MARKETING Magazine Asia

Revenge travel is back and despite the post-pandemic warnings, travelers are making use of every holiday to explore new sights and sounds. What more, brands are maximizing the potential of outdoor advertising to announce their offerings.

AirAsia recently partnered with Moving Walls for an OOH campaign to launch their 7 million free seats* promotion. Needless to say, the campaign was a resounding success.

So we decided to virtually sit down with Mahek Shah, head of Account Management at AirAsia to talk more about the travel industry, the increasing use of OOH campaigns and what the future holds.

Q. What excites you most about D/OOH today?

A. For me, DOOH has brought out the liveliness and actionable essence of OOH. With OOH we began to see a downward trend, but with DOOH, we saw the possibility for innovation happening in this space.

This was not just because of the format or the way it was delivered but also because there are different signals that can be leveraged to reach the audience and make it more engaging.

Also, it is being able to reach out to audiences where they are. So apart from being static, DOOH has changed everything for marketers like us.

Q. Do you think COVID had an impact on OOH?

A. During the pandemic people were locked up in their homes, now that people are able to move around, we are able to reach audiences that we couldn’t before.

With screens becoming larger, it has given us the opportunity to experiment with 3D or foolscap. It makes it more exciting for people to go out and see those screens.

Q. What are the key factors to consider when adding D/OOH to your marketing mix?

A. We try to integrate our plans with our digital audiences by trying to identify where they are based on their behavior and response.

Travelers are the key audiences, so we think of ways where we can find them.

Then we look for screens where they would engage or interact with. We also think of ways we want to break into the market, do we do standard media buys or other strategies?

For the 7 million campaign, we did a countdown to spur a sense of urgency.

Q. What is a key capability you were able to activate by partnering with Moving Walls for D/OOH campaigns?

A. I think overall, through the platform there are a lot of capabilities.

It goes back to how much we want to leverage and how deep we want to go into it.

We’ve done some features related such as the countdown, and location, and we are also in talks to see how we can execute other features, this includes first-party data and retargeting.

Q. What is one achieved campaign result you would like to highlight?

A. The key highlight is more in terms of measurement.

Unlike other offering channels where you cannot track and measure, Moving Walls provides that solution where I can track and measure how many people have been reached, and impressions served.

It liberates the whole OOH scenario when we use platforms like Moving Walls.

Q. What do you think is the most exciting marketing trend at the moment? Or that you foresee next year?

A. As the routes open the key challenge is to drive awareness among audiences in those markets.

As we are recovering from the pandemic situation we are trying to build up the network again.

People who were traveling with us pre-pandemic need to know that we are back.

So to create awareness, get them to familiarize themselves with the routes. We did a few launches in Australia where we tried to create awareness.