The Global Playbook:
A Strategic Guide to Executing Multi-Airport Advertising Campaigns

Choosing the right airports for a global campaign is a strategic decision that aligns directly with your company's core business objectives and sales priorities. Unlike event-based targeting, broad multi-market campaigns are typically designed to support local sales and marketing teams by building brand awareness and presence in key revenue-generating regions.

The selection process is a nuanced, multi-layered exercise. We guide our clients through the following strategic framework:

Step 1: Define Your Priority Markets Based on Business Goals
The process begins internally. The selection of countries is typically driven by senior leadership and local sales teams, based on factors such as regions with high-priority clients, markets targeted for revenue growth, or the territories of specific sales teams that need air cover and brand support.

Step 2: Conduct a Nuanced, Airport-Level Analysis
Once the priority countries are identified, the focus shifts to selecting the right airports within those markets. This is a detailed analysis based on:

• Key Airline Routes: Which airports serve the most important domestic and international routes for your clients and your sales teams?
• Passenger Volume & Impressions: Which airports will deliver the highest number of impressions to your target audience?
• Cost-Effectiveness & Value: Which airports offer the best media value and ROI to maximize your budget's impact in that region?

Step 3: Engage a Specialized Partner to Execute the Strategy
This is where high-level business strategy translates into a viable media plan. A specialized partner like EAM takes your list of priority countries and objectives and executes the complex airport-level analysis for you. Leveraging our deep knowledge of inventory, routes, and pricing across our global network, we can recommend the optimal combination of airports that aligns perfectly with your budget and strategic goals.

This is a classic strategic decision, and the right answer depends entirely on your campaign's primary goal. Are you aiming for maximum impact and brand authority in critical markets, or broad, consistent brand awareness across an entire region or country? Each strategy serves a different purpose.

Strategy 1: Hub Domination
This approach involves concentrating a larger budget on a few key international hubs (e.g., London, New York, Dubai) to create an overwhelming and unforgettable brand presence. It is ideal for:

• High-impact product launches.
• Targeting C-suite executives and financial decision-makers who frequent these major hubs.
• Making a definitive statement of market leadership.

This strategy often utilizes premium, large-format media like Spectacular Digital Networks (SDNs), video walls, and experiential exhibits to achieve its goal.

Strategy 2: Wide Reach & Presence
This strategy focuses on achieving broad awareness by placing a smaller, consistent presence across a larger number of airports. As noted in our media benefits research, the accessible cost of smaller static and digital formats allows for a "saturation" strategy that can make a brand feel ubiquitous and authoritative on a national scale, often at a more manageable overall price point. This approach is best for:

• Building general brand recognition and preference.
• Supporting regional sales teams across an entire country.
• Campaigns where frequency and consistent presence are more important than single-location impact.

Ultimately, the right path is a reflection of your brand's unique goals. A specialized partner like EAM can model budget scenarios for both a deep 'Hub Domination' plan and a broad 'Wide Reach' strategy to help you make the most informed decision.

Maintaining brand consistency across diverse cultures is one of the most critical—and challenging—aspects of a successful global campaign. Our role as your strategic partner is to provide the expert guidance and centralized management necessary to navigate these complexities, ensuring your brand's core message is communicated effectively and appropriately everywhere.

We achieve this through a "Global Core, Local Flex" framework.

1. Establish the "Global Core" Message
First, we consult with your brand to help define the non-negotiable elements of your campaign. This includes the core value proposition, primary tagline, and official brand guidelines. This "Global Core" ensures that the fundamental identity of your brand remains consistent and instantly recognizable, whether a passenger sees your ad in New York (JFK), London (LHR), or Singapore (SIN).

2. Guide the "Local Flex" for Cultural Resonance
While your team develops the creative, we provide the critical strategic guidance to ensure its success in each market. We do not create the artwork ourselves; instead, we empower your creative team by:

• Educating on Effective Messaging: We advise on the types of messaging and imagery that are culturally resonant and have proven effective in specific regions.
• Facilitating Translations: We assist in ensuring your core message is translated accurately and, most importantly, in a way that is culturally appropriate.
• Navigating Local Rules & Regulations: We provide crucial guidance on the local advertising laws, content restrictions, and the specific artwork review processes for each airport and vendor. This ensures your creative is compliant before submission, avoiding costly delays and rejections.

3. Provide Centralized Creative Management
Our primary role is to act as the central project manager and brand guardian for your creative assets. Once your team has produced the final artwork, we manage the entire complex process of trafficking the correct creative files to the correct vendors across the globe. This centralized system ensures the different "Local Flex" versions are implemented flawlessly without diluting the "Global Core" message, guaranteeing a powerful and unified brand presence worldwide.

Yes, and this is where a truly strategic campaign comes to life. We can go beyond targeting a whole airport and focus on specific terminals—and even specific zones within those terminals—to maximize efficiency and impact.

