Tag Archives: Adcentricity

DSE Session 1 – Best Practices in Digital OOH Planning & Presentations

11th Screen | The Interactive Out-of-Home Blog

The panel is the reason I came to this session – Rob Gorrie (Adcentricity), Dan Levi (Zoom Media), Jill Nickerson (Horizon Media), Andrew Miller (Kinetic Group Americas)

(Jeremy Lockhorn (Razorfish) – was not here – kinda a bummer – would have been great to hear from him.)

This session is a mock-RFP session where agencies put out an RFP to networks and then the networks pitch to the agencies. So, this will be interesting to see how they all approach and talk about “Digital” OOH, particularly as it relates to actually bidding/winning some business.

There’s no set-up to what we’re going to here in this session. They just jumped right in. Think a little bit of set-up would help properly frame for the group. At least give us some information from the fictitious RFP.

So, the networks are supposed to pitch to the agencies. Here we go.

Rob’s up first – They start w/ defining objectives (against the funnel), who they’re trying to reach.

They then go into research & data – understand who and how. Try to get insights out of them. Then, look at potential venues based on the target/insights. Then, look at the target markets. Merge those together and you can see the opportunities you have in each market.

OK, this is getting real detailed. Good stuff, but way detailed and Rob is still talking. 25 minutes in and no one else on the panel has said anything. How are they going to get to anyone else?

One thing he notes in his preso and what they think about – mobile and social. So, this is good – they hear the original request for “DOOH” and they’re thinking about other channels, too.

Logical flow, they’re smart about the way they think about things – goal/objective definition & research first.

Now, Mandi Dyner is up from Outcast Network. She gets right into talking about gas station networks (this is what they do but, ugh). Captive audience. Content customization. (Who in the world watches those gas station TV’s? I mean, really? What a thing to lead with.)

Didn’t hear much research here.

Now, Dan from Zoom. Introduces us to the company first. Then, he mentions Neilsen (just like all the others), how their network is measured. Recap of the RFP’s objectives, audience.

Then, their concepts – he makes sure to talk about mobile and social, pretty good emphasis on social.

They use MRI as their primary planning tool.

They focus a lot on creating custom relevant content for each venue/location “network.” They proposed a text-in donation aspect to the content. Then, they proposed showing social content, highly localized – trash-talking Tweets from sports fans and a SM aggregator.

15 minutes to go and the pitches are still going on. When/what/how are we going to hear from the agencies? Will be interesting….

Taking into account the actual pitch, the presentation, and the thinking – Zoom wins on the creative ideas/experiences and Adcentricity wins on research-approached effective solutions.

But here goes the agencies – they’re asking questions to each of the pitchers. It’s a little awkward for the audience – at least it seems that way to me – because the agencies are asking questions of specific people on the panel, they’re all sitting up at a table with each other, and they’re just talking to each other. It’s all directed to the front. Kinda shutting out the audience.

Here’s the thing – there’s a lot of talk about “mass awareness.” This is exactly what I talked about in this post – digital signage is a great mass awareness channel. But what about mass engagement?

Adcentricity got kudos from the agency panel by starting out with so much research.

Nut – interesting approach to a session. Like the idea. Think it could have been structured more effectively – like framing it up front for the audience. At the end, the agencies moved away from asking pointed questions from the networks, they just told the audience what they liked/wished they would have gotten from each of the networks. That was good.

Another nut – measurement is key. The media planners always get involved and they want measurement numbers. Be prepared.

Quote of the session – “If you don’t have compelling content, people aren’t going to look at the screens.” – Andrew Miller (Kinetic Group Americas) Will they anyway? Is there screen blindness?