In the lead up to the event, I’ve had the chance to speak to my co-panelists and, as you can imagine, we all had different points of view on where we are organizationally (as an industry), how our models differ from that of OOH. What has changed and how technological advancements will change the space now, and five, ten years from now.

It’s interesting to me that in 2011 we’re taking such a hard look at organization and structure in DOOH. Perhaps that speaks to the robustness of platform offerings or that different technologies really are starting to coalesce in such a way that could be tricky if we’re not careful. If the sheer volume of the product offerings in the social space (most of which can be integrated with your average DOOH platform) is any indication of where we are going, then tackling all the nagging misconceptions out there about buying and planning for DOOH will be even more challenging.

It’s a tough spot to be in when the same “spot” is chock full of unbelievable innovation. At the same time, it’s a place where a lot of confusion and complacency on both the supply and demand side exists. With all these technological innovations and the varying market needs they meet, it’s simply impossible to fit DOOH into the old model of buying and planning. DOOH gets to a level of targeting sophistication that requires extra steps and work from a planning point of view.

So until we also reach some kind of happy medium (hey, maybe we’ll get it sorted during the panel) this just begs for further discussion…like what kind of model are we talking about anyway?

Stay tuned….

On his post here: http://www.millwardbrown.com/Global/Blog/Post/2011-02-07/Can-you-really-tell-sheep-from-shepherds-online.aspx he explores and questions what is really meaningful to measure in online/social marketing/media when 90% of the people out there don’t really participate and are more “sheep” than “shepherds”.

He uses a quote I got a kick out of:

If we’re really going to advance this field, we need to figure out how to identify not just influential people, but also influenceable people. We need not just shepherds, but sheep.

Which I completely concur with as it applies to DOOH.

He then asks a question I would also agree with and we at ADCENTRICITY ask all of the time about assembling and extending some of the digital programs into a broader reach to influence consumers in real locations…especially if those locations happen to harbor Digital OOH:

To what degree is what we observe online in any way representative of the important influences on an individual’s behavior? My suspicion is that all too often we end up measuring the tip of the iceberg and our actions are informed by what is measurable, not by what’s truly important.

Why we at ADCENTRICITY get a lot of enjoyment from the creative uses of the Digital OOH medium is that we are not an amorphous entity that can’t be observed and many times the results are directly tied to influenceable consumers who perform real actions, knowingly or unknowingly – many times directly tied to sale of product.

Not only were they one of the first this year to really shake off the economic doldrums (let’s just say the first half of 2009 is one I think the whole ad biz would like to forget) but they decided to innovate and press forward in a very competitive field which I have to give a hats off to.

ADCENTRICITY is very proud to be working with both MPG Canada and Evian/Danone on this one but Marketing Mag got the jump on us and dropped it in market before we could thump our chests

The folks at Danone/MPG jumped in to the hyper-competitive “eau” (read: water) market and are driving Evian to the throne it originally had as one of the best and the original in the glacier/spring water market

What I find terrific and am looking forward to perfecting with the team at MPG is that Digital OOH was one of the very very few mediums (Internet and DOOH) they decided to action when taking their global campaign to market locally in the Canadian market. It takes a lot to innovate in tough years and we need more folks like Danone and MPG Canada around to foster great results for our clients over a sustained period.

Taken from Marketing Mag’s article by Matt after EXPLICITLY noting that NO TV would be used:

However, the creative, which was developed by France’s BETC Euro RSCG, will be shown on LCD screens in Mac’s convenience and independent grocery stores across Canada.

“It really allows us to get our creative in a place where consumers are making their purchase decisions,” said Thouin. “This is the first time we’ve done this and we’re really excited about it.”

The Toronto office of digital out-of-home firm Adcentricity, along with media firm MPG Canada, helped to arrange and execute Evian’s in-store plan.

Kudos to all involved and we’re really excited about it too Michael!

One of the videos can be seen here

I’ve had this conversation with many after recent announcements have come out on the mobile marketing front. I’m very cautious when talking about mobile and where it will go and how we need to be cautious in its introduction into the culture and execution of digital OOH’s success.

Case in point? Look at the Internet.  While Internet advertising has grown by leaps and bounds and makes lots of people very rich, the fact of the matter is, because it went to a “success is a click-through” model (aka direct response) as fast as it did, it leaves 100s of millions of dollars on the table as click throughs rarely actually lead to the execution of a “sale” that is trackable.  As today’s Ad Age article from Hernan Lopez details on a statement from Randall Rothenberg:

Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has called for a “creative renaissance” on the internet, which he said has been “an unthinking hostage to a direct-marketing culture and tradition that devalues creativity and its long-term effect on brands.”

