Il canale più dolce
James Whitmore, managing director at Postar, gives an insight from the FEPE International congress and talks about the old conundrum of short-term return versus long-term effect…
While you have been sloshing around in your wellies feeling sick, miserable and depressed, I have been poncing about in Milan, soaking up the sun and admiring the views.
The occasion was the 53rd Congress of the Federation European Publicité Exterieur or FEPE. In fact it is now “FEPE International”, as it has expanded to promote the outdoor medium in a great many markets around the world.
The overall conclusion is that the outlook for the sector is exceedingly perky. The opportunity is there. The question is how to make the most of it.
The theme of the conference was the medium’s place in a global, connected and converged world. The challenge, as one speaker put it, is that the “interconnected communication ecosystem creates a redefinition of effectiveness and value”. There is some thinking to be done.
A popular thesis is that there will only be two media – screen-based and out-of-home. And much of the latter will itself be presented on screens.
There are signs that in line with this, the advertising community is already placing its bets. The growth in global revenues for out-of-home outpace all media other than the internet.
The dichotomy appears to be this; how to balance the new opportunities that have the potential to make outdoor a “return path” medium with the traditional and increasingly rare power to build brands through mass communication. Is it one or the other, or do you enter two races and aim to win both?
Many speakers were certain that the world of interactive outdoor is with us. It is the future that must be grasped now and grasped very firmly indeed. There are many manifestations. You can interrelate on a one-to-one basis through NFC and other technologies.
This enables a direct response, ranging from playing a game to picking up a coupon on your phone. You can even do your weekly shop by zapping the items on the poster display that you wish to buy in the knowledge that they will be delivered to your home at a later date. And so on.
While awareness and usage of the technology remains quite low, it is evident that these interactions do lead to a deeper level of engagement for the consumer. There is also a mounting body of evidence that out-of-home directly stimulates social media traffic.
The key to all this is the smart phone and it is hard to argue against the idea that increasing levels of penetration coupled with a growth in the users’ ability to understand and optimise the technology will take us to a place far ahead of where we are today.
Even without the smart phone, advertising sites are able to employ technology such as face and eye recognition that can count the number of viewers or determine which copy should be displayed. It is already feasible to set up a pay-per-eyeballs deal for an outdoor ad.
In time, a combination of the various technologies will evolve to allow the display of live, bespoke copy and the real-time optimisation and trading of campaigns.
Others argued that the phone and other interconnectors are solely concerned with transactions and search. This could limit the value of the medium. Indeed it might be commercially unwise to head down a path of pay-per-click or cost-per-view. Transactions do not build long-term brand equity.
Public communication has a distinct advantage over one-to-one contact, in that it when it is done well it creates enhanced value for a brand that is long lasting and defensible. This point is not lost on Google and Apple, both of whom invest large sums building their brands using out-of-home media.
This school would employ technology to ensure that brand exposure was at its optimum. In Germany they are testing a network that displays the same copy at exactly the same time on every digital screen. In effect this would be a new free-to-air TV channel, albeit one without sound.
It is the old conundrum of short-term return versus long-term effect. The former pays out lots of small coins; the latter offers a few big notes. The congress recognised both opportunities and was quite satisfied to have more than one string to its bow.