Jan
9
Had a fantastic conversation yesterday with a very large “spirits” (alcohol) company. I really like how these guys operate…”Come and swing by for Happy Hour and we’ll chat”. Happy hour consist of free booze, a fully catered event and good people and good fun. Anyway…back to the story:
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 
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[...] has kinda been my mantra about the benefits of Digital OOH for some time now. The medium is efficient (more targeted media [...]