How we won the Grand Prix in the 2009 Outdoor Planning Awards

The pre-Christmas outdoor campaign was a product of Tesco’s desire to become the supermarket to shop at for a perfect Christmas, elevating them above their competition in the escalating supermarket price-war.

Tesco needed to build mass awareness of a number of deals, each of which lasted for one week only, starting on Wednesdays. However, outdoor posting cycles are two weekly, with the actual posting of sites starting on Monday. It was essential that we overcame this major difference in deal periods and posting periods in order to make a successful and relevant campaign. This would involve making outdoor, a medium sometimes seen as inflexible, a more reactive and dynamic media channel.

JC Decaux and Clear Channel agreed to a bespoke Tesco posting cycle, re-writing a basic tradition of outdoor. Creative went onto 8,000 x 6 sheet sites every Wednesday of the six week campaign, and the usual three to four day posting cycle was reduced to two days. This meant that all of Tesco’s latest discounts were on the high street as soon after they went in-store, fuelling the pre-Christmas bargain shopping extravaganza.

To ensure optimum targeting, we took panels in proximity to both Tesco stores and their major competitors, which included not only Asda and Sainsbury’s, but also Argos, PC world etc (a number of the deals were on electricals). During certain weeks of the campaign, there were deals for goods such as bikes and blenders, which were not available in the smaller high-street Tesco stores. To counter this, we used our mapping systems to identify which 6 sheets were in proximity to the large ‘Extra’ stores that stocked such products, thus ensuring the correct deals were advertised in the relevant places.

The quick turnaround from creative delivery to posting was another essential part of the campaign. Artwork was finalised on Friday afternoons by The Red Brick Road, posters were printed over the weekend by Odessa, and then were despatched around the country ready for posting on the Wednesday or Thursday. There were some sweaty moments caused by such a tight timeline, but fortunately everything ran smoothly!

This campaign has truly set a precedent for just how flexible and reactive posters can be, and quite rightly won the ‘Grand Prix’ and ‘Best Use of Roadside’ categories at the 2009 Media Week Outdoor Planning Awards.

By Paul McCormack