Our approach involves two layers of precision targeting:

1. Macro-Targeting: Selecting the Right Terminal by Airline Mix
The first step is choosing terminals that have the highest concentration of your target audience. We do this by analyzing the "airline mix" within each terminal, as different airlines cultivate distinct passenger demographics based on their route networks and service models.

• For B2B & Affluent Travelers: We prioritize terminals that are primary hubs for legacy carriers like United Airlines or British Airways. These airlines naturally have a higher concentration of corporate and frequent business travelers due to their extensive global routes, robust loyalty programs, and premium cabin offerings.
• For a Broader Consumer Audience: To reach a different demographic, we might focus on terminals that heavily feature leisure or budget carriers like Southwest or JetBlue.

Our strategy is to select terminals where the dominant airlines' passenger profiles best align with your brand's target customer.

2. Micro-Targeting: Pinpointing Zones Within the Terminal
This is a more granular layer of targeting that allows us to intercept your ideal audience based on their behavior within the terminal itself. We can strategically place your message near:

• Specific Gates: Targeting media near gates frequently used for long-haul international flights, which often use larger aircraft like the A380 and board higher-value passengers.
• Premium Amenities: Placing your brand near high-end retail stores (e.g., luxury watch or handbag boutiques), exclusive first and business-class lounges, or fine dining restaurants. This ensures your message aligns with a premium environment.

This dual-layered approach allows for incredible strategic focus. It ensures that your budget is concentrated in the precise locations where your most valuable audience is guaranteed to be, dramatically increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of your campaign.

The timeline for a global campaign has two key components: our rapid strategic planning and execution process, and your internal corporate approval process. While we move very quickly, the overall lead time is often determined by the client's internal workflow.

Here is a realistic breakdown of the timeline:

Phase 1: EAM's Initial Strategic Plan (3-5 Business Days)
Once we receive your initial brief, our team will deliver a comprehensive multi-airport presentation. This includes top-level media options, exploratory details, and budget scenarios for your target markets, giving you a clear strategic overview to review internally.

Phase 2: EAM's Formal Proposal (2-3 Business Days)
Based on your feedback from the initial plan—on timing, budget, media preferences, and creative considerations—we then build a detailed, formal proposal ready for your internal submission.

Phase 3: The Client's Internal Review (The Primary Variable: 2-8 Weeks)
This is typically the longest phase of the process. Every organization is different, and securing approvals for a multi-market investment requires time. This period involves evaluation by multiple stakeholders, coordination with your procurement and finance departments, review of contracts by your legal team, and the development of creative collateral by your brand or agency teams.

Phase 4: Execution & Final Production
Once you give us the final approval, our side is built for speed.

• EAM's Finalization (1-2 Weeks): We can complete all vendor negotiations, finalize contracts, and coordinate all production vendors in just one to two weeks.
• Final Production Lead Time: After all creative is approved and trafficked, the final step is production by the airport vendors, which typically requires 3-7 business days for digital media and 21 business days prior to the start date for static/printed media.

This scenario highlights one of the most critical advantages of our single-source model: simplicity and accountability.

• The Standard (DIY) Process: Without a centralized partner, if a digital screen goes down in Frankfurt or a banner is installed incorrectly in Tokyo, your team is responsible. This means tracking down the correct local vendor contact (who may be in a different time zone), communicating the issue (potentially with a language barrier), and managing the follow-up process to ensure it's resolved and that you receive the appropriate credit or make-good.
• The EAM Process (The Solution): With EAM, you make one call or send one email to your dedicated EAM contact, regardless of where the issue is in the world. We take immediate ownership of the problem. We then leverage our direct relationships with the local vendor on your behalf to diagnose the issue and ensure a swift resolution. Our role is to act as your advocate and operational arm, managing the entire process from confirmation of the fix to securing any necessary make-goods for lost advertising time. This allows your team to remain focused on the strategic success of the campaign, not on operational troubleshooting.

Unlike the fragmented data sheets you would receive from multiple individual vendors, our final performance report is a single, consolidated document designed to provide a clear and transparent record of your campaign's execution. We aggregate the critical metrics from every airport, providing a full gallery of Proof of Performance (POP) photos and, in some cases, videos, showing your ads live in each location, alongside a detailed breakdown of total impressions delivered by airport and media format. For digital placements, we also include vendor-supplied play-out reports to verify your ad spots ran as contracted, when that data is made available to us.

That's a crucial question. While the foundation of the price is the cost of the media placements, a multi-airport campaign is priced as a comprehensive, managed project with several key components.

1. The Core Media Cost
This is the primary component of the budget. It represents the cost of the advertising space in each airport, which varies dramatically based on the market size, the quality and type of placements chosen, and the duration of the campaign.

