Super-sized: Melbourne Airport unveils Australia’s largest outdoor advertising screens

AUSTRALIA. Drivers using or traversing Melbourne Airport’s Terminal 4 Car Park will now find their attention drawn to two giant digital screens – the largest in Australia.

The dual 320sq m screens allow advertisers to create campaigns that can interact with one another on a scale that can’t be found anywhere else in the country.

The advertising assets are in prime position within the car park (facing the Tullamarine Freeway), which handles over 45,000 vehicles inbound each day.

Sight lines: “We are guaranteed to capture the attention of millions of travellers each year,” says Melbourne Airport Chief of Retail Andrew Gardiner.

The airport company believes that the platforms provide unrivalled promotional opportunities for marketers and brands. The screens allow full synchronisation between displays, full motion content and full HD capabilities, plus over 1.52 million individual LEDs per screen.

Melbourne Airport advertising concessionaire oOh! Media manages advertising on the super screens.

“Installing such grand-scale digital screens is not only ground-breaking for an Australian airport but also the country, taking our ability to raise brand awareness to new heights for marketers,” said Melbourne Airport Chief of Retail Andrew Gardiner (see his interview with The Moodie Davitt Report below).

“Melbourne Airport is Australia’s busiest 24/7 airport, servicing almost 37 million people annually, so we are guaranteed to capture the attention of millions of travellers each year.

“We are focused on improving our interaction with travellers and the airport community and these screens really elevate our ability to share information,” says Andrew Gardiner.

“While the screens produce new opportunities for marketers to unleash their creativity, they will also play a key role in the airport’s ability to communicate with passengers through showcasing airlines, retail deals, car parking offers and new tenants.

“During important dates such as Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the screens will come to life with bespoke graphics as a means to connect with our travellers. We can also promote Victoria’s key events and attractions such as the AFL Grand Final, The Australian Open and The Australian Grand Prix, which is really exciting.”

Gardiner said that incorporating digitalisation throughout the airport is part of his team’s retail strategy to amplify communication. “We are focused on improving our interaction with travellers and the airport community and these screens really elevate our ability to share information,” he said.

Melbourne Airport partnered with leading LED manufacturer Unilumin and audio visual supplier Corporate Initiatives to deliver the product.

Andrew Gardiner: “Content creation has become very quick and easy with modern software. So, to get content onto massive digital screens is a very quick process. To technically produce [traditional] billboards is very hard.”
INTERVIEW – LEVERAGING THE POWER OF NEW TECHNOLOGY

Andrew Gardiner’s inspiration for the giant advertising screens came shortly after he joined Melbourne Airport in early 2014.

“One of my first jobs for the airport was to oversee the building of the car park,” he tells The Moodie Davitt Report. “And when we built it, I thought: ‘There’s opportunity here to do some really massive advertising’.”

Originally, the airport used the spaces, sited on the two rotundas leading to different levels of the car park, for large static adverts.

“So, of course, the logical improvement to that was to look at digital,’’ continues Gardiner. “We went to the board, about seven or eight months ago, having had significant discussions with oOh! Media, our advertising partners, to say, ‘Look, if you were to put up these two very large digital screens, do you think there’s a market for them?’ They said: ‘Definitely, yes’.

“We went ahead and ensured that we got the capital expenditure and that we brought the right engineers in. Because, of course, these are very large, and therefore very heavy and required some significant engineering works.’’

The hardware was supplied by the Chinese LED products and solutions provider Unilumin, and Australian audio visual specialist Corporate Initiatives was responsible for the delivery of the project.

“It’s a massive opportunity. It’s not just an advertising role, it’s also about information-sharing with our customers.’’

The logistics of putting such vast screens in place might have been difficult, but from now on advertising management and monetisation gets a whole lot easier, Gardiner says.

“Content creation has become very quick and easy with modern software. So, to get content onto massive digital screens is a very quick process. To technically produce [traditional] billboards is very hard. If you were to talk about the five big billboards that we had up there, to technologically produce content was expensive and to have them hung took days.

“Whereas with these screens it takes you literally ten seconds to change things online. You’re making use of similar space with different technologies, which have become far more economic to use. So, the commercialisation of them and the returns are quicker than was the case five years ago.”

“In fact, the two screens can operate almost as one. So, you can have one ad running across both screens. It’s a massive opportunity. It’s not just an advertising role, it’s also about information-sharing with our customers.

“We have 38 million customers a year. So, there’s a lot of customers driving to the airport and traversing the airport. So, with that, we’re saying, “Well, this is really the way of the future, having advertising on digitals rather than static.”

Footnote: Got other great examples of airport advertising? Send them to Martin@MoodieDavittReport.com for inclusion in our planned new monthly e-Zine, Sight Lines – The Amazing World of Airport Advertising, launching in early 2019 in which we profile advertising and communication initiatives across world airports. Each issue will build to a very special culmination in 2019. For details contact Irene Revilla at Irene@MoodieDavittReport.com.

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