Even The Billboards Are Feeling The Heat

Do you ever think about how much more productive you could be if you didn't have to drive? The average commute time in Tampa Bay is more than 20 minutes. That's nearly an hour each day that would probably be better spent preparing for your big meeting, catching up on the news or planning your weekend.

Unfortunately, until someone invents a teleportation device to eliminate travel time, we are all stuck driving for a good portion of our daily life. With digital outdoor, advertisers are starting to engage audiences by offering them relevant, useful information while they're stuck feeling trapped and unproductive during their time spent driving. Breaking news headlines, sports scores, weekend events, weather forecasts, stock tickers and virtually any other dynamic item can be utilized as part of your design.

Action Air Conditioning creates a much more compelling ad by playing to what people are thinking RIGHT NOW. It's hot, and chances are you can't wait to get home to your air conditioned house. Seeing this billboard makes you think about the poor folks who are in need of the services being advertised, and chances are that if you ever find yourself in such a situation, you'll remember Action Air as a company who feels your pain.

The technology that digital outdoor offers is begging to be utilized in creative new ways by forward-thinking advertisers. What relevant information could you offer to consumers that would make your ad more compelling?

A Discussion with Wildfire Marketing

Wildfire Marketing Group is a Tampa-based marketing and advertising company that specializes in helping smaller companies compete and win against larger companies through a powerful combination of unconventional and traditional marketing techniques. Wildfire has been featured in several publications including Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business and on CNN Money.

Jeremy L Knauff, the CEO of Wildfire, took the time to ask me some questions about digital billboards as part of his website's "Thought Leaders Thursday" feature. You can read the interview here.

Digital Billboard Leads to Recovery of Missing Child

On Monday, I received an email requesting that we use our digital billboards to post photos of fugitive sex offender Robbi Potter, 27, and his associate Candace Watson, 24, who were wanted for the alleged kidnapping of 4 year old Haylee Donathan. Within minutes, we uploaded the photos to our digital billboards, as did several other Clear Channel Outdoor markets nationwide.

Yesterday at approximately 4:30 pm (PST), a tip was received by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, which led to the apprehension of Potter and Watson and the safe recovery of little Haylee. The tipster reportedly saw one of the digital billboards which we posted in partnership with the U.S. Marshals.

The success marks the end of an intense nationwide manhunt over the last several weeks, which has garnered significant national media attention, especially on CNN shows Nancy Grace and Headline News, as well as America’s Most Wanted. Potter and Watson will face extradition back to Ohio to face their charges. Haylee is safely in the custody of the San Diego County Children Services pending further review.

“We are very thankful to our partners in the media, especially CNN, America’s Most Wanted and Clear Channel Communications, for getting the photos and story out nationwide.” said U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott. “Clear Channel was able to quickly put up digital billboards in multiple states across the nation and this ultimately led to the tip that brought a safe ending to this investigation.”

Watch the ABC news report here.

Absolute Transparency

We love new technology, but we don't always completely trust it. Fear of the unknown is a natural human instinct. We buy surge protectors, credit card insurance, and read consumer reports. We take comfort in the security of an extended warranty. It's understandable- we want to make sure that we get what we've paid for.

The benefits of digital outdoor should be enjoyed without the hassle of having to worry about your investment. That's why we've installed webcams on each of our digital billboards. The camera feeds are monitored 24/7 by a team in San Antonio, and a local service technician is deployed at the first sign of a problem. Any problems are corrected within 4 hours, ensuring that down time is kept to a minimum.

Now, we're taking our commitment to service excellence to a new level. All current advertisers will have the opportunity to view the webcams at their leisure. You'll be provided with a username and password that will grant you access for the length of your campaign. This will allow you to to view your ad as soon as it goes up, verify that any creative changes are made correctly, and make sure that your ad is never displayed back-to-back with a competing advertiser.

You can access the login page by clicking on the animated banner ad at the top of the page. It's our way of tearing down the wall between you and your digital campaign, so kick back, relax and enjoy the show!

