In Situ Media Case Study

CASE STUDY
Responding to High Value Customers
A small sport & leisure media specialist needed to raise its own
game to meet the changing tastes of Britain’s biggest advertisers
Insight. Strategy. Implementation.
Lucidity London
Inspiring Growth

Lucidity London | Case Study | In Situ Media Page 2 of 15
MODERNIZING THE UK’S NO 1 LEISURE CENTRE MEDIA COMPANY
Executive Summary
At the end of 2010, management at In Situ Media were facing challenges on multiple fronts. Revenues had been
falling since the UK first entered recession in 2008 while competition was intensifying as advertiser’s diverted
expenditure online and towards a growing number of Digital Out-Of-Home formats.
Furthermore, In Situ had failed to invest properly in its products and systems over many years. If management
were going to re-ignite growth in leisure centre media, they would need to modernise the company’s offering to
meet the needs of Britain’s biggest advertisers much more closely.
About In Situ Media
In Situ Media is an out-of-home advertising contractor
which sells display advertising space to major brand
advertisers inside 550 leisure centres across the UK.
Launched in 1991, the company now has long-term
contracts with 8 leisure centre management companies,
12 local authorities and 98 individual leisure centres.
It employs seven people and generates revenues of
approximately £1m a year.
Table 1 - Media formats available inside Leisure Centres:
Format Location
6-Sheets Poolside, foyers, walkways
Changing Room Panels Male, female and mixed
Banners Poolside and sports halls
Stickers On walls, mirrors and lockers
Sampling Reception, studios

Situation
In Situ was once the small friendly place where media
professionals went to buy large family, teenage and
health-conscious audiences on behalf of Britain’s biggest
advertisers. They knew they could get what they needed
because there were relatively few Out-of-Home options
available to extend the reach of their campaigns into
these demographics with such precision.
By the end of 2010 though, the advertising landscape
had changed dramatically. Massive investments in digital
were transforming the media industry and giving
advertisers more choice, flexibility and accountability in
their media selections. Large multi-nationals built online
display advertising networks capable of reaching
massive youth audiences, while the Out-of-Home
industry developed digital networks rotating multiple
campaigns in the same space every 2 weeks targeting
people on the move in shopping centres, supermarkets,
railway stations and the London Underground (see
Appendix A for more details).
With so many options available to advertisers, In Situ’s
leisure centre media proposition began to lose its
intrinsic appeal. Revenues began to decline as
advertisers moved expenditure into digital media
formats, relations with an influential channel to market
came under strain and one of the company’s most
valuable customers (the Government’s media buying
unit the Central Office of Information) closed its doors.
A shrinking panel network gave further cause for
concern. In Situ lost scale and quality from its panel
network when, in November 2010, one of Britain’s
biggest leisure centre management companies awarded
its media business to a rival, believing their network in
private gyms offered ‘a better fit with our brand’.
Truth was, In Situ’s products and systems were showing
signs of a lack of investment. Its panel network was
visibly ageing and its systems were undermining the
team’s ability to deliver a modern customer experience.
The company hadn’t tackled and resolved transparency
and accountability issues which the industry at large had
dealt with 10 years earlier.
These events occurred in a period of increased
competition which began with the ‘credit crunch’ in
2008. Advertisers’ responded to the financial crisis by
making massive cuts to their budgets, and expenditure
in out-of-home products took a particularly hard hit,
down 17% in 2009, before growth resumed in 2010.
Fig 1 - UK Ad Expenditure, % change on previous year
Source: Advertising Association/WARC
In Situ’s management needed a new plan to modernize
its core proposition and raise its quality standards if it
was going to adopt a more competitive posture in a fast-
changing environment.
-20%
-10%
0%
10%
20%
2008 2009 2010 2011
All Advertising Out-Of-Home