While I’m a big proponent of Mobile in digital OOH -warning: registration required- (actually I’m a proponent of its use in many places with the right solution and thought process behind it), I’m very hard on the idea that it be used for any form of true “measurement” in the space.  This is for a couple of reasons:

1.    It takes the all of the onus off the need for a quality product and brand strategy around the product and puts it on the digital OOH medium.
2.    It takes all of the onus off of creative agencies to understand how to use our medium and execute quality creative strategies that attracts consumers in the first place
3.    Calls to action and value to the consumer are typically terribly weak even when #1 and #2 ARE addressed, further putting the onus on digital OOH to perform better for potentially crappy products with bad creative AND add no value to the consumer experience
4.    I’ve already seen this happen in the Internet ad business who decided to move to click based measurement ALONE and they never got out of that funk and it is now affecting their ability to be considered anything but “DR”

Don’t get me wrong.  Mobile can be used as an INDICATOR of success, it’s just that it should never be considered the SOLE test of a digital OOH’s campaign’s success if we value long term growth of a successful new medium. i.e. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

ADCENTRICITY, was actually founded on many of Erwin Ephron’s theories and comments – hence our approach towards Path-2-Purchase and Point-of-Purchase based continuity programs and strategies.  Erwin is considered the founder of recency theory who, as Hernan stated in the article in answering an advertising paradox:

Consumers act on ads for products they’re ready to buy and ignore the rest. That called for a shift in scheduling, from flighting to continuity; being off the air was “like being off the shelf.

Basically, you never know when someone is going to be ready to buy your new tube of toothpaste so you have to have continued, targeted advertising in order to best support ongoing sales and profits as consumers become more receptive as they become more prepared to make a purchase.  In the digital OOH world, this also means that if a consumer is not ready to buy a product and the call to action is weak then they definitely won’t engage with you via mobile, further downward skewing mobile measurement.

I especially liked one of Hernan’s supporting comments on this front:

Advertising can work in subtle ways. It can boost profitability, even for large brands in developed markets, which are normally sluggish and rarely see sustained sales increases. Advertising is not as weak as it seems, just difficult to measure.

Unfortunately, in today’s world to many, something that’s difficult to measure, is too difficult to sell to the new CMO…the CFO – the guy who is willing to pay for something he can see today – not down the road.

Fortunately, there are studies like those referenced in the article from comScore, that are showing display ads online (not clicked) with real world purchases.

We as an industry are not quite there yet.  Much more research has yet to be done on this front to prove this type of behavior, although we’re already seeing these forms of results.  What I will say, however, is don’t be so quick to abandon all of the other forms of success measurement (3rd party brand/recall based studies, sales lift, campaign activity lift, etc, and most importantly CASE STUDIES) in favor of a medium measurement solution that could significantly harm your agency or network efforts going forward.

Mobile will be a very important part of our medium going forward and help shepherd in an era of consumer behavioral grooming and brand loyalty and connectedness, you just have to know how to use it and when in order to effect the results – both short and long term – that you want.

Last point that Hernan referenced in his article was one on the creative front to make ads in mediums work for you best.  I wanted to address these in lieu of my earlier comments on creative and strategy in the medium:

1.    They are entertaining and amusing;
2.    They are visual rather than verbal; and
3.    They say something important and meaningful about the brand being advertised

More recently, he added the expression “rational arguments enclosed in emotional envelopes”

Choose your mobile strategy wisely!

If I were to take three things away from the show and my chats with various stakeholders this time around I’d say they were:

•    Improved understanding
•    Increased activity
•    Varied maturity

Improved Understanding

There was a dramatic increase by the networks on how to present themselves and discuss business in ways that were much more aligned with brand needs.  In the same light, unlike last year where one mid-tier agency media supervisor said to me…

“I’m more confused now than I was when I walked in!”

…this year saw many more light bulbs going off and a general sense of more comfort.

This is a direct result of some intense and aggressive education and evangelism (not sales efforts) put in place by a number of networks and partners in the field and can also be attributed to the results of various campaigns run by select agencies and brands over 2008 that have helped to clarify where this new medium fits.  Because of the hybrid below/above the line nature of the digital OOH medium, it’s taken some time to get a sense of how this “stuff” works while at the same time, trying to push it into one box or the other and make it look like something that folks are used to buying.  While the medium is not there yet, definitive strides have been made since last year.

Increased Activity

Folks at this year’s show had a lot more to talk about in terms of results, case studies and clients – which in no small part is based on “Improved Understanding”.  Some bigger accounts are now in play in digital OOH – especially those organizations that are looking to expand and “test” in new mediums.

While Q1 of 2009 has not been a very positive time for ANY media owner, it’s quite obvious that there is a newfound like and ‘need’ for mediums like digital OOH.  Many I spoke to were quite impressed at the volume of activity they were “about” to have to deal with once brands started to release budgets (which, I can tell you, has started to happen since the show ended).

