Entertainment events need visibility before the doors open. Whether you are promoting a concert, festival, theatre production, exhibition, comedy show or live experience, out of home advertising can put the event in front of people as they travel, commute, shop and spend time around the city.
For event organisers and promoters, the value of OOH is its ability to connect the campaign with real world audience movement. Advertising can be planned around areas where potential attendees spend time, transport routes they use and locations close to the venue itself.
From our experience planning out of home advertising campaigns across the UK, we look at the event date, audience, venue, catchment area and ticketing period before recommending locations and formats. This helps OOH perform a clear role within the wider event marketing campaign rather than simply adding visibility for the sake of it.
Why Use OOH Advertising for Entertainment Events?
OOH advertising can help entertainment events build awareness, reach potential attendees around relevant locations and maintain visibility during the period when tickets are being considered and purchased.
The key advantage for event marketing is context.
An advert for a West End production can appear around stations used to access the theatre district. A concert campaign can target transport routes and city centre locations around the venue. A festival can build wider regional coverage around areas where potential attendees live and travel.
This creates several opportunities for entertainment advertisers:
- Build awareness ahead of the event
- Announce tickets going on sale
- Promote artists, performers or headline acts
- Reach audiences around the event’s catchment area
- Create visibility close to the venue
- Reinforce social, search and other digital activity
- Support the final ticket-sales period
The campaign can also evolve as the event gets closer.
Start With the Event Date and Work Backwards
One of the most useful differences between event advertising and general brand activity is that there is a fixed date to plan towards.
That should influence the media strategy.
An entertainment campaign may need to communicate several different messages during its lifecycle.
Early Awareness
The first stage can introduce the event, artist, production or experience.
At this point, the creative needs to establish the essentials quickly:
What is happening? Where is it happening? When is it happening?
For an established artist or production, recognisable imagery may carry much of the message. A new event may need more explanation.
Tickets on Sale
Once tickets become available, the campaign can move towards action.
The creative might introduce:
- On-sale dates
- Ticket information
- Headline performers
- Venue details
- Website or booking information
The locations selected should still reflect where the likely audience can be reached.
The Final Build Up
As the event approaches, urgency becomes more relevant.
Digital OOH can be particularly useful here because creative can be updated without replacing a printed poster, subject to the media booking and approval process.
Messaging could move from an event announcement to:
This Weekend
or:
Final Tickets Available
The important point is to plan these stages before the campaign begins, rather than treating every week of the event marketing period in exactly the same way.
Use Location to Bring the Campaign Closer to the Event
For entertainment events, proximity can be particularly powerful.
We would usually assess the venue and surrounding audience movement as part of the planning process.
Imagine a concert taking place at a major London venue.
Rather than spreading the entire budget evenly across the city, part of the campaign could focus on Underground stations, transport routes, roadside locations and pedestrian environments that connect with the venue.
This can help the advertising feel increasingly relevant as audiences get closer to the event.
Location planning can also extend beyond the immediate venue.
A festival attracting visitors from several cities may require regional coverage. A local theatre production could benefit from concentrating activity within its realistic catchment area.
The event’s audience geography should determine the OOH geography.
This is one reason we would establish where ticket buyers are likely to come from before recommending specific media.
Billboard Advertising Can Give Events Scale
Billboard advertising can work particularly well when an entertainment campaign has strong visual assets.
Film style artwork, performers, artists, production photography and distinctive event branding can all translate effectively onto large-format media.
For entertainment events, billboards can be used to:
- Announce an event
- Introduce a headline performer
- Promote an on sale date
- Build recognition around the creative
- Establish visibility across a city
- Support the final ticket-sales period
The creative should remain simple.
People passing a roadside billboard have limited time to understand it. Trying to include the full line up, several ticket packages, multiple sponsors and extensive event information can weaken the message.
A useful event billboard usually prioritises the event, date, location and one clear action.
Transport Advertising Can Follow Audience Journeys
Transport Advertising is particularly relevant to entertainment because people frequently travel into town and city centres for leisure.