2. Production & Installation Costs
For any static or printed media in the campaign (like banners, wall wraps, or dioramas), there are separate hard costs for the physical production (printing) and the professional installation and removal at each airport. These are always factored into the overall project budget.

3. Potential Cost Efficiencies through Negotiation
This is a key area where we provide value. As a specialized agency with deep vendor relationships and significant, consolidated buying power across our entire client portfolio, we can often negotiate more favorable rates on the core media cost than a single brand could achieve on its own.

4. The Value of Centralized Management
A portion of the budget accounts for the end-to-end service that transforms a complex list of media buys into a single, seamless campaign. This includes the unified strategy, multi-vendor negotiation, consolidated contracting and invoicing, centralized creative management, and holistic performance reporting.

So, while the price is built from individual airport and production costs, the final value you receive is far greater. You are investing in a streamlined process and expert negotiation that would be incredibly resource-intensive, and often more expensive, to replicate on your own.

Yes, there are significant cost efficiencies, but they come from strategic areas that go beyond a simple bulk discount. Our value is in optimizing the entire investment, not just the media rate.

The efficiencies are achieved in three key ways:

1. Leveraging Consolidated Buying Power
Media vendors value their relationships with specialized agencies like EAM that bring them consistent, high-volume business. Because of our position in the market and our consolidated buying power across all clients, we are often able to negotiate more favorable rates and secure better placements for multi-airport packages than a single brand could achieve on its own.

2. Strategic Budget Optimization
True efficiency isn't just about lower prices; it's about better value. Our deep knowledge of inventory across our network of 132 airports allows us to recommend high-value placements that a client might overlook. We ensure your budget is allocated to the most effective and efficient media for your specific goal, eliminating wasted spend and maximizing ROI.

3. Significant Operational Savings
Clients realize substantial savings in "soft costs," which are often the most significant. This includes reduced hours spent by:

• Your Legal Team on reviewing and executing dozens of disparate contracts.
• Your Finance & Procurement Teams on vetting, onboarding, and processing payments for numerous international vendors.
• Your Marketing Team on managing vendor relationships, trafficking creative, and resolving operational issues.

So while the efficiencies aren't a simple percentage discount, they are substantial and multifaceted, combining better media rates with smarter budget allocation and a dramatic reduction in your internal operational costs.

We eliminate this financial complexity for you entirely. Our single-source model is designed to shield your finance and accounting teams from the risks and administrative burdens of managing multiple international currencies.

Here is the process:

• EAM Manages All Foreign Transactions: We handle all payments to the individual media vendors in their respective local currencies, whether it's British Pounds, Euros, Japanese Yen, or others. We absorb the complexities associated with exchange rate fluctuations and international bank transfer fees.
• You Receive One Consolidated Invoice: Your team receives one single, consolidated invoice from EAM for the entire global campaign. This invoice is presented in your preferred currency (typically USD), which provides complete budget clarity and predictability.

This streamlined process allows you to manage a global campaign with the same financial ease as a domestic one.

While a single advertising placement in a smaller airport can be accessible, a truly meaningful multi-airport campaign designed to create a significant brand impact requires a more substantial investment.

The final cost is built from several key variables that determine the price of each individual media placement. These "building blocks" include:

• The Type of Units: Digital screens, static banners, and experiential exhibits have very different cost structures.
• The Size & Location: A large spectacular in a main walkway will be a greater investment than a smaller screen at a gate.
• The Airport Market Tier: A premier hub like New York (JFK) will have higher rates than a medium-sized market.
• The Quantity of Units: The number of screens or banners included in the plan across all airports.
• The Campaign Duration: The length of time the campaign will run (e.g., 4 weeks, 12 weeks), which is a key cost multiplier.

Given these variables, to create a campaign with a strategic presence across three to five key airports, we typically advise clients that a starting budget should be in the range of $75,000 to $300,000.

This level of investment allows for a campaign that can achieve the necessary frequency and reach to make a real impression on a global audience. Our approach is always to start with your core objective, and we can build a strategic proposal designed to maximize any budget for a multi-market initiative.

Managing the creative logistics is one of the most detail-oriented and critical parts of a successful multi-airport campaign. Our process is designed to handle this entire complex workflow on our client's behalf, transforming dozens of separate requirements into one streamlined process.

Here is how we do it:

1. We Create a Centralized Spec Sheet
At the start of the project, we consolidate the technical specifications from every vendor and every media placement into a single, unified spec sheet for your creative team. This document clearly outlines all required dimensions, resolutions, file formats, spot lengths, and specific content restrictions for every ad unit in the campaign.

2. We Provide a Pre-Submission Review
Before your creative is formally submitted to any vendor, our team performs an expert review. We check the assets against the spec sheet to ensure they meet all technical and content guidelines. This proactive quality check helps prevent common rejection issues, saving valuable time and avoiding last-minute revisions.