Varied Adoption Maturity

The most striking thing to notice was the disparity between agency groups about maturity, adoption and utilization of the medium – almost by holding company.

If you were to look at an adoption Bell curve, we’re definitely still in that first 12-13 percent of early adopters.

Some agencies have decided to make this a staple of their offerings and force brands to evaluate the medium and understand it across 50+ networks and opportunities and are approaching it much more as a strategic audience opportunity supporting existing targeting programs and embedding it deeper into their planning strategy.

Others have taken a very narrow approach and are still buying venue category by venue category, cherry picking what they understand today and limiting their exposure to smaller segments of the entire digital OOH landscape.

This isn’t to be unexpected.  There will always be early adopters and trailers in any medium.  I’ve seen this happen in both Internet advertising and Mobile marketing over the last 13 years and it always takes time but those on the leading edge of the adoption curve are definitely learning fast and holistically ‘today’ about the landscape and how it benefits their brands.  It will stand them in good stead next year and beyond for client results.

More evangelism and education, especially based on case studies and specific results by category, like the Samsung projects we’ve been a part of, really open some eyes and move mountains in short periods of time.  The results of some major segment based campaigns this year will help in increasing overall adoption.

I’m very much looking forward to the show next year and how much further we all will have come.  Thank you again to the MediaPost crew and let’s all have a great three quarter year!

We started looking at Facebook about 8 months ago as an opportunity to have a single place – or launchpad – to keep everything up to date.  It turns out it’s just about perfect.  From general info, connections, events, case studies, research, campaign videos, event photos, etc…it manages it all and allows everyone to tune their settings about how much they want to hear about – and more importantly – what they want to say back to us.

It turns out that about 50% of who we do business with is on Facebook anyway, so it made the decision fairly easy.

You can catch us HERE.  We’ll be paying a lot of attention to this side of our business.  It’s nice to have a single place to do it all.  If you have questions or comments, post them in the forums or on the Wall at facebook – although you can always respond here on this blog as well.

Conversations were had with a whole bunch of folks ranging from heads of brands down to heads of procurement.  The head of media procurement actually quite likes our little Digital OOH space. He’s encouraged by the possibilities it offers and is looking to explore much deeper in 2010.  In the mean time, he thought that experimentation for this year may be worth the investment.  He also relayed that this year is all about demonstrable efficiencies.

His company is going to be taking a long look at all of their media plans and buys to understand exactly what they get out of each medium. “Same plan as last year” is definitely not in their vocabulary.  It’s likely going to be a long year of answering very tough questions for those doing the plans and buys as each decision gets scrutinized.

“Efficiency” came up in the conversation a couple of times in the 10 minutes we chatted.  Message received.  Demonstrate your efficiencies chums!

Efficiency does not, however, mean cheap.  For anyone who just looks at a CPM price without understanding what they’re getting in return, stop it. For anyone thinking they need to cut rates, stop it.

Efficiency isn’t just the measure of your audience.  It’s a measure of the return the company gets for using you.  This one is a little more subjective as it relies on campaign objectives, which can be very loose sometimes, but if the objective is to drive consumers to a web site and you can demonstrate that you lifted or can lift traffic by “9%” over what they’re currently doing, you’ve got a winner.

We recently ran a program for a large bank and the client was extremely impressed that, all things being the same, adding in DOOH created a noticeable spike in traffic and requests for more info….exact numbers are coming soon.

Digital OOH is about as efficient as you can get.  The value just based on audience numbers for the price is quite something…you can get your message in front of a ton of people.  But what’s coming to light based on a lot of case studies is the value based on the response rates and impact that our medium is generating.

And folks are starting to notice it agency side too:

When we ran the Obama campaign, the lead at the agency came back to us and noted that, of all the media he had bought for that portion of the campaign, Digital OOH was by FAR the most efficient part of his spend.

Same thing from the Federal political campaign in Canada.  The A.D. at the agency mentioned “we’re getting a huge boost out of this Digital stuff…

The point of all this is, if you’re speaking to others about the medium, make reference to this “efficiency” thing.  We as a medium definitely have it.  Learn how to demonstrate it and you’ll likely have an audience or at least more of an ear with those whose attention you crave. It may sound obvious but….

And I need to figure out how to get to happy hour more often

From Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP (which owns an enormous amount of the agencies you know, if you weren’t aware):

“We don’t believe, given the pace of activity in digital and online, that our existing businesses can move fast enough….”

After today’s rumours of a 10% head rolling at WPP across the board, it will be interesting to see who pays attention at his companies…especially with the rank and file.

Martin has been trying to steer his agencies this way for a while but “les traditionelle” (the old guard) and the culture his companies are built on have stymied his efforts to “get there faster”.

