Motors, Geely Auto, FAW Toyota, Shanghai Volkswagen, Jiaduobao, Wanglaoji, Coca-Cola, Luzhou Laojiao, Mengniu Dairy, Skyworth TV, Lenovo Group, Midea Group, Sanning Chemical, etc.

Seven advantages of wall advertising

Figure: Comparison of the communication effects of wall advertising, radio and television

Compared with the Internet, television, newspapers and other media forms, wall advertising has its unique advantages:

1. Low cost. For example, in a small county-level city with a population of more than 800,000, a wall advertisement with a cost of 40,000 to 50,000 yuan can be used to make hundreds of wall advertisements of about 20 to 100 square meters. The advertising coverage can basically achieve the effect of every village having an advertisement and everyone knowing the brand. The cost of 40,000 to 50,000 yuan invested in road sign advertising may not be enough to cover the annual cost of a road sign advertisement. An advertising tower or bridge advertisement can even produce thousands of wall advertisements, not to mention media such as television, newspapers and city buses.

2. Compulsory media that can be seen every day and cannot be refused. In order for an advertisement to be remembered, it needs to be repeated at least three times in a row. This is not realistic on expensive mass media such as television, but wall advertising can do it because it is inexpensive, can be run for a long time, and is placed in the audience's real living space. Whether it is on both sides of national highways, provincial highways, or county roads, or around county towns or villages, there are wall advertisements. Whether you like it or not, it is there.

Taking Dayin Communication Company as an example, it currently has more than 900,000 works spread across the country, distributed in more than 300 cities, more than 2,000 counties, and more than 30,000 towns in prominent locations on both sides of the main roads and major entrances and exits, covering more than 570 million consumer groups every day. The communication rate of this type of advertising is unmatched by other media.

3. Intuitive and easy to understand, simple and effective. Wall advertising layout designs are mostly based on solid colors, which are bright and eye-catching. The advertising texts are concise and easy to understand. There are no complicated scenes to interfere with the theme. Therefore, outdoor advertising is most effective in the few seconds of effective acceptance time.

4. The only way to enter the third to sixth tier markets. Compared with first- and second-tier cities, grassroots markets have relatively fewer channels for information exposure. According to relevant survey results, watching TV and listening to the radio are still the most frequent media exposure activities for farmers, with exposure rates of 90.3% and 64.6% respectively, while the exposure rate of newspapers is the lowest, at only 6.4%. As for the outdoor media around us, there is no other choice except wall advertising. Therefore, as an important part of the media mix, wall advertising has become a must for brand promotion in the third to sixth tier markets, especially in the vast rural areas.

5. Closer to sales terminals. Wall advertisements are generally located in crowded places, which are also where sales terminals are located, making them more likely to evoke scene-based consumer associations. Therefore, wherever the wall advertisement reaches, there will be scenes of the product selling well in that area. Wall advertisement can cooperate well with marketing activities such as the expansion of terminal channels and the release of new products.

6. Effective media amplifier. The memories left by media such as television and radio are short-lived, while wall advertisements are lasting reminders. Their release cycle is at least one year and as long as three to five years. They can effectively amplify and prolong the communication effects of mass media such as television.

7. Targeted delivery and precise reach. The communication of mass media such as television is often in the form of casting a wide net. No matter whether they are my target customers or not, I will just catch as many as I can first. This has also led to the so-called eternal problem in the advertising industry: we know that half of the advertising budget is wasted, but we don’t know where it is wasted. In comparison, the placement of wall advertising is much more precise. My advertising will be placed wherever your market expansion is directed.

Is content king or channel king?

Professor Bobby Calder, an internationally renowned brand management guru, visited China and expressed the following view in an interview with Sales & Marketing:

With the emergence of new media, advertising is no longer very effective. The theme of communication now is not advertising but content.

So, can Professor Bobby Card's point of view be understood as "content is king"? It is undeniable that in the era of information explosion, only good content can attract readers' attention, but we should also realize that there is another dimension to information dissemination.

Media Categories

Time Dimension

Spatial Dimension

Typical Representatives

TV, radio, internet

Outdoor advertising, special channel media (high-speed rail, aviation)

Information Model

Active information mode

Passive information mode

Traffic attributes

Online traffic is not restricted by physical areas

Offline traffic, built-in scenarios

The author believes that according to the division of time and space, all media can be classified into two camps: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, etc. belong to the time dimension, wall advertisements, bus body advertisements, building elevator advertisements, electronic screens, bus stops, anti-aircraft guns and other outdoor advertisements and some information media relying on special channels (such as aviation magazines, high-speed rail magazines and television) belong to the space dimension. The former is an active information model, and the latter is a passive information model. The former is disseminated based on online traffic, and the latter is disseminated based on offline traffic (also called "scenario-based traffic").

Time media can be switched back and forth or even turned off, but space media cannot be chosen independently. It is placed in people’s living space. Whether you watch it or not, it is there. When communicating in time media, if you want to attract the audience's attention, you must win with content, but when communicating in space media, the channel for information release is more important.