Task
Lucidity London were commissioned to help management
reverse the decline in sales, and return the company to
profitable growth. To this end, our strategic objectives
were articulated as:
1. Assess customers current perceptions of leisure
centre media, and the company’s overall service
2. Build consensus around a new strategy which aligns
the core proposition to the needs of Britain’s
biggest advertisers and their intermediaries
3. Remodel inefficient business processes to support
continuously rising quality standards
4. Begin modifying the set of associations surrounding
the In Situ brand and focus on building ‘quality’
attributes
5. Achieve gross media revenue of £1.5m in 2013-14
Action
External Reality Digs
To understand customers’ perceptions of In Situ and
their leisure centre media proposition, we asked senior
planners and buyers who knew the business well to
participate in a process we call Reality Digs.
Among the sample, we found the most commonly-held
perceptions of leisure centre media were somewhat
downmarket: ‘council-run centres’, ‘C2D audience’ and
‘not illuminated’ were among the more frequently
recalled top-of-mind attributes.
And in private health clubs, advertisers had an easy way
to compare the attributes and performance of both the
media and the contractor. This assessment revealed
more downmarket perceptions though - there had been
relatively few similarities between the development of
private health club and leisure centre media over the
years (see Appendix B).
These customers also told us that leisure centre media
presented specific problems for advertisers, including:
 a low quality panel network (“not illuminated”, “no
regeneration of sheetage”)
 difficulty understanding which sites offered genuine
impact and long dwell-times to advertisers (“too
many parallel panels”, “clutter in the environment”)
 lack of investment in media self-bolstering activities
(“poor photographs”, “lacks research”, “no new case
studies”)
 sales and marketing presentations that “haven’t
changed for years”
Exhibit 1 - Example of a low quality poster panel

Delving further into customers’ frustrations, we
arranged to interview decision-makers at an influential
out-of-home specialist with whom relations had recently
become strained.
For them, leisure centre media was surrounded by a
constellation of unhelpful attributes associated with In
Situ rather than the format itself, including:
 management which lacked commitment to the
industry’s drive for greater professionalism
 observable lack of investment in product, sales,
marketing and operations
 comparatively low product and service standards
They went on to describe a modern media environment
in which greater creativity had driven agencies to
consult more closely with media owners and work with
clients to match new technologies with innovative
executions. The relationship between agencies and
media owners, which once may have been considered
adversarial, had become far more collaborative. Without
digital, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth capabilities in the network, In
Situ had missed out on this trend.
Internal Reality Digs
When we assessed the company’s service delivery
model, we discovered a proposition that was being
undermined by flaws in the design of its processes and
systems. For a while now, management had ignored
critical issues related to buyers’ assessment of quality in
both pre- and post-sales service (see Table 2).
Table 2 – Key Processes and their Impact on Quality
Stage Process Quality Assessment Criteria
Pre Panel Assessment what is the presentation like
Posting how are ads put on display
Audience Estimation how many people will see my ad
Post Proof-of-Posting what evidence is supplied to prove
my ads are on display as specified
Campaign Evaluation how many people saw my ad
See Appendix B for a more detailed description
As the reality of the challenges facing the management
team became clearer, so too did the root cause of the
company’s decline. In the absence of a formal planning
process, In Situ had responded to the credit crunch by
drifting towards a strategy of cost minimisation. This
was driving a general perception that the company was
unresponsive to customers’ concerns. And, to people for
whom winning in their own business was about caring
more than other companies (about customers, about
colleagues, about how the organisation conducts itself in
a world with endless opportunities to cut corners), In
Situ had fallen way behind.
New Strategy, New Direction
Having persuaded In Situ’s management to recognise
the enormous changes taking place across the industry,
and take an honest look at the company’s operations,
we needed to build consensus around a new plan to
revitalise the business. After all, national advertisers
were still looking for places to interrupt consumers to
deliver commercial messages. And public leisure centres
were still being visited by millions of Brits each week.

