Expanding the Definition of Storytelling – Digital out of Home Media

 Today’s guest is Jeff Atley – One of the co-Founders of ADCENTRICITY, an award winning leader in digital out of home media.  Jeff  is an entrepreneurial business development and marketing specialist with a comprehensive background and experience in marketing, media, entertainment, advertising and mobile marketing. Atley also owned and operated Vibe Marketing Group, a private sales & marketing firm in Toronto, Canada developing brands, international business development agreements, integrated marketing programs and co-operative strategies with several Fortune 500 companies.

QUESTION: Your expertise is in digital out of home media – how do you define that media and what is the current state of the industry?

Digital out-of-home media is made up of LCD screens that have been placed in premium consumer viewing positions inside venues from doctor’s offices to taxi cabs and pharmacies. The screen is controlled by a software system that plays a closed-loop of content. The content on the screen is intended to provide information and/or entertainment that is relevant to the viewers inside the environment. As a medium used for advertising, the opportunity exists to have a highly effective, direct communication with consumers.

There are three main segments of digital out-of-home media which, include:

 Place Based

Screens of varying sizes (avg. 32”-42”) within environments ranging from transit stations, restaurants / bars, office buildings, doctors offices and more.

 Retail

Screens positioned in key locations inside retail environments from grocery store aisles to convenience store check-outs and pharmacies.

Outdoor

Much the same as traditional outdoor billboards; however, are made of medium- to large-format LED screens.

QUESTION: How does a digital out of home media aggregator work? Why would that role be needed?

Aggregation is not a new concept. Newspaper, television and internet advertising have evolved through similar models of aggregation due to the balance of market demand and focused solutions to effectively utilize the media for customized brand initiatives. DOOH is not entirely different except that there are a significant amount of variables that need to be managed professionally with a profound level of knowledge to meet the unique campaign needs. At ADCENTRICITY, we pride ourselves on the ability to deliver effective advertising campaigns to over 100 network partners offering over 200,000 screens and proving 375 million monthly audience in 70 venue types such as, universities, transit, sports arenas, convenience stores, restaurants / bars, gas stations, office buildings, ATMs, grocery stores and more,

QUESTION: How do you describe strategy driven aggregation for DOOH?

Aggregation is ideal for targeting and increasing efficiencies in understanding if DOOH will help accomplish your plan goals. More importantly, the holistic knowledge of aggregators can bring experience and insight across the entire landscape of your media needs as opposed to those of a single venue type. Aggregation can streamline and consolidate three weeks of work into 30 minutes for an initial plan.

The aggregation model allows plan and strategy revisions to occur in seconds, decreasing media waste and staff time, reducing creative, distribution and billing requirements and ultimately creating a more efficient end-to-end ecosystem. An aggregator can ensure that you only plan and buy what you need and want, focusing on the maximum audience that will drive results, which also saves advertisers money – the more targeted you can get, faster, the more impact you get for less. In assessing a 12-network plan and buy, aggregation increases the efficiencies of the process by over 800%, which increases exponentially each time another network is included.

QUESTION: How is digital storytelling different for DOOH than say, broadcast TV or web? How can you make your stories and experience more effective?

Done right, DOOH can have a massive impact in targeting, stopping power, media awareness, consumer influence, recall, sales lift, reach, and relevance. But getting the advertising spots right requires a lot of insight into the many unique characteristics and challenges of this fast-emerging new medium.

So how do we effectively tell a story? With powerful, well-conceived creative that is essential to this medium’s continued growth.

ADCENTRICITY, recently pulled together and released a multimedia reference guide that tapped industry experts, who’ve built up bodies of work and insight, for their thoughts and advice on designing and developing the best solutions for DOOH advertising. What we found is that in many respects, the challenges DOOH presents mirror those of online, going back a decade and more. Just like there were few standards and guidelines for ad banner shapes and formats, causing endless production headaches, DOOH networks are just starting to establish guidelines on ad and screen shapes, resolutions, and file formats.

When it comes to planning the experience, we offer marketers and agencies the following advice:

-          Know your audience. There are 4 key market maker, “audience segments” that I identify and profile – what makes them jump and what keeps them up at night? Initiate independent efforts for each segment.

-          Remember, visuals are the new language. There is little time to drill down into finite descriptions (until it’s required) so make it visual. It’s hard to sell a car with only a picture of the engine – I want to see myself driving that puppy! Paint the picture that can be described by your target audience to their boss during a chance ride down the elevator together, especially with an evolving product offering.

-          Consider how vital communications channels are. Provide engaging content, provoke thought with no bullshit – especially as a 5% contributor to a overall marketing mix.

