Why Out-of-Home Media is showing no signs of slowing down

Apart from being a long term sufferer from anxiety, I like to think I’m also a deep thinker. This can be a not-so-fun trait to possess when you’re isolated and uncertain about the future of your independent business.?

I’m traditionally a print man. As an extremely tactile person, during my years as an art director at a local publishing house, I always appreciated the touch and feel - the smell even - of a magazine on good stock paper.?

The day I successfully met a deadline and the final draft had been sent to the printers, it was time for a stiff drink or two before moving on to the next edition or publication.?

Once I’d recovered from a three-day hangover and the hard copies of the mag were delivered to the office, my hard work always felt tangible.?

But back then, I was an employee. My only responsibilities were flat-planning, ad placing and desktop publishing to the printers. Things have changed.

As a business owner, I find I’m coping with the current situation by focusing my energy on the fundamentals of what works - the bread and butter of my business and purpose - and cutting out all the BS.

While the advertising and marketing industry is magical - and very lucrative when invoices are eventually paid - it’s also very unpredictable and arguably the very first industry to stop trading when the going gets tough for the local economy. The Covid-19 crisis is no exception.?

So, while my media company (I Love MCR) has little or no revenue during this time, instead of worrying when/if we’ll be back up, running and thriving again, I’m trying to think positively and productively.?

I’m thinking about our past and present strengths and what’s important to the business. I’m thinking optimistically about the future of the brand.?

Today, I Love MCR’s most obvious strengths are its massive brand awareness and prolific online presence.?

I Love MCR’s brand awareness can largely be attributed to consistent out-of-home (OOH) campaigns. OOH - a term that encompasses most ads displayed in public - is, and always has been, very important to us at I Love MCR.

I've always loved print but knew it was only a matter of time before the industry went completely digital and print would start to slide away.

Manchester billboard ads are one of the major reasons the I Love MCR brand has resonated with so many residents and visitors and has remained an easily recognisable symbol of the city’s civic pride.?

While I Love MCR continues to optimistically champion a better future for Manchester, it’s important for the business to invest further in out-of-home media partnerships as we strive to deliver the same results for local brands and businesses.

Surprisingly, given that old-school media players like print publishers have been rumbled by the rise of online and social media advertising, OOH media companies are thriving in the modern media market.

OOH advertising is one of the oldest forms of promotion. According to advertising trade magazine Campaign, it makes up 13% of the global ad market, with annual revenues that total the equivalent of ￡32bn (and growing).

TV advert revenue has shrunk from 37% to 29% of the market and print ads from 37% to 11%. So while we already know that internet advertising has the biggest slice (currently 47% of all spend), OOH is the only traditional mass media business that is not losing its share of the pie.?

I’ve been thinking *a lot* about why this is the case.?

OOH has always been a bit of a vanity sale appealing to big egos. Every business owner wants to be seen in a big public space. It’s their way of saying to their peers that they’ve ‘made it’ in Manchester (or wherever they play in the world). It’s the Las Vegas effect.

“This is a brand that’s spending money to be in your face,” says Claire Beale of Campaign magazine. “OOH is a show-off medium: it almost has a peacock’s tail effect.”

OOH avoids context issues, unlike internet advertising, which can place an ad right next to a promotion for penis enlargement pills or, even cruder, a greasy competitor. Avoiding affiliation issues is imperative for a wholesome brand like I Love MCR as well as the many brands and businesses which we interact with on a daily basis.??

Personally, I think the main reason that OOH is showing no signs of slowing down is because it’s always evolving and is making the most of media tools and technology. OOH pioneers are starting to see the digital age as an opportunity rather than a threat, which it clearly is for print and TV advertising.?

The physical billboard canvas is moving quickly away from conventional paper-and-paste billboards which require printed graphics to be rollered on every few weeks to new state-of-the-art digital screens which rotate with different ads every 10 seconds. OOH promotions can now be interactive full motion ads.?

Digital OOH ads appeal to brands and businesses because they can decide when their adverts are shown, whether it’s only on Monday mornings or at weekends.?

The greatest asset of OOH is the intrinsic nature of this type of advertising. The screens can be used as digital notice boards to share updates and important information about the surrounding environment, like in the lobbies of apartments and commercial premises which residents can’t miss.?

OOH and online advertising can work hand-in-hand.?

On the one hand, billboards are special because we view them when we're out and about around other people, making us look up away from our phones. And because many ads are now viewed on small isolating screens in the palm of our hands, a towering billboard on Deansgate seems even more impressive.?

On the other hand, it can be tricky to track how effective OOH ads are in driving traffic to brands, which can be considered a shortfall in an age which is obsessed with stats.

I Love MCR’s online presence is monetised with many different types of digital media by measuring, analysing, and managing different digital marketing strategies by views, impressions and clicks.

As technology ascends and becomes easier to track the performance and present the results of campaigns, it also becomes more quantifiable and transparent - and easier to sell online advertising.

Covid-19 may be causing anxiety for media companies - obviously it's hard to sell advertising when everything’s on lockdown - but broadly speaking the future looks bright.

More and more people are moving to cities. In fact, according to Monocle magazine, 55% of the world's population lives in cities and in the next 25 years it will likely grow to 68%.

As the city of Manchester grows at an eye-watering pace, the I Love MCR digital database is updated and the city centric OOH portfolio grows with more eyeballs.

While I Love MCR is doing everything it can to support the community and the savvy businesses which are adapting during lockdown, I'm confident that, once the lockdown is lifted, the media industry will inevitably be heavily relied upon to remind people that certain businesses are still there.

As long as we do the right things, support the right causes and stick to brand values, we will come out of this stronger than before.?

So when we’re all back up and running and you choose I Love MCR for a video advertising package, why not trim your favourite 10 seconds of your motion image to use as a billboard ad?

And who knows, we might even be able to deliver ad campaigns to even more eyeballs.