For advertisers aiming to reach captive audiences, an increasingly popular venue is barber shops and beauty salons, where their messages can be targeted to ethnic males and to women while they socialize and get their hair done.
Ads in barber shops and beauty salons go well beyond traditional signage.
There are all sorts of ad opportunities right at the barber's or beautician's chair, from clings on the mirrors customers use to check out their new do to logos and ads on aprons and elsewhere. Samples can also be handed out.
The new thing is video. With many shops now equipped with TVs and DVD players, entertainment brands will distribute video for trailers and clips for upcoming TV shows and movies.
To find out how to get your client’s message in front of barber shop and beauty salon customers, read on.
This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.
Fast Facts
What
Advertising in barber shops and beauty salons. Salon advertising targets a wide range of women, while barber shop advertising almost exclusively targets African Americans and Hispanics. There's comparatively little advertising in barber shops catering to white males, as an audience already delivered by a range of other media.
Who
A number of vendors around the country offer advertising in barber shops and salons. For this article Media Life spoke with Brand Marketers, Ambient Planet and Alloy Acccess, the multicultural arm of Alloy Media + Marketing, all based in New York.
How it works
The simplest form of advertising in barber shops and beauty salons is static signs, which usually run between 16-by-20 inches and 24-by-36 inches in size. Signs can be placed in just one shop, a handful of shops, shops within a specific market, or shops across the country.
Ads can also be placed on the smocks or aprons used during haircuts and colorings, as well as on the towels used to dry customers' hair. BET has used smocks and towels ads to push the reality series “Next Level: Vince Young” and its annual “BET Hip-Hop Awards” show.
ABC and CBS have promoted “Desperate Housewives” and “The New Adventures of Old Christine” with messages on nail files.
Sampling of hair and skin care products is common at salons, and marketers can look to operators not only to hand out samples but to pitch their benefits, which can be a real plus because they have credibility with their customers.
And of course there's always the opportunity for an oddball promotion, such as a recent one by Dunlop where the tire-maker handed out prizes to customers who had the pattern of a Dunlap tire tread shaved into their hair.
Markets
Advertisers can target barber shops and beauty salons in any market, but the widest opportunities are in shops in the top 10 or 20 DMAs.
Numbers
Numbers vary by market and individual shop, but Alloy estimates that barber shops average 700 customers a month and beauty salons around 500. Men average about a half hour per visit, while women average between two and three hours.
How it is measured
Total impressions can be tracked by customer counts and where there's sampling by a count of samples handed out.
What product categories do well
Hair and beauty products are a natural, but other popular categories include movies, TV shows, footwear, food products, insurance and auto dealers.
Demographics
Marketers can target by ethnicity, such as African-American males and Spanish-speaking Latinos, by gender and by location, within zip codes or even by neighborhood. For example, a restaurant might want to target all salons and shops within a four-mile radius.
Making the buy
Brand Marketers: Lead time is 30 days. For static signs pricing averages $500 per month per shop. The company focuses on the top 10 DMAs.
Ambient Planet: Lead time is four weeks for local campaigns and up to eight weeks for national campaigns. In-store signage runs $250 a month per location.
Alloy Access: Lead time is 30 days and ads are sold in 30-day flights. Pricing for signage is between $300 and $350 per board per month.
Who’s already in parking barber shops and beauty salons
Fox, Paramount, ABC, CBS, Dunlop, BET, Soft & Beautiful, State Farm, Allstate, Telemundo and Vaseline.
What they’re saying
“Some shop owners get into it and help us with branding. The barbers and stylists use word-of-mouth because they’ll have a point of view on it anyway. And it’s not contrived because they’re curious and often times they’re also consumers themselves.” – Tru Pettigrew, president of Alloy Access
Web site info
Brand Marketers
http://www.brandmarketers.com
Ambient Planet
http://www.ambient-planet.com
Alloy Access
http://www.alloy-access.com
