The story about one national transit advertising campaign.
You could notice the bright buses, trolleybuses and trams МЯУ!™ (the cat food brand of Kormotech) during half a year in 5 Ukrainian cities. This project was developed by PUSH-K Solutions advertising agency team. We are sharing our experience gladly.
About efficiency. Imagine a large and beautiful trolleybus that crosses a city with a million-plus population from day to day, showing your advertising visuals and messages. Large and mobile – of course, the intuition says that it is more effective than several boards, which cost the same. The intuition is good, but we need the facts and statistics always. To understand the effectiveness of an advertising campaign on public transport and to compare it with other communication channels, it is necessary to analyze cost and coverage at different angles. Everything seems simple, but the transit advertising market in Ukraine is full of surprises. Only 1 of the 5 local specialized operators was able to give OTS statistics on routes as the quantity forecast of non-unique contacts per month, while the others were generally surprised by the request for statistics (usually customers do not ask for this, as it turned out). So it was no any sense to request the base number of GRP/day on routes. To prepare the correct and close to reality OTS, CPT and GRP campaign forecasts, we`ve collected and analyzed a lot of reports, articles all over the world. Bit by bit we finished this puzzle and all calculations of efficiency were carried out. Now we can reasonably say that advertising on public transport at its current cost (2019) is an excellent communication channel for wide target audiences.
Design of ad for transport and authorities. Actual Key Visual МЯУ!™ has been adapted by us for use at large vehicles. After agreeing the exact routes and models, the design layouts were individually prepared for each unit of transport. In such adaptations you should take in account the allowed % of printing at windows and technological holes; you should keep in mind that in bad weather (wet snow) the lower sides quickly get dirty, so it is advisable to place important visuals and messages higher.
The approval of ad design for public transport by local authorities is not necessary or is easy in the most of cities. So, when preparing ad campaign for pet food we did not expected for any surprises. But the surprise happened in Odessa – local authorities refused our artwork. We suppose that the officials were confused by the image of plate with cat food, because we were advised to remove it from artwork. It was strange decision so we`ve insisted and the visual for tram was approved for usage in the city. Perhaps the approvals of artwork in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Dnipro helped us to negotiate successfully with Odesa authorities.
Print at public transport. The branding of transport is always a separate cost position, it equals approximately to 2-3 months of transport rent. Operators in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro and Kharkiv have mastered high level printing techniques: the images are juicy, the film stays in perfect condition through the year. It is normal practice to get photo reports of your booked transport monthly, so if any place of film is damaged (expl. door) it can be restored fast and cheap.
Unfair operators. We are confident in our transit ad local partners and glad that they adhere to the same high business ethics standards as the PUSH-K Solutions advertising agency. Alas, besides these excellent companies, there are unfair competitors at the market who use dirty methods to occupy local markets. We faced such situation in Kharkiv. 2 months before the expiration of the our rental contract, the competitors of our local partners organized the dismantling of branding from the trolleybus and sent the photos to our client (!) with a comment: “We warned that you should to work via us in Kharkiv” (!). Such behavior not only damages healthy competition at the market and violates the antitrust laws of Ukraine, but is totally unacceptable in the civilized society. Thanks to our joint efforts, together with the Kharkiv operator, this situation was instantly resolved and in 3 days (after re-branding) the trolleybus entered the route without any additional expanses for our client and agency. This case clearly shows that justice is worth fighting for, and unfair operators should be moved out from the market.
Totally it was perfect project and experience. “Be careful, the doors are closing” : D
