During the week of April 13th, do it outdoors began running three of our largest mobile billboard units out on the road in York, PA with eye-catching ‘Thank You’ messages targeted toward area essential local grocery and healthcare workers.
As with any of our campaigns, our operations team customized the mobile billboard routing specifically for York, Lancaster and Harrisburg, so the three units reached each and every grocery store, hospital, health clinic and pharmacy in the area at least once.
Our drivers made it a priority to stop at these locations and encourage the heroes within the buildings to check out the ‘thank you’ message and take a photo if they liked.
Showing support for local heroes
As a leader in the out-of-home media space, do it outdoors took notice of other industry leaders leveraging their media formats, such as static billboards and bus shelters, to thank essential workers in larger, densely-populated markets, such as NYC, Chicago, or D.C. However, we just weren’t seeing OOH as prominently advertised in smaller markets such as their headquarter region of South Central PA, where the essential worker heroes are just as important.
Our goal was to change that, and our mobile billboards made it possible to pull up to these locations’ doorsteps (literally) to show them gratitude.
“There are so many workers out there right now who don’t have the luxury of working from home right now and are putting themselves at risk. We wanted an impactful way to thank them,” says do it outdoors’ Marketing Manager Bryant Hughes. “Right now, not every company has the resources to make large monetary donations, so this is our brand’s unique way of giving back and showing these heroes that we’re grateful for everything they’re doing for us.”
Behind the creative
The colorful creative (see below) was designed by in-house Graphic Designer Rachel Frock. It focuses around a “Not All Heroes Wear Capes” message. We settled on concept and bright colors with the hope that it would grab viewers’ attention and resonate in a fun, optimistic way with those in local communities.
Positive local reception
The campaign concluded in York on Friday, where it received recognition from the local media including York Daily Record as well as a special segment on Fox43 News that included an interview with Marketing Manager, Bryant Hughes (see full video below).
On April 22nd, the were mobile billboards were included in a special procession to honor front-line healthcare workers at Geisinger Holy Spirit hospital in Cumberland County, PA. First responders from New Cumberland to East Pennsboro, up and down the West Shore and all over, came together to say thank you. CBS21 News came out to cover the story and long-time driver Larry Daigle was interviewed by reporters. Click here to watch full the video.
What’s next for the “Heroes” campaign?
The campaign migrated north to the state capitol of Harrisburg on Monday, April 20th and will continue in Lancaster starting April 27th. Due to the extremely positive community response to this initiative thus far, we’ve begun looking into the logistics around expanding this campaign out into additional markets as well, which we hope to do soon!
This initiative is one of many that do it outdoors has set into motion as a way of utilizing our OOH media resources during this COVID-19 outbreak. Some of these special initiatives and services include mobile hand-washing stations, grocery delivery services and pro bono mobile billboards.
