LONDON: Burger King, the fast-food chain, is looking at new ways to use digital out of home, following a recent London campaign that drove footfall across the day by varying the creative on selected digital panels.

Renato Rossi, VP/Marketing UK at Burger King, told the recent ad:tech London conference that the brand had been overly reliant on traditional OOH “because it has been working”.

But its limitations were resulting in missed opportunities, as static displays that remained in place for up to two weeks meant “You level down” to something that will appeal to the majority of people who see it – usually a promotion of some sort.

With digital OOH, however, “we saw the opportunity, in a simple way on the execution, to show what’s relevant, at the relevant time in a relevant moment of consumption”. (For more details, read WARC’s report: ‘They’re talking to me’: how Burger King drove footfall with DOOH.

Data identified the best digital panels near stores in 13 London locations, with appropriate content triggered based on factors such as the time of day – pushing the breakfast menu in the morning, for example, or coffee in the afternoon – the weather or other events taking place in the local area.

More than 30 different messages were crafted, all reacting to the various data triggers, and delivered in a playful tone of voice that mirrored the one the brand was already using in social.

“By being more relevant we were able to drive a significant amount of traffic into our restaurants at relevant moments of the day,” Rossi reported.

“We saw an opportunity to even out our performance throughout the day - as a retailer that’s very important - and this has helped enormously.”

Looking to the future, he felt the campaign had demonstrated how “the streets can be a lot more connected to our digital environment” – and he envisaged possibly linking DOOH panels to feedback received via social media channels.

“We can be a lot more aggressive with what we can do in the OOH space,” he stated. “We should be very excited.”

Sourced from WARC