The Reach & Frequency Of Wash & Dry, Laundries Become Media

Spin cycles have long been a part of the media plans for some big marketers, usually the political kind. But starting this week, the term is taking on a new meaning - not among public relations executives - but for media planners and buyers trying to evaluate a new advertising medium: laundries.

In a national advertising buy kicking off this week, the United States National Guard has become the first major advertiser to sponsor a new network of "laundry boards" being rolled out in the residence halls and dormitories of college campuses nationwide. It's the latest push by the ad industry into an array of new media outlets that are transforming public places into advertising spaces, and giving marketers new options for reaching an increasingly transitory consumer marketplace.

It's a trend that's also forcing advertisers and agencies to come up with new ways of thinking about the impact of advertising impressions in various locations, and is fostering new language to describe them and new metrics for measuring their effectiveness.

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And they're not just spin cycles, says Derek White, executive vice president of Alloy Media + Marketing, the youth marketing and out-of-home media firm that is rolling the laundry boards out on more than 1,000 college campuses nationwide. They also include wash cycles, and dry cycles and any of the other ways of measuring how people spend their time while doing laundry and gazing at media surrounding it.

"A full run in terms of a typical wash and dry cycle is about an hour and 15 minutes," explains White. "What we don't know is whether students, in some cases, hang around and read, or in other cases whether they load a machine, leave and come back later. But taking out most conservative estimates, you're still talking about at least a half dozen impressions on that basis."

Actually, Alloy will begin gathering data on the new laundry board cycles via its agreement with Mac-Gray Corp., the company that operates the laundry rooms on the college campuses. White says the machines are digital and capable of tracking and uploading data on the precise amount of time people use them. What isn't digital, at least at the start, is the actual laundry board media buy. The boards are analog advertising boards positioned at eye-level just above the washers and dryers, though Alloy is evaluating the possibility of installing digital video boards, and possibly even other technologies for providing "scent" based advertising and even "clings" and other gimmicks to what is assumed to be a relatively captive audience of highly desirable college audiences.

What's a "cling?" According to White, it's an attention-getting technique that places a garment with an ad attached to it as if it were clinging inside a dryer. Such clings can be highly viral, says White, citing a recent stunt conducted by Axe deodorant that placed women's undergarments inside dryers with an Axe ad attached to them.

Such extensions are part of what companies like Alloy that specialize in "experiential marketing" love to capitalize on, and extending them into laundry rooms is just the latest place to experience them. Alloy already dominates other public spaces on college campuses, including residence halls, dormitories, dining halls and student centers. It also maintains an large online panel of college students and younger members of the youth market.

At the start, the laundry board effort will not have any extravaganzas attached to it, but Alloy is open to ideas that leverage the possibilities of the location and its proximity for some marketers. Laundry products such as detergents are a natural fit, as are other products and brands hoping to capitalize on idle time for the highly mobile college crowd.

In fact, the National Guard will be extending the experience of its initial laundry board buy with another medium, albeit a highly analog one, designed to spark a "call to action," says Ken Coelho, senior media planner on the National Guard account at Arlington, VA-based Laughlin Marinaccio and Owens. The laundry buys will include "take-one" pamphlet boxes containing recruitment brochures for the National Guard.

"Everything we do for the Guard is based on leads, leads, leads. It's all about piquing their interest in finding more about the Guard," says Coelho, adding, "It's becoming more and more challenging these days. It's hard to convince somebody to join the National Guard. But the thing with the Guard is you can serve at home if you want. And that's important to tell college students who may be considering a career decision."

Coelho says the laundry board buy did not come from any pre-existing ad budget, but is part of a zero-based approach to developing new and innovative ways of connecting with consumers.

"It's not so much that we look at things from a reach and frequency standpoint, as what is special about a venue that enables us to get out in front of our consumer for more than a few seconds," he says. And the assumption is that the laundry boards will do just that.

"The average college student living on a college campus probably does not do their laundry as frequently as they should. When they do get around to it, they're there for two, three, maybe four loads," Coelho notes. "That's several hours of washing, driving and a portion of their time spent folding. And there's an opportunity to get their attention while they're doing that."

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