We recommended the company adopt a customer focus
and a generic strategy focused on quality improvements.
By concentrating resources on delivering continuous
improvements to product and service quality, we felt we
could boost the appeal of leisure centre media among
Britain’s biggest advertisers.
The strategy had two distinct phases. The first phase
prioritised the modernisation of the static 6-sheet
proposition and the company’s systems. The second
would focus on the development of a digital network.
Re-Modelling Operations
Responding immediately to concerns over the quality of
the company’s network, we initiated a panel audit to
quantify the scope and scale of any problems, and set a
baseline for a panel replacement programme.
We immediately ran into problems operationalizing the
audit though. No-one at In Situ was routinely visiting
their leisure centres so, unless we spent 2 months
travelling around the country ourselves, how were we
going to assess the condition of almost 3,500 poster
panels in 550 leisure centres nationwide?
A solution arose as we considered how to respond to
concerns around accountability in the posting process.
At that time, In Situ were sending posters to leisure
centres by courier, together with instructions to display
them at a specified time and location. The sales team
then telephoned leisure centres to check that the
posters were on display at the right time and place.
This process had two major flaws. Firstly, there was no
‘hard’ evidence that campaigns were on display – it was
theoretically too easy for someone to tell us that posters
were on display even if they weren’t. And secondly, the
company had no direct contact with its panel network;
they lacked a clear view of its (deteriorating) condition.
We recommended outsourcing the final leg of the
posting process to regional posting contractors, along
with a mandate to provide time and date-stamped
‘proof-of-posting’ photos from each individual posting
event. With each new campaign, we’d receive images of
panels which the operations team could assess for signs
of wear and tear, and take action where necessary.
As the panel audit progressed, so the panel replacement
programme began. Within 2 months we’d received
images of 80% of In Situ’s panels, and identified sites
which urgently required repair or replacement. When
management selected a new high spec poster panel to
introduce into the network, the rejuvenation of the
physical network began.
Exhibit 2 – Example of a new poster panel

Lifting Sales & Marketing to Higher Standards
With a revitalized panel network in development, we
began assessing opportunities to improve In Situ’s sales
and marketing competencies.
In interviews, customers had informed us of the need to
refresh the company’s sales collateral (see Appendix C),
while also highlighting the need to:
 excite planners about leisure centre media
 articulate key media facts and figures clearly
 socialise case studies demonstrating the
effectiveness of leisure centre media
 take better photographs
 arrive at meetings informed about brand advertisers
and their communication strategies
We drew up a sales and marketing plan which prioritised
and co-ordinated the delivery of these and more
customer-inspired quality improvements on a timetable
which would maximise their cumulative effect.
Signalling the start of change, we created a fresh new
visual identity for the company, quickly followed by a
user-friendly website designed to meet the information
needs of busy planners, buyers and clients. Content
highlighted new product and service quality attributes,
and a download library minimised the time required to
access PowerPoint, PDF and JPEG files for circulation
among larger decision-making groups.
Exhibit 1 - In Situ Media’s new logo
Exhibit 2 - New company website
Pre-Sales Service Enhancements
To present the new quality-based narrative directly to
customers in group presentations and face-to-face
meetings, we created a library of PowerPoint slides for
the sales team addressing key topics, such as:
 media opportunities inside leisure centres
 geographic coverage and network configuration
 leisure centre audience facts, figures and images
 analysis of leisure centre users using TGI survey data
 new proof-of-posting services
 new post-campaign research services
 client success stories and case studies
 glossy images of client campaigns

Exhibit 3 –Sales and marketing presentation (2011)
Sales proposals also drew from this library, and were
further enhanced by the development of a robust new
Audience Delivery model, which blended fresh footfall
data supplied by leisure centres with TGI consumer
survey data and In Situ’s panel location data.
An Audience Estimation Toolset facilitated access to this
dataset, helping In Situ’s operations team design
bespoke packages to suit client’s objectives and/or
budget. It also gave the sales team ready access to
estimates of a campaigns reach and frequency at
different weights – all critical inputs to most clients’
media evaluation and planning software.
Exhibit 4 – Audience Estimation Tool
To help the sales team add value to individual customer
interactions in face-to-face meetings, we developed a
system to acquire, summarise and distribute facts about
advertisers’ strategies. We subscribed to media industry
databases and news websites discussing brands and
their media strategies, and assembled Summary
Briefings focused on individual advertisers’ news, their
communication strategy and recent campaigns.
We also analysed the habits of Frequent Leisure Centre
Users in great detail using TGI consumer survey data.
Investigations were undertaken and findings socialised
which described their demographic profiles, centre
visiting behaviour, category purchasing repertoires,
brand preferences and main media consumption habits.
Exhibit 5 – Analysis of Leisure Centre Use, by Lifestage

