Ambient media

Ambient media are advertising media (as a rule, from the field of outdoor advertising), originally integrated into their environment.

This term was coined by English advertisers in the second half of the 90s of the twentieth century and over time began to denote a broader concept of non-traditional (alternative) advertising or marketing. Ambient means "surrounding". This is a type of guerrilla marketing that uses creative, non-standard techniques with minimal investment.

Conventional advertising has long caused "banner blindness" in the target audience. They do not notice it, such advertising is boring to them. In the 20th century, the user saw about 250 advertisements per day. Today, he sees thousands of ads even before going online.

In addition, classic marketing techniques are often accompanied by high costs. Small and medium-sized businesses cannot always afford expensive advertising campaigns, especially if they need social advertising that does not require high budgets, but will demonstrate effectiveness.

Ambient Media solves all these problems and allows you to create an advertisement that a member of the target audience does not expect to see and cannot ignore. At the same time, such advertising does not irritate them, Ambient Media has an unobtrusive effect on the consumer.

The author of the technique is J. K. Levinson, he is known for one of the most recognizable memes - the Marlboro cowboy. He proved that it is possible to use a completely different promotion technique, in which the main principle is creativity - an approach that will not be rejected by a potential consumer.

Such advertising is distinguished by another advantage - virality. An unexpected format attracts the attention of users and motivates them to talk about what they see, for example, on social media.

In a narrow sense, ambient media are non-standard advertising media, such as branded benches, trees, architectural monuments, building roofs, building structures, road markings, transport stops, and public or private transport itself.

Ambient media carriers are found not only on the street, but also inside buildings or any structures. They can be anything: from escalators to door handles and lamps, from elevators to handrails or even urinals.

Another name for ambient media is guerrilla marketing, as it uses hidden, implicit advertising media that you may not immediately notice. Effective ambient advertising should organically fit into the environment, be creative and moderately noticeable, but not “flashy”. A particularly important factor for it is the novelty and originality of the way advertising is placed and the appearance of the advertising medium.

Among the successful cases of using Ambient Media is the opening of a new clothing store in Paris. To tell the target audience about this event, the company decided to hang jeans with leaflets in their pockets all over the French capital. They did it at night and in the morning every citizen could take the flyer for himself. The promotion was a great success. Advertising brochures were not sent to the trash cans, promoters did not hand them to people, they themselves took advertising and told their friends about what they saw, sent it to social networks.

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