April 23, 2024

Media Decoder: Ads Suggest Allergy Relief at the Pump

A new Halls campaign incorporates customized weather data.

If you have a sore throat and runny nose because of allergies, chances are you do not want to spend a lot of time beside a gas pump. But if you find yourself there, a new digital advertising campaign for Halls aims to convince you — with the aid of real-time forecasts — that you should buy its cough drops.

Part of the Halls campaign will include using video screens at gas station pumps, where consumers will see an ad for cough drops followed by the day’s pollen count.

Lori Mazuro, the senior associate brand manager for Halls, says the company is hoping that consumers who see the ad will want to buy the cough drops at a nearby convenience store. The campaign will focus on cherry, honey-lemon and Mentho-Lyptus flavored cough drops. “We want to solidify our positioning within the allergy space,” she said.

Halls worked with Outcast Media, which has PumpTop TV screens at gas stations in cities around the country, including Philadelphia, Atlanta and Austin, Tex. The screens are connected to a network that will take pollen count information from AccuWeather.com.

Halls, owned by Kraft Foods, is the first brand to use AccuWeather on one of the screens, but Nathan Gill, the chief revenue officer for Outcast, said the company hoped to use weather-based services in the future to better focus on affluent 18- to 49-year-olds, a coveted demographic, with other relevant ads.

The technology also allows brands to customize messages with temperature and precipitation levels. “I think this really is the next evolution of location-based services,” Mr. Gill said.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0d716aab18872f016686646fe9dd8df9