Captivate Network, a broadcaster of content in elevators, began a new national advertising and direct marketing campaign to catch the eye of prospective advertisers.
The Westford, MA, company is targeting decision makers at advertisers and ad agencies via print media, on-air ads, online banners, e-mail and direct mail. Visual Republique, Lawrence, MA, handled the creative aspects of the effort.
“What we continue to seek to do is to educate the marketplace on the value we bring,” said John Bigay, Captivate's director of marketing. “Given the reality about the shifts in media consumption habits, marketers can add a medium like Captivate to a traditional media plan to really help extend their message.”
The tagline summarizes the campaign's essence: “See Us at Work.” Captivate will run three ads on its own network in elevators and three print executions. Ads appear in Advertising Age, BusinessWeek, USA Today and Canada's Marketing and Strategy magazines. Ads point to www.captivate.com.
On the direct side, dimensional mail including a skiing figurine premium in a box and three e-mails will drop to a targeted in-house list of 2,000. Three versions of banners in skyscraper, button and square formats will run, too.
The call to action for the outreach is to encourage prospects to participate in a sweepstakes on designated microsites. The grand prize is a getaway for two to Vail, CO.
Targets for this largest integrated push from Captivate include senior marketing executives and brand managers in the automotive, travel, financial services and technology categories. Media planners and account heads are targeted on the agency side.
“The idea is to surround people with the messaging and have multiple touch points,” Bigay said.
All ads, which began running after Labor Day, will appear through mid-November to coincide with the fall ad planning cycle.
Captivate aggregates content from CNN, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Weather Channel and other media sources.
Content is viewed through 4,700 flat-panel television screens in elevators across North America. Captivate claims to reach 1.5 million people daily, delivering nearly 30 million impressions monthly. It plans to double the network in the next 18 months. According to Nielsen Media Research, the average person takes 6.4 elevator rides daily.
Captivate is present in about 400 office towers in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, Boston, Denver, Atlanta, Houston and Washington.
Among Captivate's advertisers are Whirlpool Corp., Dunkin' Donuts, Mercedes-Benz, Verizon, Travelocity, Delta Air Lines, Ernst & Young, British Airways, Amtrak, Bloomberg, AARP, Polaroid, Monster, IBM Corp. and McGraw-Hill Cos. Newspaper giant Gannett Co. Inc. bought the 7-year-old Captivate in April.
