Outstanding Out-of-Home

Outstanding Out-of-Home 

When our longtime client, ParkMobile, was looking to make a huge impact in Boston, they turned to our team for a good media idea. The goals were simple -- grow the on-street parking app user base and reinforce the new ParkBoston partnership with stakeholders at Boston City Hall. We looked at various options and designed an out-of-home BLITZ to dominate on-street exposure to Boston commuters. 

• MBTA bus tailbacks (over 1’ tall and 4’ wide) 
• On-street digital urban panels (2-1/2’ tall x 4-1/2’ wide) 
• Wraps of two MBTA elevators called the Downtown Duo (11’ tall, 12’ wide) 

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The star of this program was the Downtown Duo, a pair of 4-sided wrapped structures in the heart of Downtown Boston. This installation was located at the intersection of Summer Street and Atlanta Avenue, one of the busiest roads in Boston, and at the entrance to South Station, the MBTA’s busiest transit hub. To top it off, this can’t-miss exposure was located just 0.6 miles and a short 10-minute walk from Boston City Hall. This strategic location reached tens of thousands of daily commuters and reinforced ParkMobile’s newly inked technology partnership with the City of Boston’s ParkBoston parking app, promoted as, “A wicked way to pay for parking.”

The result? Boston set new records and became a Top 10 market for ParkMobile within the first week of the campaign. Here are some additional performance stats from the first week after launch: 

• 59,000 paid transactions
• 35,835 new accounts 
• 4,000+ new accounts per day 

Takeaways: 

• Go big or go home. Limit the number of media tactics to ensure marketplace dominance and strong advertising message frequency. 
• Even though out-of-home may not have the immediate performance data and direct attribution that digital programs can oftentimes provide, success can still be measured by web traffic, sales, awareness research, point-of-sale surveys, social media monitoring, and ultimately, sales.
• Only digital advertising leads out-of-home in revenue growth over the past three years. Industries that are projected to have the biggest increase in digital advertising activity include: media/entertainment, government campaigns, retail, finance and tourism (InsiderIntelligence.com, June 2022).
• ParkMobile had the courage to take a chance on out-of-the-box thinking, with tremendous tangible success.

ParkMobile, headquartered in Atlanta and a client of McCulloch+Company since 2017, partners with municipalities, airports, universities, independent parking garages, and event venues to help millions of people easily find and pay for parking on their mobile devices.