Printed sleeves: learn how to reach your audience
The shift in the Advertising Industry
As the effects of the economic impact of COVID-19 crisis continue to spread and spill over the advertising industry, advertisers are facing the challenge to adapt the advertising message and tactics. At the end of March, Gartner reported that 65% of chief marketing officers (CMOs) surveyed were planning to cut marketing budgets as a result of business disruptions from the coronavirus. The survey showed that 34% of businesses expect “reduced levels of business operations” due to COVID-19.
Agencies will be required to change their advertising method. The traditional out-of-home advertising in malls, at bus shelters, will be fast replaced by in-home advertising. The lockdowns will keep people more distanced and inside their homes. Hence, the best ways to reach the audience will be to take your advertising message to them indoors.
Adzze has been re-imaging the advertising tactics and adapting to a more sensitive message. The operation team has working on extending its capabilities to offer advertising concepts that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these methods uses pizza boxes as advertising space. Think of this as small moving billboard that that consumers will receive in their home. Surveys indicated that this type of tactics can trigger an 80% recall rate (8 out of 10 individuals recall seeing an ad on the pizza box) with an average ROI of 150%. This means, for every 1 dollar the advertiser invested in a pizza box advertising campaign, they received at least additional 2.5 dollars of sales. For more details in the article Estimating the ROI of Pizza Box Marketing.
Can you imagine a consumer picking up your brand in his/her hands and walk off with it? Well, selling coffee cups with a custom printed sleeve can achieve this quickly. This unconventional marketing technique is similar to guerilla tactics designed to ambush the consumer and to magnify the impact of the message.
Exploiting the coffee culture
About 64% of adults in the US drink coffee, translating to around 400 million cups in a single day. Interestingly, a growing number of Americans are taking their coffee on the go. Fewer coffee drinkers, mostly adults aged 65 years old and above, prefer to brew their coffee at home. The younger generation in the US is more rushed, hence unable to brew their coffee at home. Interestingly, this trend presents a huge opportunity for advertisers to exploit.
The design of the modern coffee cup offers a space for a printed sleeve to be fitted. Often, the coffee cup sleeves carry the logo and some relevant writings from the coffee brewing company. Besides carrying the composition details of the cups’ contents, the sleeve could act as miniature billboards. Interestingly, advertisers can print a message and the logo of the brand on sale on the sleeve to target the coffee consumer.
From an expenditure point of view, this is an inexpensive means of reaching out to consumers. Interestingly, one might spend less than a dollar to customize the coffee cup sleeve. The coffee cups are then distributed to strategic locations, such that the business can focus on the exact target audience. With just $20,000, a business can reach over 40,000 consumers. Further, most people consume coffee when they are peaceful and less distracted. As such, it is possible to have more than 10 minutes of the consumer assimilating the message.
Stay-at-Home Ads with Coffee Sleeves
The concerns over advertising costs existed already long before the emergence of COVID-19. Small businesses find the cost of mainstream advertising crushing. Guttmann explained in a Statista publication that the majority of small businesses in the United States in 2017 devoted less than 10,000 U.S. dollars to marketing activities. The demand for pocket-friendly advertising is not just a concern peculiar to SMEs, and it is easy to see that it is a need that will surpass the existence of COVID-19.
Now, imagine spending about $14,000-20,000/month on outdoor advertising and getting very low ROI. Compare this to spending the same amount of money on in-home focused advertising media. This is what we offer you at Adzze; an array of unique in-the-hand advertising strategies that place your brands in the hands of potential clients in their homes. Coffee sleeve advertising leverages the ad space on coffee cups that gets delivered to your audience.
The logo and message of the advertiser are printed on sleeves that protect coffee drinkers from hot coffee. The coffee cup ads are distributed to the coffee shops the advertiser selects. This tactics demonstrated improved assimilation of the advertising message since it places the brand in the hand of consumers. Each venue distributes approx. 2,500 coffee cups/month, generating an estimated total of 1.7M impressions. Think this as small moving billboard that the audience will grab and carry it forward. This tactics places the brand in the hand of consumers. The coffee venues deliver in the hand of the consumer generating an impact up to 70% brand lift. The advertisement cannot be ignored as the consumer will grab it in their hands. On average, each coffee cup will provide 35 min of exposure since the coffee cup ads provide an additional exposure to other viewers who are in the surrounding. Coffee sleeves can be creative tactics for small business and deliver better results than traditional billboards with high recall rates.
The printed sleeve is better than outdoor advertising
Coffee cup advertising utilizes ambient marketing concepts. In particular, the marketing concept places ads in unconventional places, hence ambushing the consumer. An ambushed consumer is highly likely to engage with the message and to assimilate it. Further, coffee drinkers hold the cups in their hands more than half of the time they sit down to drink coffee. If on the subway, then one will keep the coffee cup until the cup is empty. All this time, they have access to the message.
On the contrary, outdoor advertising is less likely to command high rates of message assimilation. It is because drivers are avoiding distracted driving, which claimed 3,166 lives in 2017 alone. Therefore, as drivers and other commuters struggle to maintain their attention on the road, they miss outdoor ads. Ultimately, coffee cups stack up favorably compared to outdoor advertising.
