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Brand Activation Conference Recap - Part II - Media Leader Insights

Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics 

Continuing on my last post on the Brand Activation conference last night, here are some session highlights.

For the most part, I’ll be brief.

The first session was called Media Leader’s Insights for Digital Out Of Home Media

The panel was made up of:

The session was moderated by Mark French, General Manager of NBC Everywhere.

All around, this session was good.  As I mentioned before, it had some good commentary, without the usual “this is why we’re not buying” rhetoric.

A few of the more juicy bits:

Tim Hanlon had a little segue on content and I heavily agree with him.  WRT Content:

“as a media operator, you must be a trusted provider of Content. Without this, no one will ascribe value to the advertising”.

As self evident as this may seem, most people miss it when developing their businesses. And when Tim says “no one” he means both none of the advertisers, agencies OR consumers will see value in the advertising if you don’t have something relevant and engaging on the screens.  I’ll tell you this, I don’t find News, Weather or Sports tickers engaging or relevant at all…so will your audience?  I find folks like KidCareTV do this well and develop custom programming that really fits the mold.  If you want more info on this, I wrote a post a long time ago which explains more of my position on this.

Next up came some commentary from Alan Schulman.  Alan made a commentary about how the Digital OOH business has to:

Get out of the impression business

This was quickly echoed by Todd Glick who then also added:

Demographics are out

Basically saying that another form of “buying metric” was needed.  This wasn’t just for DOOH, they lumped a few more mediums in here.

My position is really more of a direct business point.  While I’ve heard both of these positions before and actually heavily agree with them, the fact of the matter is that both Tim and Todd’s employees, who actually do the leg work at their companies, still plan and buy this way (impression and demographic).  While it’s nice to have these discussions at the top, the fact of the matter is that most planners and buyers who Network’s sales guys deal with still get the calls from the guys at the desks of folks like Zenith saying:

I need 24-44 year old females.  Here’s what we’re trying to accomplish….Here’s the campaign objective…

There’s a disconnect between the theory of what upper management and agency leaders want and think should happen and the realities of what their partners and vendors contend with from their employees….the folks who actually spend the money.

Unfortunately, it’s a very difficult proposition for everyone because, while OVAB will be launching their new metric, which is a good step, creating and ascribing value to some form of “rating point” defining the value of an audience/venue/dwell/etc mix of some form has to be adopted by an entire industry of planners/buyers, muchless one agency in order for the “selling” groups in the industry to change tactics.  This really has to be an industry mandate for adoption, led and adopted heavily by the agencies (all agencies) at the plan/buy level, otherwise each Network risks disrupting their sales efforts, impacting the bottom line.  Don’t get me wrong, it will happen, but even Internet ratings are still being batted around so this ain’t an overnight fix.

Next up, Todd was actually quite (refreshingly) open about where Zenith is in their thought process on planning/buying DOOH.  He quite candidly admitted that his staff were still in transition in understanding how the DOOH medium fit into their strategies.  He expected that to start to change within 12-24 months but it was taking time.

Lastly, one of the guys, I forget which one, went on a bit of a rant on how everything in this medium needed “sight, sound and motion”, at which point I started shaking my head.  This is an easy commentary from someone who is used to designing TV and/or interactive but a naive statement if you haven’t worked, lived or breathed in the retail, merchandising or place based game.  NBC’s multi million dollar fubar of CheckoutTV back in the early 90s and CBS’s recent approach to Gamestop takeover or ClearChannel Canada’s Airport projects can show what happens if you don’t understand the venues you operate in.  There are countless examples of this.  I understand what the point he was trying to make was but I’ll shoot right between the eyes on this one and say Good Creative (idea and execution), is what is required for our space, and it may or may not include sound.  I’ve seen some killer static outdoor campaigns with fantastic creative that do a better job than many TV campaigns in getting your attention and driving you with a call to action….just think of what we can do with Digital.  If you can do sound and it’s not disruptive, great but if you think that’s what’s going to make you better in the Digital OOH space, I’d revisit.

A good friend of mine who is a very senior Creative Director at Publicis looks at the lack of sound in some of these spaces as a huge benefit.  Specifically, he said:

I love this [DOOH] medium because I can finally be creative again and break out of what’s “expected” in TV and Internet.  I get to think again.

Anyway…that was just session 1 and some of my thoughts.  I’ll post more later.

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