GERMANY. Media Frankfurt, the marketing and advertising division of Fraport Group, has marked its 50th anniversary. The company is the largest provider of airport advertising in Germany.
“For fifty years at Frankfurt Airport we have been offering continuity, connectivity and creativity”, says Media Frankfurt Managing Director Martin Korosec. “Customers such as Sixt, Opel and Lufthansa, but also many luxury brands, have been able to show with us how attention-grabbing out-of-the-box advertising works. The airport, at which the baggage carousels or the tower have themselves become advertising spaces, forms the ideal brand scene for surprising showcasing campaigns beyond the classical channels.”
In September 1971 the airport advertising company was launched as a partner company to the airport and Deutsche Städtereklame. At the beginning it marketed back-lit picture surfaces, large-screen displays, showcases, posters and flags at Frankfurt Airport, at which 10.6 million passengers arrived, landed or changed planes in that year. One of the biggest advertising customers was Lufthansa.
By 1986 the company employed 12 staff and developed high-profile advertising campaigns for customers such as Still fork trucks, Stockinger safes, Gebr Heinemann and the Airport Boutique.
In 2000 JCDecaux became a shareholder. Today, Fraport owns 51%, JCDecaux 39% and the Ströer Group 10% of the shares in Media Frankfurt, which employs over 40 staff.
The company noted that the target group at Germany’s largest airport has changed, become more varied and more travelled. Airport extensions have opened space for new marketing formats, with an increasing focus on innovative and emotive digital displays. In 2014, outside the airport, today’s flagship Digital Landmark site was inaugurated. At 100sq m, it is the biggest digital display in Media Frankfurt’s advertising portfolio. Soon afterwards, at two hubs in the Departure Area, two spectacular digital mega screens entered operation: the Digital Business Board and the Digital Deluxe Board.
Today Frankfurt Airport’s media sites include baggage carousels, glass bridges, DOOH areas, promotion points, the gangways, security checks, hangars, on the feeder roads to the multi-storey carparks, airline lounges, and all stages of the customer journey. Marketing collaborations with Hamburg, Stuttgart and Vienna airports, plus Zürich Airport more recently, have created a wide-reaching network.
The company said that digitalisation will play an ever greater role in the portfolio in future. Today 50% of advertising space is operated digitally, including the Digital Deluxe Board at 43sq m. In 2026 Terminal 3 will be inaugurated with a portfolio to be controlled entirely electronically. By 2031 Media Frankfurt anticipates a digital share of 80%.
DOOH is one element in a wide-ranging advertising portfolio, added Korosec. “Probably the most innovative campaigns at the airport are the major omnichannel campaigns, which interlock advertising, retail, promotion, online and newsletter at the most effective level, such as the campaign by La Prairie in 2019,” he said. “Probably only we can offer such a seamless 360-degree campaign, because Fraport participates equally at all relevant touchpoints. You will not find such an intensive and comprehensive advertising platform of this kind in Germany or Europe.”