Post Sales Service Enhancements
Customers had also told us that In Situ needed to do
more to assess the effectiveness of client’s campaigns,
and prove leisure centre media works in an integrated
media mix. We responded by creating a new Campaign
Research Service which initially provided clients with key
advertising performance metrics such as awareness,
consideration, persuasion and intention to purchase.
We appointed an independent media research specialist
to help us design and implement a robust research
methodology and deliver an objective assessment of
each client’s campaign performance.
Fig 3 – Early campaign effectiveness results
Source: Clark Chapman 2011
While the initial results showed impressive levels of
campaign awareness, we were also building a body of
evidence to help us describe how different segments of
the audience interacted with advertising inside leisure
centres. For example, a campaign for the Twentieth
Century Fox film Mr Poppers Penguins delivered
spectacularly high levels of unaided recall among mums,
who told us they were always on the lookout for ideas to
keep their kids entertained during the school holidays.
Another opportunity to modify the company’s post-sales
service proposition arose alongside changes to the
posting process.
Regional posting contractors were now providing time
and date-stamped images from each posting event
showing a client’s campaign in place and on time. To
present this to clients in a modern context, we decided
to organise all aspects of the company’s post-campaign
reporting activities around an easily accessible,
password-protected client microsite. We called the
system Verify and it provided ‘hard’ evidence of a
client’s campaign in the form of a ‘site visit’ from their
desk! Posting images were presented alongside posting
reports, high quality photographs of the campaign
(another known client bugbear) and research studies.
Exhibit 5 – Verify: proof-of-posting microsite
13%
38%
17%17%
56%
29%
36%
67%
46%
Nokia 20th Century Fox E45
Spontaneous Prompted Recognised

Reaching Out to Media Planners and Buyers
To broadcast In Situ’s revitalization story among the
wider population of people with responsibility for or
influence over large advertisers’ media expenditure
decisions, we developed a series of tactical campaigns
promoting product and service quality enhancements.
The company’s customer database was analysed and
segmented by value and a ‘Platinum List’ of customers
identified on whom we would concentrate scarce
resources. Targeted Direct Mail, Email and Personal
Selling campaigns showcased the modern leisure centre
media experience, and featured major brands currently
showing ads in leisure centres.
Exhibit 7 – Extract from Email
When we’d accumulated fresh campaign imagery,
audience profile data and post-campaign research
results, we designed a new media pack which reflected
the enhanced quality of the new proposition and the
characteristically ‘time-poor’ nature of media life. A
minimalist design approach was adopted, giving imagery
a high level of salience in the presentation while copy
was kept to a minimum.
Exhibit 8 – Extracts from new media pack