For example, aviation magazine may be the ugliest magazine in the world. You will never remember the content after reading it, but the back cover is full of advertisements for Cartier, Rolex, Omega, Vacheron Constantin and other famous watches. Many people's knowledge of watch brands comes from aviation magazines.

The same is true for wall advertisements. These advertisements are generally located in conspicuous locations on both sides of national and provincial highways. Imagine if you have had this experience: during a long and boring journey, you will find that appreciating roadside advertisements is a good way to pass the time, and the information that the advertisements want to express is accepted by people unconsciously.

When a person is in a time and space that is more boring than the advertisement, the advertisement will be seen. At this point, the importance of content gives way to channels.

In the era of mobile Internet, people's attention is focused on online traffic, while offline traffic is ignored. In fact, in comparison, offline traffic is superior in terms of cost-effectiveness and conversion rate. For example, your electric bike runs out of power on the road, and you happen to see an electric bike advertisement on the wall: *** Electric bikes, longer battery life! It can run *** kilometers on a single charge! Isn’t this much more effective than the electric car commercials you’ve seen a thousand times on TV?

One characteristic of offline traffic is that it comes with its own scene, because it is placed in the audience's real living space. When the audience encounters advertisements in a specific scene, it will stimulate a stronger desire to buy. This is also the reason why online brands such as Xiaomi and Three Squirrels are rushing to open offline experience stores. Online traffic seems to be much larger than offline traffic, but the transaction rate is low. Offline advertising seems to be subject to regional restrictions, but it is easier to promote sales conversions.

Here, the author is not advocating the superiority of offline traffic, nor is he trying to trick everyone into doing wall advertising, but is reminding everyone not to be blinded by the halo effect of the Internet.

Wall advertising strategy

Modern marketing is based on mass media such as television, and brand owners are more adept at using this type of media. However, wall advertising, as a form of advertising that is different from mass media, has many particularities, and its delivery strategies are also very different.

1. Be consistent with the brand’s philosophy and market positioning. This is very important and should be considered first before launching. Because of the regional characteristics of wall advertising (third to sixth tier cities and rural areas), it is not suitable for some brands, such as luxury goods.

2. Choose a service provider with brand guarantee. Although it has experienced several decades of development, overall, the wall advertising industry is still in a mixed development situation, and there is a huge gap between different service providers in advertising production and post-service. Therefore, you must be careful when choosing a service provider. The first thing to look at is the cases they have cooperated on before, and the second thing to look at is whether their after-sales service is complete. For example, large service providers like Dayin Communication will create electronic files for each project, conduct regular inspections and maintenance, and promise to repair any quality issues free of charge within 5 working days and postpone the release period.

3. Closely cooperate with marketing activities. For example, in channel expansion, terminal distribution, and terminal promotion, before the activities are carried out, targeted wall advertising can play a role in market education and create a sales atmosphere, making the marketing activities more smoothly. Wall advertising is usually carried out in conjunction with channel expansion and marketing activities, so it is necessary to ensure that the area of ​​placement does not deviate from the target market.

4. Simple and easy to understand, innovative in form. Wall advertisements are mostly distributed on the roadside. When driving, people have very little time to read information. If a wall advertisement cannot effectively convey the main information within 3 seconds, it usually fails. Therefore, the content of wall advertisements must be simple and easy to understand, and at the same time innovative in form to achieve an eye-catching effect. Only in this way can it stand out from the wall advertisements that are spread all over cities and towns.

5. Innovate media combinations. Wall advertising is a media amplifier. As an offline traffic carrier, it can produce a fission effect when combined with different online media.

For example, during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2015, Emma Electric Vehicles made a successful attempt to combine online and offline media. Emma painted the lyrics of its spokesperson Jay Chou and some internet slang on the walls as wall advertising slogans, such as: Watch the good voice, listen to mom, ride the Emma electric bike; Ride the Emma bike to practice nunchakus; Cowboys are busy and Emma is trendy; It’s not easy to make money, so don’t be careless when changing cars... Then through clever planning and grafting, this offline brand communication was packaged into an online hot spot, triggering a screen-sweeping effect, and achieving good emotional interaction with the target audience.

For example, a Suzhou dealer of Emma rode Emma's new model and took 6 photos with different advertising walls as the background, and posted them on his circle of friends. This trendy advertising form that subverts tradition immediately became popular in his circle of friends, receiving 68 likes and 13 comments: Where is this? I'll take a photo and post it on your Moments. Do you want a red envelope? You only saw the car but didn’t see your stick? What's so trendy about that? You should change into jeans and wear a straw hat when taking photos. It’s not easy for me to make money, can you give me one? Riding a Challenger to chase a pretty girl...

In this era of information explosion, brand communication has become increasingly difficult, especially online. Although the traffic seems to be huge, it is undoubtedly like looking for a needle in a haystack to capture the attention of target customers among the vast amount of information. However, offline media with their own scenes can eliminate this interference, which is why wall advertising is becoming more and more popular among brands. The media should break the boundaries between the old and the new and achieve coordinated linkage between online and offline, so as to maximize the communication effect.

Author: Sales and Marketing

Source: Sales and Marketing