Brendon Cook, CEO of outdoor giant oOh! Media says the print and out-of-home (OOH) industries need to ditch the terms digital and static, offering the terms classic and dynamic as new adjectives for a rapidly evolving market.
According to Cook, using the words static or traditional to describe printed media is synonymous with old or outdated. He says despite industry panic, printed signs are anything but dying.
“If you think of the term traditional in advertising, it implies going out backwards. Certainly there are media sectors where the trajectory is not upwards and onwards, but classic billboards are not one of them,” say Cook.
“Classic implies value and that is how we see out-of-home billboards. They are not going out of fashion. They are here for the long haul – 80 per cent of OOH advertising signs in Australia are of the classic form.”
Cook also says print industry professionals should limit the use of the word digital. The oOh! boss is at the forefront of the print-to-digital switch, and knows the scaremongering effect of over-using the term.
“Because digital is used everywhere, the power of the word is diminished when you are trying to express the excitement and the possibilities of any single part of our lives or our cities that is underpinned by digital technology,” he says.
“Yes, we live in a digital world. We are digital natives. We are part of a digital audience. We leave a digital footprint. Our banking, our entertainment, our media and communications are digital.
One argument for favouring dynamic is the term digital is so synonymous with online, and it is not representing enough of a difference between the digital online and digital OOH.”
[Related: Ooh! soars but print declines]
The digital rebrand, Cook says, is a step global OOH companies and advertisers should take to keep astride a booming industry.
“Dynamic as a concept – not digital – needs to be embraced by advertisers globally. There is not yet a consensus over dynamic like there is about classic, which correctly reflects the quality of an old medium that is still as strong and valuable as it has ever been,” adds Cook.
“For me there is no question. I firmly believe we can pull of dynamic because most of our 6,500 digital screens are dynamic and full-motion screens that inventive creatives will increasingly use in a dynamic fashion.”
The OOH industry has had a booming 2016, with full-year results on track to trump last year’s earnings.
Print – or classic – remains a powerful revenue stream for outdoor companies, however digital revenue is inching closer, now making up 38 per cent of total revenue compared to 25.6 per cent last year.
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