Competition Is About The Progress.

Meet our thoughts on the competition, progress, and the role of digital signage advertising in it. Our today's post will cover one particular case of competition on the market of digital out-of-home advertising and how this competition helped two companies to gain some traction and give a boost to their progress. 

Here's the thing: you will never become the best if you do not compete with the best. That sounds so easy, yet it's a long road that you'll have to take before you get to the top. When we talk about digital signage advertising and digital signage strategy in general, we tend to forget that all these technologies popped up because of the huge market competition. 

The advertising market was already full of different kinds of advertising content and forms of out-of-home advertising. That's when the first companies decided to try out the new digital signage advertising networks and take this whole thing to the next level. Today we'll review two well-known companies that steadily boosted their progress and business development because of how they competed with each other for the almost identical target audience. 

Keeping up with the pace of your competitor

Of course, we're talking about the Burger King and McDonald's. Let's face it – their target audiences are almost the same; they love burgers; they love french fries and enjoy eating fast food. 

It's important to understand that when you compete for the same target audience, you've got no time to chill, you're in a constant search of the win over your opponent. 

This resulted in a series of viral competitive advertising campaigns that included digital signage advertising, AR solutions, mobile app campaigns, and media attacks. 

This is where we come to the first and most important reason why competition is essential: while you keep up with your opponent, you keep progressing and developing your business. You do not have time to be lazy or uninventive. Once Burger King stroke with a viral digital signage marketing campaign, McDonald's had to come up with something and keep up the pace.

Competition helps you find solutions to your weaknesses

This is simple: when you're the only major player on the market, and you have no need to compete for your target audience – you're not acknowledging your weaknesses. You enjoy the monopoly and stay focused on why you're the best. 

On the other hand, when you have a very serious opponent on the market, you've got to work on your weaknesses, so he wouldn't be able to use it. 

One of the digital signage marketing campaigns that Burger King had was called the 'Whopper Detour,' and it shocked everyone: the media, the clients, and the competitor himself. 

Burger King knew that one of their key weaknesses is that McDonald's simply has more coverage nationwide, and they have a more physical presence. So the idea of the 'Whopper Detour' was in encouraging BK customers to go to the nearest McDonald's building and get the promo code for a one penni whopper. All their clients had to do was to open the BK app, and the app verified whether you actually visited the place. 

To support their viral campaign, BK used big digital signage with the 'Whopper Detour' promo guidelines near the most famous McDonald's locations.

It worked, and they've made it to the #1 place in Appstore and got more than 1,5 mln downloads within a few days. 

You become more creative when you compete

Whenever BK mentioned McDonald's in another viral campaign they had, McDonald's had to strike back with something creative. When BK noticed that McDonald's utilizes their digital signage and out-of-home advertising quite well, they had to figure out how to turn that in their favor. 

They were doing great with the viral campaigns. McDonald's, on the other hand, simply used the outdoor advertisement effectively without the rush and chase for the virality. 

Then Burger King released the new 'Burn that ad' campaign that added the new AR feature to the BK app. People could now open their phone's camera, point it to the other company's digital outdoor ad. The ad would burn down, and the only thing that was left on the screen was the new ad – the Burger King's one. That also managed to shake the industry a bit. 

This is another proof that whenever you compete – you become more creative and come up with crazy, yet successful solutions. 

Competition makes you invest in new technologies

While competition creates a healthy environment for the growth of both opponents, it also puts a spotlight on new technologies that they use to win the race. 

This way, not only the competitors will find the competition beneficial for their progress, but the industry itself will face technological disruption. This sounds like a win-win situation, doesn't it?

When we talk about this particular competition among the McDonald's and Burger King companies, we can see a lot of unusual technologies popping up from time to time in their race. Digital signage, AR, VR, and new smartphone solutions. While chasing for each other, these two are creating great examples of a technological approach to marketing and viral campaign development. 

Progress is inevitable when the competition is on

The digital signage advertising companies strategy defines the future of outdoor advertisement. While new technologies pop up and bring creative solutions to the competitive markets, major players will always give it a try to leverage the scales in their favor. 

No matter the technologies used, the competition itself will always be necessary for the healthy growth of the company in any industry. While competing with each other, you and your opponent will give an unintentional boost to each other's progress and the consumers will benefit from it as well.