StopPress turned 10 this year and to help celebrate we spoke to some of the partners that have supported us since day one. Here, oOh!media talks us through the lessons its learnt along the way and import milestones that have made it what it is.
Q&A with Nick Vile, general manager of oOh!media New Zealand.
- What are some of the best lessons you’ve learnt?
Stick to your guns and put yourself in the advertiser’s shoes. Not getting caught up in trying to bring every new initiative to market, but rather slow down and focus on what is really going to add value for advertisers or help to improve the vendor-agency relationship. Advertisers will always be seeking new ways to reach audiences, but it is the undeniable power of Out of Home to engage and inspire, so focusing on our strengths has seen growth in our more evolving medium.
- What are some of your favorite campaigns you’ve implemented since 2009?
This is a tough one, there are many. The best campaigns are always where the medium has been at the forefront of the creative challenge – rather than just an afterthought and a repurposed creative that has run across multiple formats. Recency is a dominant influence on the human mind, so my most favourite campaign is a very recent one…a $3 tap and pay donation campaign that we have executed for Breast Cancer Awareness…super simple on the face of it, but complex to deliver. Those are the best campaigns when a simple idea is bought to life through passion and commitment!
- If you could go back to 2009 and give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?
People matter more than anything. Everyone has a reason for being who they are and as a leader the secret sauce to getting the best of your team is understanding that reason, their why. Also, the result doesn’t matter, it’s how you get the result that matters…but I think I always knew that.
- What trends are you expecting to see with Out of Home media in the next ten years?
With the rise of SVOD and continued fragmentation of media it will get harder and harder for brands to achieve genuine broadcast reach – as arguably the last broadcast channel this will drive further growth for Out of Home. To enable this growth, it is vitally important that Out of Home can genuinely move from selling locations to selling audiences and at the same time make the medium easier to trade. There is a big technology play and a sector unification piece to come together for this to happen. We are working on it so watch this space.
- What did oOh! Look like in 2009?
oOh! NZ didn’t exist – Eyecorp (acquired by oOh! in 2012) held the lion’s share of retail center advertising across NZ with 51 digital panels, we our footprint is now more than six times that in shopping centres alone.
The Adshel offering was 100% static posters off a similar footprint and with a much smaller team back then with just 15 employees, digitization and data have been the big influencers on both businesses over that time… we’ve come a long way with the team now nudging 50 employees
- Last year oOh! acquired Adshel – is this the most impactful moment on the business since then?
Definitely. From a business perspective oOh! and Adshel had spent many years competing against each other for ad spend – one (oOh!) covering the point of purchase and the other (Adshel) owning the journey. It’s now a very powerful proposition being able to deliver an integrated offering to New Zealander advertisers. This proposition appears to be resonating well in market based on the feedback we are receiving, as one of our team members famously coined…like cheese and crackers (it’s my favorite saying for the year).
- Looking into the future, will driverless cars have an impact on out-of-home?
Hopefully not more crashes, humans’ instincts are still far superior to a computer in that regard, but I guess with the investment in AI and machine learning that won’t last forever. I am not close to it so for me it is still a pipe dream but, in the future, when driverless cars are the norm, then I guess initially it will bring more focused eyeballs, the rise of animation as we won’t have to be worried about driver distraction, and a ubiquitous use of audience based targeting aka automated trading.
This story is part of our wider celebration of StopPress’s 10 year anniversary. To check out more, click here.
