Reaching hybrid workers with train station advertising.
Remote workers aren’t necessarily sitting at home. They could be heading into the city for a meeting, travelling between appointments, meeting a colleague for coffee or looking for somewhere different to work for a few hours.
That creates an interesting challenge for advertisers. If your audience no longer follows the same journey to the same office five days a week, where do you reach them?
For Swurf, the answer was to think about where remote and hybrid workers were likely to be moving through Edinburgh – and put the brand directly in their path. MEERKATworks planned and bought an out-of-home (OOH) campaign for Swurf across key city-centre locations, including Haymarket Station and St James Quarter.
The objective was simple: introduce more people to Swurf at moments when its proposition could be particularly relevant.
Watch the digital out-of-home advert in action:
What is Swurf?
Swurf connects remote workers with welcoming places where they can work away from home or a traditional office.
Its free app helps users – or ‘Swurfers’ – find suitable workspaces in hotels, hospitality venues and other locations, whether they need somewhere for a couple of hours, a place to meet colleagues or simply a change from working at home. For participating venues, Swurf also opens the door to a growing audience of people looking for somewhere to work, meet, eat and drink during parts of the day that may otherwise be quieter.
The challenge for the campaign was reaching that flexible audience in the real world.
Train station advertising: reach people on the move
Train station advertising allows advertisers to target professional audiences: it reaches people while they are already travelling between different parts of their day. That could include the conventional commuter, but today’s rail audience is not limited to somebody travelling between home and the same workplace every morning.
Hybrid working has made working patterns less predictable. Someone arriving at Haymarket Station in Edinburgh, for example, could be heading to an office, a client meeting, an event or somewhere to work remotely for the afternoon. For Swurf, that movement was relevant, as rather than attempting to catch remote workers while they were actually working remotely, the campaign could build awareness while they were travelling through Edinburgh and potentially considering where to spend the next part of their day.
Rail 4-sheet placements gave Swurf a visible presence within that journey.
Taking the campaign beyond the station
The planning didn’t stop at Haymarket. Swurf also appeared within St James Quarter, putting the brand in another busy Edinburgh environment where people move between shopping, hospitality, leisure, meetings and work. Using different OOH environments can increase the opportunities for an audience to encounter a brand as they make their way through a city. Someone might arrive in Edinburgh by train, spend time in the city centre and pass the campaign again later in their journey.
Swurf isn’t trying to recreate the traditional office; its model is built around using existing hospitality and other welcoming spaces differently, giving people greater choice over where they work. Advertising within a major city-centre destination therefore made contextual sense as well as providing visibility.
Location matters
Buying OOH isn’t simply a question of choosing the biggest screen available! Where that screen sits, who passes it, what they are likely to be doing and how the environment relates to the advertiser all matter. For some campaigns, maximum reach across a city might be the priority, while for others, a smaller selection of carefully chosen locations can make much more sense.
Train stations can help advertisers reach travelling and professional audiences. Retail or shopping centre advertising can provide visibility among people spending time in busy retail, leisure and hospitality environments. Other briefs may call for roadside, airport, tram, bus or high-street formats.
The media needs to follow the audience rather than the other way around.
That was particularly important for Swurf; its proposition is based on greater freedom around where people work, so a campaign built around real movements through Edinburgh was a natural fit.
MEERKATworks plans and buys OOH campaigns across rail, retail, roadside, transport and city-centre environments throughout the UK. We combine audience insight with local knowledge and media buying expertise to identify the placements that make sense for each individual brief.
If you want your next campaign to reach the right people in the right places, speak to the MEERKATworks team today about planning an OOH campaign built around how your audience actually moves.