• by Ken Liebeskind , June 8, 2001

When Dodge wanted to advertise its return to the Daytona 500 this February, it wanted to create a splash, according to Dace Kainass, account supervisor for Outdoor Services, the Southfield, MI media buyer.

It bought all kinds of media, including large images projected onto a Daytona Beach water tower for two nights during the race. It bought the images from Projection Media, an El Dorado Hills, CA firm that offers a unique ad format that uses powerful light projection systems to display customer selected images on a large surface, usually a public building. The result is a large-scale promotion that can be seen by thousands and generates immediate exposure for an advertising campaign.

The images projected can be up to 100 ft. tall, static or full motion, black and white or color. Single image or multiple image campaigns can be run. The images are projected at night, when they can be clearly seen against a dark sky.

The idea is the brainchild of company president Michael Puehse who founded the company two years ago after pursuing a career in sales and marketing. After working for a company that sold projection equipment to small businesses, "I thought there was a market for people who wanted to use the technology but not buy it," he says. "So I located high power projection systems and began offering the service."

Advertisers supply the art that is laser etched onto glass slides that are used in the projectors. They pay on a per night basis, with prices starting at $7,000 for a single night and dropping for multi night packages. Projection Media handles all aspects of the campaign, from projecting the advertising to scout in out the best locations for it, which it does for an additional charge.

The biggest campaign so far has been run by Hallmark.com, which bought a five day campaign in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver and Phoenix to promote its Web site to holiday shoppers last year. The goal of the campaign was to sell customized greeting cards through the Web site. A series of holiday images of gingerbread men on cookie trays were used along with text to sell the cards. The images were projected in high traffic shopping areas.

"We were targeting holiday makers and the idea was to break through the clutter and imprint our message during the holiday shopping ritual," says Chris Harder, a media director at Starcom Worldwide, a division of the B/Com 3 Group that bought media for Hallmark.com.

The company used projection media as part of a multi media campaign that also included newspaper overwraps, billboards on trucks and online. Starcom had never used projection media before but was happy with it. "We know Hallmark.com had record visits during the campaign and we think it played a role," she says. "It was used in a targeted way in a location and time of year that made a lot of sense."

Pughes says projection media is frequently used for trade show and special event sponsorships. The idea is to promote the events outside of the places they occur, to motivate attendees who will see the images somewhere near the event, perhaps as they are going out to dinner the night before the show.

Kainass bought projection media for PentaCom, Dodge's Troy, MI agency. It was part of a multimedia campaign to promote Dodge, which was running cars in the Daytona 500 again after an absence. Three different slides were used which projected a branding image. The slides ran for four hours on two consecutive nights at a water tower on International Speedway Blvd., Daytona Beach's main strip. Kainass hired Projection Media to find the site.

"The goal was to get high traffic for people attending the race, going from their hotels or out to dinner," Kainass says. She claims Dodge was very happy with the promotion, but she isn't sure. "The disadvantage is not knowing how many people see it," she says. "I could get a traffic count for the street but since it's during a big event, it's not even close."

When asked if it was necessary to secure permission to transmit an image on a public building, Puehse says he's never done it before and had no trouble. If there is a problem, he'll simply use a different building, he says.

He distinguishes projection media from billboards, calling it a "new visual medium. It's light, not a billboard." He claims people are fascinated when they first see it because they can't tell where the image is coming from. "People are numb to traditional media, this arouses their curiosity."