Combining Internet With Outdoor

Residents of the Tampa Bay area who visit local news website TBO.com this week will see a brilliant red banner ad for an upcoming sale at Macy's. With premium placement on one of Tampa's most popular internet sites, the department store will effectively reach potential shoppers where they live and work. That pretty much covers the bases if you're an advertiser trying to deliver a message, right?

In the late eighties, sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term "The Third Place" to describe the spaces we occupy when we're not at home or work. The amount of time people spend away from home is steadily increasing, making it more important than ever to find a way to reach consumers while they're occupying these third spaces.

Before digital billboards, it was tough for advertisers like Macy's to use out-of-home advertising to promote sales and specials, because of the static nature of the medium. But now, through the use of digital billboards, outdoor campaigns can effectively mimic online banner ads. There are no production charges, so short term buys remain cost effective, and artwork can be changed in less than 24 hours.

But, you don't need to tell that to Macy's. In addition to their internet campaign, they are currently advertising their sale on Clear Channel Outdoor's digital billboards throughout the bay area.

Overcoming the Competition

It's undeniable that we're living in a buyer's market. Virtually everything can be negotiated, and as a salesperson it can be tough to know where to draw the line. The philosophy that unsold ad space is waste, and that we should let the market determine the value of our product is more difficult to dispute than ever. In a bad economy, the tendency is for businesses to take turns lowering their prices in order to gain market share.

There is however, an alternative to this slippery-slope price war. Imagine for a second, that instead of offering their products at a lower price, your competition gave away their products and services for free. Let's face it, with the desperate times we're facing, it might not be all that far-fetched. So, how would you compete if you charged for your products and your competition gave it away?

Think about some of the things people pay for that they could essentially have for free. People buy books, when they could get them from the library. About 1 in 10 people pay for satellite radio, while terrestrial radio costs nothing. I buy music from iTunes when I could get all the music I want for free from file sharing services like Limewire or Bit Torrent. So, what makes us willing to shell out money for things we can obtain for nothing? And how can we adjust the way we do business to create that same kind of value in the minds of our customers?

Looking at the aforementioned industries that have thrived by selling products that are available for free can teach us a lot. People are willing to pay for good service. The easier we can make the consumer's experience with our product, the better. People are willing to pay for a sense of membership. Think about how your relationship with a customer, and their personalized experience with your product can give them a sense of pride and passion about their decision to do business with you. Finally, people are willing to pay for something if you're the only one who offers it. Stop thinking about how you can make your product better, and start thinking about what you have that they don't.

If you assume your competition will start giving their product away for free, you'll minimize the amount of time you spend negotiating rate, and you can start building value for the future. After all, as a billboard I saw recently said, "Interesting thing about recessions: they end."

Newspapers Search for Ways To Stay Relevant

This weekend, I spent some time visiting my parents at their home in a small suburb of Tampa. While I was there, I encountered a form of media that has become almost foreign to me over the past few years: the newspaper. Being a typical twenty-something, I get my news online. In twenty minutes or so, I can visit the St. Pete Times, The Tampa Tribune and The Business Journal, scan the headlines, read the articles that interest me and when I'm finished I have no litter to throw out or recycle.

Flipping through my parents' Sunday paper, I began to think just how antiquated the medium has become. My father even admitted that the only reason they've kept their Sunday subscription is for the retail sales inserts (which are also available online). David Weinfeld recently wrote an article that explores the demise of newspapers, citing that in the first quarter of 2009, ad revenues in the newspaper industry declined by more than $2.6 billion from the previous year. I'm in agreement with David when he says that the newspaper industry will survive in one way or another, either in an alternate form or as a gateway to a deeper media experience.

In order to survive however, newspapers must change. They must seek new formats for their content and new platforms to broadcast from. This is where digital billboard advertising comes in. The Las Vegas Sun is using 18 digital billboards across the city to broadcast their top headlines each day. Rob Curley, a columnist for the Sun, wrote a blog post about the campaign, in which he states, "In the last three months, our traffic has increased by 32 percent on lasvegassun.com. Potential advertisers have also taken notice." By increasing their reach, they're building value for their advertisers, and thus finding new streams of revenue.