Bus, rail and Underground advertising can place an event campaign within those journeys.
For a London entertainment campaign, London underground advertising can provide access to posters, cross-track formats, digital escalator panels, ticket gateways and other station media.
Station selection should relate to the event.
A West End production may prioritise stations around London’s theatre and entertainment districts. A larger event could use key interchange stations to build broader reach.
Bus advertising can provide another layer of city coverage, taking the event creative through streets, retail areas and commuter routes.
For us, the important consideration is how these formats work together.
If the same potential attendee encounters the campaign on their journey to work, around a city centre and again near an entertainment district, those placements are contributing to repeated recognition of the event.
Digital OOH Can Respond to the Event Timeline
Digital out of home advertising can be particularly useful for entertainment campaigns because event information changes.
This gives promoters greater scope to change creative as the event approaches.
For example:
Six weeks before
Announce the event and headline talent.
Tickets released
Switch to an on sale message.
One week before
Emphasise the date and remaining availability.
Event weekend
Use immediate messaging where appropriate.
Digital can also accommodate several creative executions within the wider campaign.
A music festival could feature different artists. A theatre production could introduce individual cast members. A multi day event could promote different programme highlights.
Build the Campaign Around Where the Audience Spends Time
The venue is only one part of the location strategy.
Also consider where the potential ticket buyer spends time before deciding to attend.
For example, an event aimed at younger urban audiences might prioritise media around:
- Universities
- Shopping and leisure districts
- Relevant transport networks
- Nightlife areas
- Music and entertainment districts
A premium arts or cultural event may have a different geographic and audience profile.
This is where OOH planning becomes more precise.
Instead of asking where can we advertise this event?, we would ask:
Where can we reach the people most likely to be interested in attending it?
That shift can help narrow a long list of available sites into locations that have a clear reason to be included.
Connect OOH With Ticket Sales and Digital Activity
An entertainment campaign rarely relies on one media channel.
Potential attendees might see an OOH advert and later search for the event, encounter a social post, visit the ticketing site or discuss it with friends.
This makes consistency important.
The event name, imagery, colours and key message used in OOH should connect clearly with the creative people encounter online.
Where the viewing environment allows it, OOH can also provide a more direct route to digital action through:
- QR codes
- Short URLs
- Search prompts
- Promotional codes
- App or ticketing destinations
QR codes make most sense where people have sufficient time and physical opportunity to scan them. A close range poster in a pedestrian environment provides a very different opportunity from a roadside billboard viewed from a moving vehicle.
How Should You Measure OOH for an Entertainment Event?
Measurement should reflect what the campaign was intended to achieve.
For an entertainment event, useful indicators could include:
- Estimated campaign reach and frequency
- Ticket sales during the campaign period
- Branded search activity
- Website visits
- QR scans
- Promotional code usage
- Geographic patterns in ticket sales
- Awareness or consideration studies for larger campaigns
Ticketing data can be particularly useful.
If you understand where buyers are coming from, that information can help inform both the current campaign and future event planning.
It is important, however, to avoid assuming that every ticket sold after an OOH exposure was caused solely by that advert. Entertainment marketing often involves several touchpoints before someone makes a booking.
Make OOH Part of Your Entertainment Event Campaign
Entertainment events give OOH campaigns something valuable to work with: a place, an audience and a moment in time.
The strongest campaigns use those elements together.
Billboards can establish scale. Transport advertising can build repeated visibility across audience journeys. Digital OOH can change messaging as the event approaches. Carefully selected sites around the venue can strengthen presence when the campaign reaches its final stages.
At OOH International, we plan campaigns around the event, audience, location, timeline and available budget, using our experience across billboard, digital and transport media to identify the formats that have a clear role in the campaign.
If you are planning a concert, festival, theatre production or other entertainment event, get in touch with OOH International. We can help identify the locations, formats and level of coverage that fit your event and the audience you want to reach.