It’s time to start shouting about the Outdoor Media Centre
Mike Baker, CEO at the Outdoor Media Centre, says the trade body’s recent relaunch has happened just in time for the Olympic Games: “Outdoor will be the universal branding medium. It is already now. But even more so in 2012″…
On 25 January, we rebranded what was the Outdoor Advertising Association and relaunched it as the Outdoor Media Centre. An evolutionary rather than revolutionary change, although we did also consider more radical naming options in the Thinkbox mould.
Some 115 industry contacts attended our launch event – outdoor media companies and specialists, predictably, but also the great and the good from 20 agencies as well as from the IPA, AA and ISBA. Quite a turnout.
Does it feel any different? Well, my colleagues and I are all a few pounds poorer, having contributed a pound into the swearbox every time we get the company name wrong in answering the phone. But that will pass, I’m sure. At least we have given ourselves a clearer direction – to be a resource centre for all things outdoor media, and specifically for agency media planners looking for something to swing the argument in favour of the outdoor medium.
From a standing start we have assembled 17 videos, almost 1000 photos, and some 30 recent case studies, all of which now sit on the site. There are charts and stats and research galore, as well as category argument and advertiser listings germane to 10 different business sectors. More will follow.
From day one I am happy to report we have had satisfied customers, which is heartening – people who have gone in, poked around, and actually lifted something useful from the site. And bothered to tell us about it too, which is massive. Obviously we’ll monitor usage in the usual way via Google analytics, so we’ll know page traffic and unique visitors. But there’s no substitute for anecdotal word of mouth evidence.
Right now our whole identity still feels a bit like a secret (as it had to be for a couple of months leading up to launch), but we need to start yelling it from the rooftops. Generating awareness and usage, and creating a feedback loop, is what will take us forward.
The other really positive thing about assembling material was how the industry supported us, for which I am hugely grateful. Agency bigwigs did not need to be asked twice, and chimed in with fantastically supportive videos. Media owners dug out cases, photos and success stories in abundance.
Specialists shared some of their most compelling presentations, and agencies – and I will single out UM and Mediacom for special praise – submitted their own outdoor testimonials in our new template. Even clients, in the shape of Aviva, responded to the clarion call and wrote their own case, bless them, based on actual usage of outdoor in a live campaign. The whole programme has felt really collegiate, and all the better for it.
If I was a fan of the zodiac, I’d be looking heavenwards for whatever favourable planetary alignment has made this possible. Or perhaps the new year of the Rabbit has got us off to a prolific start.
It is early days, of course, and the hard work lies in front of us. But as Jeremy Male, the Outdoor Media Centre chairman, said at our launch party, there are a couple of special reasons why Outdoor should continue to grow.
One being new audience data across multiple outdoor formats, which will be with us later this year. And the other is the special focus on the Olympic Games, as the London Games sponsors already start to make their outdoor media selection by midyear 2011 – a full 12 months ahead of the Games.
And as I have said elsewhere, Outdoor will enjoy as special place as the visual connector, the lingua franca of the Games for the UK visitors, but especially for the hundreds of thousands of overseas visitors who will come to our shores and consume no other media.Outdoor will be the universal branding medium. It is already now. But even more so in 2012.