These are dark days for print media, but rest assured that forward-thinking publications like the Las Vegas Sun aren't going down without a fight.

Art Exhibit Wrap-Up

Tampa's first Digital Billboard Art Exhibition ended Sunday after two weeks of dazzling commuters with the works of 12 bay area artists. The number of visitors to The Mainframe nearly tripled during the exhibit, as people flocked to our artist profile page to find out more about the paintings and photos displayed on the digital billboards. I received letters and photos (see above) from many of the artists, who were thrilled to have their names up in lights.

Due to this wildly successful first campaign, we are planning to hold future exhibitions based on availability of the billboards. Fall 2009 is our next projected date, and we've already received dozens of submissions that didn't make it into the first run.

Our hope for these campaigns is that the billboards are not a final destination for bay area commuters, but a launching point from which they can dive into the vast and expansive world of talent that resides in Tampa. My thanks goes out to all the artists who participated- I couldn't have asked for a better collection of art to broadcast to the masses.

Want A Remote Control for Digital Billboards?

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that explored the idea of using Apple's iPhone to interact with digital signage. Well, those musings are becoming reality in London's Westfield mall, where visitors will encounter a 57 inch LCD screen which displays objects that can be controlled by touching and tapping the face of their iPhones.

Visitors can zoom in on items, rotate them and select different color variations. The screens launched with an image of a shoe, which users can spin and flip to view from all angles. Wanna see that in blue? Simply select your color of choice and the shoe instantly changes to the desired hue. The interactive shoe program was designed to show advertisers the potential of the screens as a marketing tool.

Russell Townsend, managing director at the digital creative agency Clusta, commented "Digital outdoor is an incredibly innovative medium, and as an industry we are really just scratching the surface of the weird and wonderful ways it can engage.” Roadside digital signage doesn't present the same opportunities for interactivity as pedestrian signage. Nevertheless, the linking of digital billboards to personal devices for passive interaction, such as automatic content delivery, seems like an inevitability at this point.

Rocking Out On Digital Billboards

This was just too cool not to post. Clear Channel, along with some other media companies held a fundraiser last week in Toronto's Dundas Square. Ad agencies and media groups gathered at the Hard Rock Cafe to compete in a Rock Band tournament which was broadcast to digital billboards outside on the street. The live streaming footage of the video game contest was periodically interrupted with a leaderboard, keeping pedestrians and commuters up to date on the current points leader.

"We wanted to show that, as competitors in the digital OOH industry, we can come together to showcase how impactful large-format digital outdoor can be when used boldly and creatively," says Dora Alexander, VP of ad sales at Outdoor Broadcast Network.

Media service company OMD was crowned the winner with their rendition of "Eye of The Tiger," and were awarded a four week digital campaign to donate to the charity of their choice. What a great way to prove the power and impact of digital outdoor to a large group of media planners and buyers. Thanks to Marketing, Canada's leading advertising and marketing magazine, for sharing the photos!

The Survival of The Smartest

This week, Office Depot is launching the "Adopt A Small Business Contest" on digital billboards across the country. The billboards encourage people to visit TheSurvivalOfTheSmartest.com where contest rules are explained in full. Participants must send in a short video explaining the smart things their small business is doing to cope with the current recession. 500 winning small businesses will each be awarded over $2,000 in prizes for sharing their bright ideas.

Additionally, Office Depot is using their new website as a resource center for small business owners. The site includes tools such as marketing tips, sample budget spreadsheets, expert advice and HR training. Virtual hosts Matt and Matt guide visitors through the site's offerings, and they will be hosting informative webisodes which will be broadcast via the website.

I love the way Office Depot is essentially offering a partnership to their customers. They don't want to simply be a supplier of manila folders and scotch tape. They want to help businesses thrive and grow. After all, every bankruptcy filed represents one less customer they can serve in the future. Smart, indeed.