Results
When we arrived at In Situ, we found a company which,
through a combination of misfortune and mistakes, was
struggling to adapt in a rapidly changing environment.
In the 6 months prior to our engagement, the company
had lost a major customer, the support of a key channel
to market, and a large leisure centre operator from their
network.
Reality Digs revealed how decisions taken cumulatively
had eroded the appeal of leisure centre media. A focus
on cost-minimisation had resulted in an ageing network,
relatively low service standards and a perception that
the business was unresponsive to customers’ concerns.
Within six months though, there were visible signs of
improvement. In listening and responding to high value
customers, In Situ’s team and its proposition were
undergoing a transformation. The physical panel
network was being upgraded, and their systems had
been successfully re-modelled to the point where the
changes were now embedded in day-to-day operations.
Most importantly, quality was driving decision-making.
In Situ were heading in the right direction. Their strategy
of boosting the appeal of leisure centre media through
incremental improvements was beginning to drive buyer
preference once again. The core proposition, supported
by value added service enhancements, was attracting
interest from Britain’s biggest advertisers and their
intermediaries.
Sales leapt by more than 1200% immediately after the
proposition was re-launched, followed by an increase of
152% in the next quarter. Seasonal effects contributed
to a decline in the Q4 comparison before growth
resumed again in Q1 2012.
Source: Internal Accounts, April 2012
The quality of the brands choosing leisure centre media
was striking too. Advertisers’ with a vast range of choice
in their media selections were selecting leisure centre
media to extend the reach of their campaigns. In Situ
and leisure centre media were back on the path to
growth.
Exhibit 9 Major Brands choosing Leisure Centres, 2011
-33% -53%
372%
-74% -93%
152%
-64%
74%
Q1 '10 Q2 '10 Q3 '10 Q4 '10 Q1 '11 Q2 '11 Q3 '11 Q4 '11 Q1 '12
Fig 4. In Situ Media Income, 2010-12
% Change in QuarterlyGross Media Revenue
Re-launch
Mar 7 2011
1206%

APPENDIX A
Source: Outdoor Media Centre 2012
Source: Outdoor Media Centre 2012
Source: AA/WARC Expenditure Report 2012
50,000
60,000
70,000
80,000
2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010
Fig 5. Growthin UK 6-Sheet Universe
Members of the Outdoor Media Centre
897 933 976 939
782
881 886
3% 3% 4% 7% 9% 11% 14%
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Fig 6. Rise of DigitalOOH
Out-of-Home Revenues,£m Out-of-Home Digital as % of total
1,367
2,016
2,813
3,350 3,541
4,097
4,784
8%
12%
16% 20%
24% 26% 30%
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Fig 7. Rise of Online
Media Revenues,£m
Internet Advertising Internet as % of All Advertising

Appendix B
Table 1 Comparison between Private Health Clubs & Leisure Centres: 6-Sheet Products
Private Health Clubs Leisure Centres
Panel Specifications ……………………………..… Illuminated, Scrolling, Static Static
Main Panel Locations ……………………………..… Inside Gym, Foyer Foyer, Poolside, Walkways
Basis of Audience Data ……………………………..… Membership, Footfall Internal Estimation
Posting Process ……………………………..… In-House Courier
Medium Self-Bolstering ……………………………..… Regular independent research Intermittent
Marketing ……………………………..… Simple, Clean Busy, Data Rich
Table 2 – Operational Processes and their Impact on Customers Assessment of Quality
Process Design Flaw
Impact on
Assessment of Quality
Panel Assessment
Leisure centre staff telephoned in if a panel was a danger to
patrons; panel assessment was 100% re-active
Hygiene factor
Posting
Posters sent to leisure centres by courier along with posting
instructions informing staff when/where to display posters
Lacks transparency and
accountability
Audience Estimation
Footfall data supplied by leisure centres on an ad hoc basis
quantifying use, frequency, activity and customer profiles
Data recency and
accuracy
Proof-of-Posting
Sales staff telephoned leisure centres to ask if a client’s
campaign was on display
Lacks ‘hard’ evidence
Campaign Evaluation Infrequent assessment of the impact of clients’ campaigns Lacks evidence

APPENDIX C
Exhibit 10 - In Situ Media’s previous logo
Exhibit 11 - Media Pack Cover2009
Exhibit 12 - Sample sales presentation (2010)
Exhibit 4 – Samples from In Situ’s previous website
1994-2010

About Lucidity London
Lucidity London is a marketing consultancy
which provides research, strategy and
programme implementation services to local,
national and international clients.
We combine in-depth customer insights with
practical expertise in marketing and operations
to help our clients evolve and grow.
Our home page is www.luciditylondon.com
Copyright © 2014 Lucidity London
All rights reserved.
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trademarks of Lucidity London.

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