Carat President William Swayne outlines the key role for out of home in leading the next media revolution. Swayne delivered the keynote address to the 55th annual FEPE International Congress in Stockholm. FEPE International is the only global organisation representing Out of Home media owners, agencies, technology companies and other suppliers.
Out of home advertising can lead the media industry as digital transformation moves from the digitisation of analogue media – “digital as a screen I can go to” – to the reinvention of traditional media – “digital coming to where I already am”.
This process of digitising reality can already be seen in the importance of objects and things, even bricks and mortar in the case of Amazon Go and will lead to the reinvention of TV and radio as well as out of home as all media becomes programmatic.
Out of home will lead the charge as it moves from scale, reach and mass awareness to meaningful reach with the most relevant message targeted at individuals.
Instead of pouring consumers into the top of the “purchase funnel” it will expedite flow around the entire purchase ecosystem with its ability to track consumers.
And it will move from providing cultural resonance to delivering true value to society through its role in enabling “smart cities.”
These are some of the key themes to emerge from this year’s conference.
To achieve this transformation the OOH industry needs to focus on three elements:
Planning – We need to embrace data so we become much smarter, using the range of data streams available, to tell us who our consumers are, what they’re doing, when and how we can reach them.
Buying – We need to embrace automation. We need to play, test and learn with the new developments in digital imagery and prove how OOH can be used reactively, to respond to things we see in real-time.
Execution – We need to leverage the opportunities that are opening up to tap into any data feed and use data in new ways. Capture the person on the way to work through their mobile signal walking past a poster, then re-target them on their lunch break, when they have time to purchase, for example.
I am very optimistic about the future of OOH. If we work together, we can lead the reinvention of not only the OOH sector, but the entire media industry.
