Airports: Open for Business Connecting with the Decision Makers in Business

Latest research from JCDecaux reveals the impact of the advertising environment on the subconscious brand associations of key business decision makers.

‘Airports: Open for Business’ focused exclusively on senior and C-suite business people who hold significant budget responsibility and influence in their roles. These Business Decision Makers (BDM’s) were drawn from 12 countries to provide both local insights and a global overview. The study explored BDM’s attitudes and habits when travelling for business and probed their deep-rooted associations of business to business (B2B) advertising across a variety of advertising environments.

'Still-time' valued by BDM's

The study revealed that many BDM’s are flying more often for business, leading to high familiarity with airports and the procedures of flying.  Flying has become part of their routine, and they know all the hacks to make their journeys as smooth as possible. The combination of all these factors led to the interesting insight of BDM’s experiencing a period of ‘still-time’ while at the airport, a pause in their hectic schedules away from their day-to-day demands. This ‘still-time’ provides a rare window of opportunity for B2B brands to connect with this valuable business audience whilst they are in a work mindset but not distracted by other demands.

Getting to the heart of BDM's perceptions

Behavioural economics teaches us that the subconscious drives decision-making, so it was important for us to gain an insight into BDM’s subconscious associations with B2B brand advertising as they experience it in different environments.

Through a combination of implicit and explicit testing, we found that BDM’s tend to associate the attributes of successful brands most strongly with B2B advertising they experience at the airport.
 

Driving Consideration and Action

The study shows that B2B advertising at the airport is not only a powerful driver of brand consideration amongst BDM’s but also drives action, 9 out of 10 saying they have taken action as a result of seeing business-related advertising at the airport. A combination of frequent travel, work-mode mindset and positive sub-conscious associations coupled with an interest in their surroundings means the airport is a very conducive environment for any B2B brand to connect and engage with the key audience of BDM’s.

View the Airports: Open for Business infographic here. For more information, read part 2 and part 3 of the study.