InLinkUK is a high-street digitisation project launched through a collaboration between leading out-of-home media company, Primesight, technology company, Intersection and telecoms giant, BT. The InLinkUK project will see over 1,000 redundant payphone units redeveloped to become digital structures that provide ultrafast public WiFi, telephony services, charging points and tablets to access community services, maps and local information. All these services are free to the public and are funded through digital advertising capabilities built into the units through 55inch HD digital displays providing context-aware, and hyper-relevant campaigns to a local audience. The digital kiosks have been designed to bridge the gap between brands and consumers and revolutionise the way high streets are used.
The first InLinkUK unit went live in Camden in June 2017, and since then the network has expanded to over 350 digital units installed across 18 UK cities, with dozens being converted each month. To date, there have been over 243,000 registered users of the ultrafast WiFi, who collectively have downloaded over 320,000GB of data during 10.5 million WiFi sessions – indicating the popularity of these units in communities.
“We needed accurate and consistent data to support our InLinkUK investment decisions at a local and micro level. The Local Data Company were able to meet this brief and supplied it for our analysis effectively”
Mungo Knott, Director of Insight & Innovation at Primesight
THE CHALLENGE
With thousands of BT payphone locations to choose from across hundreds of markets, Primesight wanted to enhance its approach to prioritising sites by collating multiple data sources as part of a more scientific approach to site analysis and selection.
USING DATA TO MAP HYPER-LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS
Primesight chose the Local Data Company as a partner for this project as their unique data capture methodology results in the most granular, accurate and consistently available insight on the physical retail landscape. InLinkUK needed to prioritise sites based on both commercial activity and footfall in order to select locations with potential for high consumer usage and the best returns for their advertising partners. The Local Data Company was able to map and deliver a variety of insights quickly and efficiently, in a format that allowed InLinkUK to integrate their data with a host of complementary datasets which fed into additional models and outputs.
The first stage of the project was to rank the overall health of all potential cities and markets in order to provide a high-level target list. The Local Data Company used their proprietary Health Index, which assesses and scores key metrics such as the presence of anchor retailers, market churn, catchment demographics and vacancy rates to determine the relative strength and trajectory of each possible city and the suitability for this digitisation programme.
Once they had a target list of 60 markets, they required data at micro pitch level to quantify and map the highest footfall locations in each city. For each BT telephone box within the target markets, the Local Data Company built out a framework that enabled InLink to verify and visualise which potential sites would provide advertising clients with the most impactful and relevant space for campaigns. This was based on a high density of retail units, presence of brands, leisure operators and low vacancy rates, which together allowed Primesight to understand ‘pitch personality’. This information was also used to identify locations that would allow Primesight to have a diverse range of advertising opportunities for a broad range of brands and products. The data and insight provided by the Local Data Company resulted in a more focused and consistent approach, saving both time and money during the initial installation process and providing both a panoramic and granular view of each location. This methodology ensured that installation target lists focused on the most viable locations where they would be valued as both a community service hub and a way for brands to connect with consumers.
As the InLinkUK project continues to be rolled out across other major UK cities, it is essential for them to have a consistent source of data across the entire country. The data that the Local Data Company collects spans over 3,000 retail locations across the UK, resulting in consistent, reliable and comparable data on locations which the InLinkUK team is continuing to use as the project accelerates in both pace and scope.
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