Bus

Objective

To create a distinctive brand positioning for Bus to differentiate it from other outdoor formats to grow revenue faster than the outdoor market.

How we made it happen

We undertook an ambitious research study covering the whole of the country to uncover consumers’ relationships with the advertising around them and in particular their interaction with it.  The study showed:

• Consumers have an inherent trust in Bus advertising
• They welcome advertising on Buses
• Bus advertising is relevant to their lives and local community

These results led to the development of our positioning; Up Everyone’s Street – a positioning that pitches Bus as the media to use if you want to reach a mass audience but with a local feel.

What did we do?

• We developed a bus mapping system to graphically show bus routes and their relation to High Streets and residential areas; a hugely indispensible planning tool
• We sent our team of researchers to present to over 70 agencies and advertisers with the results of our research as well as 300 individual planners
• We took our own CBS Outdoor bus on a nationwide roadshow aimed at educating the advertising community
• We engaged the creative community with the aim of overcoming objections that Bus doesn’t work creatively through our Creative Challenge Competition
• Ran over 100 executions live on buses attracting over 250,000 online votes, proving that bus advertising compels people to act
• We launched the Bus Superside format as a viable point of sale medium aggressively targeting FMCG clients

Our results

• The Creative Challenge directly drove an extra £900,000 of revenue in 2009 from advertisers who hadn’t used Bus before
• Our new Superside positioning generated £1.8m in just 3 months
• Our roadshow and sales activity led to a 40% increase in pitch requests worth over £7m
• We sold 15 more bus parcels in 2009
• Beat the rest of the outdoor market by 5% points in 2009
• Heavily contributed to winning Outdoor sales team of the year 2009
• Our positioning of Bus not only created a strong media brand but directly delivered results to our franchise partners.