A sit becomes more apparent that we need to save our planet to save ourselves, sustainability is taking centre stage, especially for businesses. Unsurprisingly, the advertising industry, and the out-of-home (OOH) sector, in particular, is adopting a more environmentally beneficial approach with the advent of digital-out-of-home (DOOH).

As champions of adhering to sustainability practices and supporting brands with DOOH advertising, we’ll be explaining how and why your brand should be using DOOH as an excellent marketing and eco-friendly form of communicating your brand’s message.

This blog outlines the ways in which the marketing world can be used to leverage sustainable digital-out-of-home advertisements to support the green movement and promote companies as environmentally responsible members of society — a change that can give any business a competitive advantage when it comes to trust, image and profits.

Brand image & reputation

It’s no longer enough for brands to have mission and vision statements that mention sustainability. Consumers want more — 83% of them will always choose a brand with a better sustainability record and evidence of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Businesses of all sizes, across all industries, need to create and implement environmentally sound strategies or risk losing consumers’ attention.

Implementing sustainable practices and communicating your efforts to the public can create an impressive image for your business — crucially differentiating you from the competition and giving you a clear competitive advantage in a saturated online market.

This is exactly what Globalance Invest did with their campaign. They wanted to draw attention to clients making future-oriented investments with the following urgent message: What impact does global warming have on your portfolio? They chose to display their ads in coworking spaces as a large proportion of coworking space members make investments, but few will take environmental and sustainability factors into account when making investment decisions. By running this ad, choosing the right venue to target a specific demographic established their reputation as an investment business that cares about CSR and championing eco-social sustainable initiatives.

Why is DOOH a great tool for sustainability marketing?

Think about this — advertising whether it’s online or outdoors has a strong power to influence consumer behaviour and curb overconsumption. With DOOH growing as a channel for brands to capitalise on an unsaturated marketing channel, there’s a huge opportunity for your brand to highlight your sustainability efforts.

The global DOOH market was worth $6.8 billion in 2021, and it’s expected to reach 54.83 billion by 2030. As you see, DOOH advertising not only provides a huge platform for brands to promote their sustainable causes, but it’s also a much greener way to market themselves in comparison to printed flyers.

DOOH: Moving advertising towards a sustainable future

Using digital screens as an alternative to the standard and traditional forms of marketing like printed billboards is critical in terms of sustainability gains. The transition has been proven to lead to direct benefits including better air quality, fewer vehicle miles, saving of trees, and reduced need for disposal of waste materials. Here at FRAMEN, we’re all about doing our part for the planet as we specialise in DOOH advertising, we’d love to share the benefits with you:

1. Environment decluttering

With traditional billboard advertising, you can display no more than one advert at a time. If multiple companies want to advertise in the same spot, they either have to install multiple billboards or spend resources changing the ads.

DOOH eliminates this.

Digital displays can accommodate multiple campaigns at any one time without requiring any extra materials or several billboards. In fact, the number of 48-sheet and 96-sheet billboards — two of the most common sizes for outdoor advertising boards — has fallen. In the UK alone, estimates show that 48 sheets and 96 sheets have dropped by 40% and 58% respectively. This decline is decluttering the built environment and promoting better resource consumption practices.

On top of that, digital displays are designed to last for several years (some last for several decades) so the environmental impact of extracting materials to produce new furniture is reduced.

2. Sustainable energy use

Although outdoor advertising has traditionally used a lot of energy to run and illuminate digital billboards, things are changing. DOOH marketers that use FRAMEN are choosing to still improve brand awareness, increase revenue and enhance brand exposure whilst considering environmental initiatives that reduce both energy consumption and the advertising carbon footprint.

Consider the following:

• The switch to LED: DOOH businesses are moving towards LED lighting, which has been found to reduce energy consumption by up to 75% compared to incandescent or fluorescent lighting. It also has a longer lifespan. As such, LED can deliver ads with equal effectiveness, but with more efficiency, plus lower energy consumption and costs.

• Green energy use: An increasing number of DOOH screens (including billboards) are being powered by green energy sources like solar.

• Better design: Conventional street furniture consumes a lot of energy. To combat this, some companies are creating smart furniture that uses renewable energy, improves energy efficiency, and offsets carbon emissions.

Show the world your sustainability efforts & build trust

DOOH is a powerful platform for any campaign. It’s flexible, engaging, and targeted, and can reach large audiences. As such, brands are leveraging it to create great sustainable marketing campaigns that increase awareness of environmental issues and encourage responsible consumption. — Dimitri Gärtner, Founder & CEO at FRAMEN.

By using FRAMEN to advertise your brand’s story or message, or CSR/environmental initiatives, people would recognise your eco-friendly efforts and see the marketing channel you’ve used (screens) is far less damaging to the environment than printed flyers/brochures. Reputation is key for every brand.

With sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) taking such a central stage in every business, industry and consumer’s minds, many of our clients choose to advertise with FRAMEN to run their eco-campaigns like Vodafone. The objective of the Vodafone campaign was to create awareness as a sustainable digitalisation partner with green products and solutions for their business clients and consumers.

Through advertising on FRAMEN’s network of screens, Vodafone raised awareness of its green network and achieved 600,000+ impressions in business networks across Germany, with major metros in Berlin and Munich seeing the most success.

DOOH: A catalyst for sustainable advertising

The DOOH space is exciting when it comes to sustainable marketing and advertising. Before DOOH, the use of vinyl and single-use paper translated into large amounts of waste, which couldn’t be reused or recycled. This was a costly practice, both from an economic and a sustainability standpoint. The transition has led to many direct benefits such as improved air quality, tree savings, fewer vehicle miles, as well as increased recycling and reduced need for disposal of waste materials.

Compared to traditional OOH, which has been around for decades, there are still so many innovations and solutions to explore.

The unique opportunities provided by digital screens leave the door open for further steps in a sustainable direction. For example, some companies are developing next-generation digital screens that consume close to zero energy and reflect sunlight more effectively, essentially reducing the environmental footprint of DOOH.

Going green with our screens

As the world is in a state of crisis, the marketing landscape is feeling the pinch and advertisers are at a loss of how to act sustainably within their tight marketing budgets — DOOH is a brilliant step in a sustainable direction. It has the potential to move the advertising world to a more environmentally conscious future.

The DOOH sector has already shown a positive environmental impact and proved to drive immediate action — something that will be useful in accelerating the sustainability agenda. So, if you’re looking to advertise in a way that makes sustainability sense, DOOH is a great choice.

At FRAMEN, we offer advertising solutions that operate entirely digitally, eliminating the need for print advertising. We can guide you through all things DOOH, whether you want to learn how digital OOH can transform your campaigns or you’re ready to start leveraging its capabilities. Get in touch with our team today, and start advertising in a greener and more innovative way with FRAMEN screens.

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