Ads that stand out

As a marketing manager, you're tasked every day with conveying the right message, to the right audience, at the right time. This involves continuous decision-making. It's crucial that your activations are relevant and leave your audience with a positive impression. So, which combination of ad objects is optimal, can you add an experience to increase your impact, and how will you distribute your media budget? At Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, you have - quite literally - boundless creative possibilities.

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of the busiest places in the Netherlands. It's a shopping centre, motorway, hotel, and museum all in one. There are thousands of advertising opportunities - and hundreds of thousands of travellers per day to show them to. It's comparable to Times Square in New York. The audience is large, and the impact you can make on these well-disposed passengers is often even larger. This is due to the high screen density: in places where there are many stimuli, audiences are more susceptible to the message you're conveying. But how do you become dominantly visible at such a location? By utilising creative, out-of-the-box angles.

This Dutch version of Times Square offers a wealth of opportunities - not least because there's constantly a fresh audience milling around - but success hinges on your objectives and the creativity to achieve them. Effective marketing typically goes beyond merely showcasing your brand on static or digital advertising screens. You only truly make a profound impact when you bring your brand to life.

For instance, Amsterdam's Moco Museum maintains year-round visibility for arriving travellers at Schiphol. Their aim is to reach every tourist in the capital city. Through various touch points along the route (from the gate to the arrivals hall), they inform travellers about the artists currently featured in the museum. Such an always-on strategy isn't commonly seen in the out-of-home world, but for Moco, it serves as a constant driver of new visitation. At the same time, it both disseminates and enhances the museum's brand recognition even further. What can you glean from this? If you use your media deployment in a creative and unique way, it's likely that you'll achieve top-of-mind awareness - and that's with a continually renewing group of people.

You can surprise the extremely high density of travellers at the airport on several levels. The first level includes (static and digital) giant banners that can take up an entire wall, corridor, or even an entire area. For example, ING can be seen on all the bridges from the gate to the aircraft, and AMEX occupies the entire Pier E to welcome the arriving target audience to the Netherlands.

The next level involves activations such as samplings, tastings, demos, and pop-up shops. For example, the Rijksmuseum adorned the luggage carousel with 45 paintings from the unique (and sold-out) Vermeer exhibition, while SIXT positioned various racing cars throughout the terminal. This resulted in astonished faces; after all, such sights are not commonly seen at an airport. Furthermore, there's a complete bar dedicated to Bacardi in the VIP Centre. This includes a custom-made cocktail menu that offers guests an extensive tasting of the various Bacardi drinks.

The final level allows your brand to be featured at various touch points along the passenger route. Take, for example, the partnership between Schiphol and Audi. With a combination of life-size banners, an exclusive selection of podcasts, and special transport to and from the aircraft, the car brand pampers VIP guests at the airport.

Holland's Times Square is a unique stage where you can present out-of-the-box campaigns to a global audience. Various brands can increase their brand recognition here, and retail partners can enhance the purchasing behaviour of their target group. Trendy suitcase brand SUITSUIT, for example, focused on visibility at the airport. By covering an entire wall with ads, they built even more credibility amongst their target audience. Luxury cosmetics brand CHANEL is also a dominant presence at the airport. With huge ads and their own promo point (where travellers can get a makeover, test a fragrance and buy products), they become top-of-mind.

Also interested in advertising at Schiphol? Reach out to one of our media specialists.