Read this article…for anyone in the digital business – any digital business – Internet, mobile or DOOH, it’s almost scary…(teach me how to upload a video????)….but it will give you a great idea as to why it takes so long for new mediums like ours to get adopted – if your leaders don’t even understand the problem……

For you brands out there reading this, you’ll get a (cultural) idea as to why you don’t hear about new “stuff” and opportunities earlier (no true top down understanding of the very very quick shifts we all have to deal with with consumers) but you should also know that you need to know this stuff too…if you’re ignoring the new mediums, you’ve got a mid-term crisis coming for the growth of your brands.  What’s the definition of insanity?

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result

Sound like the media business?

Martin isn’t alone.  Aegis is really the only one I’ve seen from the outside that culturally embraces (or is trying) the new media triad.  There’s not a lot of full blown understanding out there about any of this “new” but man is it screwing with the “old”.

There are a lot of reasons for this situation but, needless to say, the buyer at the agency was a little lost in where to spend the money (Internet just wasn’t relevant enough to reallocate it all there).  Two of his major tools were taken away and the client never did print.  The client had some other issues that run deeper but for the economic situation and this particular product, they just felt TV was no longer something that was relevant for their brand.  Apparently they decided to react quite strongly to this new revelation, much to the agency’s chagrin.

If the old media triad is TV + Radio + Print, the new (and VERY different) triad is Internet + Mobile + Digital OOH.  Stephen Randall over at Locamoda has a great presentation that speaks to this quite well if I remember correctly.  Success in anything is always about relevance and, as the “media” keeps telling us, consumers are not finding TV, Radio or Print media as relevant to them as it used to be – not even close.

Network TV isn’t going away any time soon (ever) but it’s not that hard to understand why certain brands/products are getting antsy about continuing to use a medium that doesn’t come with the measurability of other, newer mediums, is the most expensive product on the market and is losing audience at an astounding rate without the reflection showing up in pricing at the same pace. Wayne Friedman over at Mediapost just wrote an article highlighting this when he says:

In just the last two years, 25% of network TV’s prime-time viewers have departed, and, odds are, they aren’t coming back. At the same time TV program costs have skyrocketed.

Wonder why NBC is going with Leno every day at 10 p.m.?

…

New TV estimates say prime time will see a major contraction in advertising dollars — some 7% to 8% overall — this year. At last year’s $9.2 billion dollar upfront broadcast prime-time level, that could come to a disappearance of some $732 million dollars.

Wayne’s article can be found here

There’s another great article highlighting issues in TV, declining audience and TV loss of identity by Frank Maggio here that is a great read. Frank sums it up well when he says:

Beyond the abysmal state (and credibility) of its accounting and metrics, any honest student of media must acknowledge that TV is losing audience to the Internet — the one televisual medium that provides searchable choice, intuitive transactional functionality, and perhaps most importantly, the ability for the dispersed audience to be heard, at least a little bit.

Do keep in mind that most people in the media and creative business hardly know what Digital OOH is, so I wouldn’t fret too much that he focuses in on Internet – we’re close behind and a part of the same winning formula

Interestingly, a week later, another client from a different agency did the exact same thing – a severe change in their ’09 plans resulting in a decrease in broadcast media.

Hmm.  If this is a pattern I’m starting to see, it’s one I like. When I was at the ANA show in Orlando in October, one of the very forceful commentaries from ALL of the CMOs who spoke was that they need to be doing different things and for agencies to stop bringing them “TV” as the only solution.  Apparently we found 2 of them that decided to take things into their own hands.

While pundits continue to cry “woe is me”, folks like my VP Graeme’s opinion and mine are of a cautiously optimistic and even quite excited about what we’re starting to see play out in the media landscape.  There’s gold in them hills, you just need to know where to look.

I believe there’s an enormous amount of good things going to happen over the next few years.  Much of the “bad” that is happening right now really is accelerating adoption of the Digital OOH medium, amongst others.  We’ve seen some fabulous opportunities come in at the expense of the broadcast business and I expect this to continue with innovative brands and agencies, although some will retreat back into what they know.

Rob Gorrie, President and Founder of ADCENTRICITY, Gives 2009 Digital Out of Home Predictions

Starting this month we’re going to be periodically interviewing digital media executives on news, products and trends. We’re happy to kick-off this series with Rob Gorrie, President and Founder of Adcentricity, giving us his 2009 Digital Out of Home predictions.

Mr. Blue Sky’s Entertainment News & Notes will also continue to run the latest news on the intersection of media, entertainment and technology.

And, now onto Rob.

MBS: What was like for the Digital Out of Home (OOH) industry in 08?

RG: 2009 will also be a year of migrating from the “after-market” effect of Digital OOH being a simple tactical “buy” to something in 2010 that will exist as a consideration for planning for the following year.  2011 will be the ultimate year for a more mature, planned approach to Digital OOH but innovative brands and agencies will be looking at it hard for 2010, using 2009 as a great, in-depth growth and learning period.