-          Connect the dots.  “Present what your preach” – the agency and client proposal or pitch must bring forward solution meeting the campaign needs that have an overall concept envelope to support the “hard facts” or “sell”. It also must play double duty that supports your core competencies.

You are collecting a lot of market data and insights on DOOH – how are you doing that and what have you discovered?

As a company, we have perfected the art of data collection because it is our job to make the complex world of digital out-of-home simple, saving marketers enormous amount of time and effort in understanding this entire landscape. A part of our responsibility is to ensure we have accurate and current data across the varied landscape of the media touch points. This means that we also act as an aggregator of data and research.

In addition, through our core product, ADVenue, we’ve essentially aggregated all the necessary information one needs when planning a campaign, from demographics to integrated census information, we make in-depth media understandable down to a granular level.

One of the ways we’ve established ourselves as an authority in the space is with our quarterly market reports.  Essentially, the reports are a collection of assessments based on data and activity we’ve come across by working so closely with research companies, advertisers, agencies and networks. We are also engage frequently in open discussions about the entire media and advertising landscape and where DOOH may intersect with strategies or products. I find this keeps us constantly considering possibilities.

I’m often asked – “what are the three key elements that innovative marketers need to execute a campaign?”

My advice has never waivered.

-          The ability to truly understand by region and venue type, which geographies and venues are a perfect fit for campaign and business objectives, supported by census, association and third party data. 

-          The ability to set priorities for a plan, such as defining tighter targeting on a desired audience or larger reach, including the ability to automatically assign priorities based on a defined budget across tens of thousands of venues.

-          The ability to plan local and buy national. Marketers can now build national plans and buys, DMA by DMA, allowing for different plans in markets, under the same consolidated annual or campaign plan.

 

Do you have a favorite digital story or project you’ve worked on? Why is it your favorite?

One of the campaigns we did recently was with the Heart & Stroke Foundation on an anti-smoking initiative. Working with Agency 59 here in Toronto, various convenience store locations throughout Ontario (Barrie, Kitchener, London, Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Windsor) were chosen to target smokers at the point of purchase. The ad emphasized the harmful effects of smoking. To further enhance the effectiveness of the campaign, POS triggers were used to prompt the ad on the POS screen as cigarettes are purchased – guaranteeing the person purchasing the cigarettes has an opportunity to view the ad during their transaction.

As one of the first trigger ad campaigns we conducted, we were really pleased with the success of it and have already started to see more companies interested in using them.

We also worked with Evian recently on an interesting campaign…

Evian, Danone’s bottled water brand is the latest marketer to join in on an emerging trend of optimizing the digital out-of-home merchandising platform within the in-store environment. Using brilliant digital creative, Evian has broken ground extending the digital reach of this creative right into the consumer’s point-of-purchase. The tagline for the campaign is “Live Young” and the new global creative developed by France’s BETC Euro RSCG is intended to virally reach cosmopolitan 25- to 49-year-olds making $75,000 plus leveraging bloggers, YouTube and Facebook.

Only days after being in the public domain the creative spots have spread like wildfire, with viewings reaching over 2 million.  ADCENTRICITY was enlisted to execute the only additional advertising vehicle being activated, a national initiative to feature the creative on in-store digital out-of-home screens in convenience stores and grocery chains.  Michael Thouin senior brand manager for Danone Waters North America said “It really allows us to get our creative in a place where consumers are making their purchase decisions. This is the first time we’ve done this and we’re really excited about it.”

Breaking News:

Just this past month ADCENTRICITY released the Q2 Digital Out Of Home Market Review, a compilation of market data and insight for agencies and marketers seeking a better understanding of the DOOH advertising sector. Our report showed that financial services dominated the media spend in the sector, followed by automotive and telecom and further showcased that the DOOH sector is still growing, and there are many positive signs for balance of 2010 and beyond. While a torrent of activity in Q1 that suggested 2010 would be a breakthrough year for the still nascent DOOH sector, our report found that activity slowed dramatically and that campaigns that were supposed to start in April got pushed to June, and June campaigns got new start schedules for August. It was a sobering few months for people in all aspects of the sector, and it became clear the only thing that could be predicted with some accuracy beyond a few weeks was volatility. However, DOOH is still growing while many other mediums are contracting. There were (and are) significant bright spots and activity occurring that drive the whole DOOH market. In fact, ADCENTRICITY had its single largest booking quarter on record and both Q3 and Q4 look strong. You can access our full report here:  http://www.adcentricity.com/RESOURCES/q2-digital-ooh-market-review/