Media Frankfurt is 50 years old
The professional marketing arm of Frankfurt Airport was launched fifty years ago. From its beginnings until today the company has been constantly adapting to a rapidly changed advertising market and an ever more global target group.
Frankfurt, 30th July 2021. In the midst of a turbulent post-coronavirus summer, Media Frankfurt has every reason to celebrate: FRAPORT’s marketing arm, and at the same time the biggest provider of airport advertising in Germany, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.
“For fifty years at Frankfurt Airport we have been offering continuity, connectivity and creativity”, says Martin Korosec, managing director of Media Frankfurt. “Customers such as Sixt, Opel and Lufthansa, but also many luxury brands, have been able to show with us how attention-grabbing out-of-the-box advertising works. The airport, at which the baggage carousels or the tower have themselves become advertising spaces, forms the ideal brand scene for surprising showcasing campaigns beyond the classical channels.”
It was in September 1971 that the company for airport advertising was launched as a partner company to the airport and Deutsche Städtereklame. In its beginnings it marketed back-lit picture surfaces, large-screen displays, showcases, posters and flags on the Frankfurt Airport site, at which in the same year 10.6 million passengers arrived, landed or changed planes. Even then one of the biggest advertising customers was Lufthansa.
With the extremely rapid growth in passenger numbers, the advertising subsidiary grew concurrently. In 1986 the company already employed 12 staff and was realising high-profile advertising campaigns for customers such as Still fork trucks, Stockinger safes, Heinemann Brothers or the Airport Boutique.
In 2000 the shareholder membership was expanded on an international level with the entry of JCDecaux. Today, following various changes in shareholders, Fraport owns 51 percent, JCDecaux 39 percent, and the Ströer Group 10 percent of the shares in Media Frankfurt and over 40 staff, true to the claim “excellence in airport advertising”, launch target-group specific and spectacular advertising installations for customers from all over the world.
For the target group at Europe’s third largest and Germany’s largest airport has long since changed, has become more varied and more world-travelled: if in the Seventies Frankfurt Airport was still mainly the exit point for many holiday trips, today it is a hub for business travellers and international passengers – from Asia, the USA, Russia and Saudi Arabia, for instance. In the record year for passenger numbers of 2019 a total of some 70.6 million travellers were en route at Frankfurt Airport.
As air travel grew, so the airport was constantly expanded. Thus, for example, in 1994 Terminal 2 was added to Terminal 1, and in 2008 Departure Hall C and in 2012 Gate APlus were added to Terminal 1 – extensions which opened space for exciting new marketing formats, with an increasing focus on innovative and emotive digital displays. In 2014, in the outside area of the Airport, today’s “flagship”, the Digital Landmark, was inaugurated – which, at 100 square metres, is the biggest digital display in Media Frankfurt’s advertising portfolio. Not long afterwards, at two hubs in the Departure Area, two further spectacular digital mega screens went into operation, the Digital Business Board and the Digital Deluxe Board.
Today an advertising story can be told at Frankfurt Airport on baggage carousels, glass bridges, DOOH areas, promotion points, the gangways, and many other places, at the security checks, in the hangars, on the feeder roads to the multi-storey carparks, at the entrances to the airline lounges, and at all stages of the customer journey. This journey extends far beyond its base, that of Frankfurt Airport. Marketing collaborations with Hamburg, Stuttgart and Vienna Airports form a far-reaching network, which is becoming ever more efficient and is growing constantly. Recently added was Zurich, with its attractive target groups of the financial and luxury sector. For mobility and departure are Media Frankfurt’s business.
The marketing company’s fiftieth anniversary will be accompanied by various digital campaigns – for digitalisation will play an ever greater role in the portfolio in future. Today 50 percent of advertising space is operated digitally, including such giants as the Digital Deluxe Board at 43 square metres. In 2026 Terminal 3 will then be inaugurated with a portfolio to be controlled entirely electronically. By 2031 Media Frankfurt anticipates a digital share of 80 percent.
But DOOH is only one strong voice in the concert of advertising vehicles at Frankfurt Airport. Even more imposing does the showcasing become when all voices in the whole orchestra play together. “Probably the most innovative campaigns at the airport are the major omni-channel campaigns, which interlock advertising, retail, promotion, online and newsletter at the most effective level, such as the campaign by La Prairie in 2019”, says Martin Korosec, managing director of Media Frankfurt. “Probably only we can offer such a seamless 360-degree campaign, because Fraport participates equally at all relevant touchpoints. You will not find such an intensive and comprehensive advertising platform of this kind in Germany or Europe.”
About Media Frankfurt
Media Frankfurt GmbH is the exclusive marketer of advertising space at Frankfurt Airport. Founded in 1971, the Fraport subsidiary has developed into Germany's market leader and number one advertising platform in the aviation sector. Through the participation of JCDecaux - marketer of over 200 airports worldwide - Media Frankfurt is the innovation hub for Digital Out of Home. More than 2,000 advertising media inside and outside the terminals reach almost 70 million mainly international passengers every year at Europe's third largest hub. Whether analogue, digital, POS and promotion or mobile - Media Frankfurt's omnichannel portfolio enables effective brand staging and cross-media, highly networked campaign management along the customer journey. Further information is available at www.media-frankfurt.de.
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