The power of engaging creatives for a successful OOH campaign

Campaign's Challenge 

The hair care brand Dafeixin launched an advertising campaign in the Beijing Metro to promote two anti-hair loss products. With the campaign, the brand aimed to raise awareness about the availability of these products on JingDong, the second largest e-commerce platform in China.

Dafeixin also sought to enhance consumer consideration and efficiently guide them throughout the purchasing journey on JD.com to drive conversions.

The challenge for the JCDecaux China teams was to effectively support the brand in measuring the campaign’s success. They aimed to evaluate the performance of the displayed creatives and assess the impact of OOH advertising on the pre-defined objectives established with the brand.

Campaign's Strategy

Running over a period of nearly six months, the OOH campaign targeted two of Beijing's busiest metro lines. The choice of environment, for this campaign, was particularly strategic, as metro are usually known for their high ability to drive attention, ensuring strong campaign visibility.

To help the brand verify the success of its advertising campaign, the JCDecaux Chinese teams conducted two post-campaign studies: a brand impact survey and an AI- driven performance analysis of campaign creatives.

The brand impact survey, led with Attest, targeted commuters who had used subway lines featuring Dafeixin ads within the past three months, gathering responses from 500 participants. With Optix Creative Heatmap, they launched a creative analysis of both campaign creatives to assess their effectiveness in capturing attention.

OPTIX Results

Thanks to Optix Creative Heatmap, a JCDecaux solution that utilises AI-driven visual, emotional, and cognitive analysis for creative performance evaluation, Dafeixin gained precise insights into how their advertising content engaged with their audience.

It enabled the brand to identify which elements in their two creatives captured the audience's attention most effectively.
These analysis showed Creative 2 outperformed Creative 1 with a higher focus score (83% vs 78%), lower cognitive demand (54% vs 61%), and superior clarity (73 vs 69) and engagement (67 vs 58).

The Optix analysis confirmed that the visual's key message was effectively communicated, validating the brand's creative choices. With 38.9% of the audience recalling the product and slogan, it highlights the importance of using no more than three design elements and ensuring text visibility in out-of-home advertising.

ATTEST Results

The JCDecaux China team was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the campaign by polling metro commuters on the different stages of the marketing funnel: awareness, interest, consideration.

The campaign successfully met its objectives, resulting in very positive post-campaign sentiment, with an audience ratings exceeding expectations and a strong recall rate. The survey indicated that the audience clearly understood the product's availability on JD.com while also perceiving an improved brand image.

The combined studies for Dafeixin has demonstrated the relevance of the visual choices in conveying the campaign messages, as survey results indicate that the audience clearly understood the message. This is likely to result to future positive business outcomes, with the target audience effectively recognising Dafeixin's new sales channel.