3. We Manage All Trafficking & Vendor Coordination
Once your creative is finalized, you deliver the files to us. We then manage the entire submission process, trafficking the correct files to the correct contacts at each vendor around the world. Throughout this phase, we meticulously monitor all due dates and track each step of the approval process with every vendor, ensuring nothing is missed and all timelines are met.

4. We Secure Confirmation & Proof of Performance
Our job isn't done until we receive confirmation of correct installation or launch from every single vendor. We then collect the Proof of Performance (POP) photos and videos for your final campaign report.

Our role is to act as the central command center for all creative assets, ensuring your team only has to work with one set of instructions and one point of contact while we manage the complex backend logistics for a flawless global launch.

Airport advertising is a unique medium, and creative that works well in a magazine or on a webpage often fails in this dynamic environment. Based on our experience, brands new to airport advertising often make a few common, avoidable mistakes.

Here are the most common pitfalls we help our clients avoid:

1. Overly Complex Messaging
The biggest mistake is trying to fit too much information into a single ad—multiple taglines, dense paragraphs of text, or several calls to action. The airport traveler is on the move, and you only have a few seconds to deliver a message. We advise following a "3-Second Rule": if the average person can't understand the main point of your ad in three seconds, it's too complicated.

2. Missing an Opportunity for Contextual Relevance
While a strong global brand message can work anywhere, a common missed opportunity is failing to add a subtle layer of context relevant to the travel environment. This isn't about creating an entirely new campaign, but about making small, powerful tweaks. A subtle nod to the traveler's mindset—whether they're on a business trip or vacation—can make your brand feel more relevant and memorable.

3. Ignoring Cultural Nuances
Using the exact same imagery, symbols, and colors in every country is a significant strategic risk. An image or phrase that is perfectly acceptable in North America could be ineffective or even inappropriate in parts of Asia or the Middle East. A one-size-fits-all approach to global creative should be avoided.

4. Poor Readability
This is a simple but critical error. Using fonts that are too small, have poor color contrast with the background, or are overly stylized will make your message impossible to read from a distance. Airport ads must be immediately legible.

Avoiding these pitfalls is a key part of our strategic guidance. We work with your creative team during our review process to ensure your message is clear, contextually relevant, and designed for maximum impact.

Yes, not only is it possible, but it is a recommended best practice for a successful global campaign. This approach is the core of the "Global Core, Local Flex" strategy we discussed earlier.

Running different creative versions allows a brand to speak with a more relevant and resonant voice in each market. Here are the primary strategic reasons for doing so:

• Cultural & Linguistic Relevance: Running a Spanish-language version of your ad in Mexico City (MEX) and Madrid (MAD), or a Japanese-language version in Tokyo (HND), will always be more effective than a single English-only creative. It shows respect for the local culture and dramatically increases message comprehension.
• Product & Offer Customization: Your brand may have specific products, services, or promotions available in Europe that are not available in North America. Custom creative allows you to deliver the most relevant message to each market.
• A/B Testing & Optimization: For large-scale campaigns, we can even run different creative versions in similar markets to test which message, image, or call-to-action performs better. This provides valuable data to optimize future advertising efforts.

Our centralized creative management process is built to handle this complexity. We work with your team to track all the different creative versions, ensuring the correct language and imagery are trafficked to the correct airports and vendors. This eliminates the risk of error and allows you to execute a highly customized global campaign with a single point of contact.

Managing the physical production and installation of static media is a core part of our end-to-end service. We handle the entire, often time-consuming, supply chain and logistics to ensure quality and consistency across all locations.

The process is managed in four key steps:

1. Vendor Vetting & Coordination
EAM maintains a global network of trusted, high-quality printing and installation vendors in all major markets. Based on the specific media formats in your plan, we select the right certified vendor for each location.

2. Centralized Production Management
We provide your approved creative files to our production partners, which begins a highly detailed process that we manage on your behalf. This includes coordinating multiple rounds of digital and physical proofs to ensure perfect color-matching and brand consistency. We handle all revision coordination between your creative team and the printers, guaranteeing every detail is correct before final production begins.

3. Installation & Removal Logistics
Our team coordinates directly with the installation crews and airport authorities at each location to schedule the installation, which is often done overnight to minimize disruption. We also manage the scheduled removal of all materials at the end of the campaign flight.

4. Confirmation & Proof of Performance
Once each installation is complete, we secure high-quality photos of each static placement. These images serve as the final Proof of Performance (POP) and are included in your consolidated campaign report.

Our centralized project management transforms what would be a logistical nightmare—coordinating dozens of individual printers and installers—into a single, streamlined process, guaranteeing your creative is produced to the highest standard and installed flawlessly on time.