While inter-terminal airport buses and experiential marketing may not be an obvious pairing, Heathrow Airport is marrying the two together with a first-of-its-kind immersive onboard experience.
OmniServe, a subsidiary of ABM, has partnered with Heathrow to start selling immersive media across its 26-strong inter-terminal bus fleet.
The buses will be equipped with NFC technology, iBeacons and digital screens, to ensure that all of the key touch points on a traveller’s journey provide a high quality and enhanced experience.
Benefits for your brand
The inter-terminal bus service, which departs every 10 minutes, connects all four terminals at Heathrow, and transports approximately 8.5 million passengers each year, with an average journey time of 13 minutes.
If that’s not impressive enough, as the UK’s premier hub, Heathrow Airport provides an exclusive and highly desirable international audience.
That’s a lot of potential eyes on your brand, from every corner of the globe!
The digital capabilities of the buses will unlock a wealth of experiential marketing opportunities. The media toolkit boasts exterior vinyl wraps (left), interior furnishings, flooring, digital screens and seat-back tablets. You can literally immerse the bus in your brand.
The experiential marketing offering will also include value-added services such as permanent uniformed staff onboard to help passengers with destination information and to fulfil their shopping needs. There will also be opportunities for brands to have their products demonstrated onboard and their product samples distributed.
Why should you care?
The importance of making the airport environment responsive to passengers’ needs is clear when you consid er that 39% of people feel that the atmosphere inside and outside of terminals – including sights, sounds, and smells – directly affects their well-being.
With ancillary services becoming valuable income streams, giving customers more control than ever before over their travel options, now is the ideal time for airport services to expand further. It is also time for you to start considering how you can take advantage of this with experiential activations of your own.
Airport technology of the future
In the operational environment of the future, the most successful airports will be those making effective use of customer-centric technology and experiential activations, in order to cater for individual preferences. To offer a truly tailored approach to air travel, airports need to provide more than flight-related services; airports of the future will use advanced technology to respond to the wider needs of their diverse customer base.
Now that’s where experiential marketing can help: awareness.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 50 30442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
