Company of the Day: Look Billboards

Company: Look Billboards

Market:  Southern Oklahoma

Headquarters: 1500 W. Broadway, Ardmore, Oklahoma

Phone: 580-226-0222

LOOK Billboards operates 100+ traditional faces and 5 digital rotary-networked billboards in the following Oklahoma markets: Ardmore, Atoka, Caddo, Durant, Healdton-Wilson, Lone Grove, Madill, Springer and Sulphur-Davis. Most of the billboards are 12 by 24.  Chris Cowlbeck is the General Manager.  Charlie Clowe handles Financie and Accounting.  The company is a member of the OAAA.  In addition to running Look Billboards, Cowlbeck is also the General Manager IBOUSA.

Chris, how did you get into the outdoor advertising business?

Our main family business started over 47 years ago now with my mother founding our real estate company in Ardmore. We had terrific response to our yard signs, and had one hand painted 12 x 24 bulletin beside our office (now a location of one of our digitals), which we knew worked well.  A grade school friend of mine and now business partner, Charlie Clowe, attempted to get the local tourism effort to build some billboards to generate revenue to promote the city, and when we couldn’t build enough interest, we said heck, let’s do it ourselves.

What’s it like to operate in a rural market?

It can be both rewarding and frustrating at the same time.  Ardmore is a trade center for about 5 counties on Interstate 35 and was ranked one of the nation’s most affordable places to live a few years back.  That really sounds great until you figure that it’s very difficult to raise rates.  Being in the oil patch hasn’t helped buffer this, so we developed some unique ways of selling that includes becoming a good marketing consultant for our advertisers who can’t afford it.Another challenge is the increasing number of locations owned by the native American tribes that are not required to get permits.  Winstar Casino is now the world’s largest and just a few miles from us.  They have helped the community in general, but it has impacted our expansion efforts.

You’re a big fan of the Apparatix out of home management software.  What does it do for your business?

Apparatix has been a tremendous time saver for us and it has freed up a ton of time for me to help run the IBOUSA.  We can access all our information whether at home, at the ranch, on the road or at the office.  We don’t miss billing anymore as all our contracts evolve directly from avails and the proposals we send electronically.  We don’t need paper files anymore and their support-first business model is not only unique, but effective.  We have adopted their core engine for our IBO Cooperative Marketing Platform where we can now manage avails in real time for our participants and are able to do some nice regional buys.  Their digital scheduler allows me to execute our unique rotary network win easily 1/10th the time and has opened up day parting and RTD capabiliies.   Our operators give us tons of ideas and they are terrific at listening to their customers.  Who wouldn’t be a big fan?

Whose digital signs do you use and what have you learned?
We currently have Watchfire signs, but we have many fine manufacturers in our IBOUSA Fusion program that allows us to use our Apparatix-based workflow to use any manufacturer and tie to IBO Digital Marketplace with several DSPs connecting soon.  I have learned that this flexibility can open up expansion by allowing us to buy other plants that may have different manufacturers and operate them on one platform without any change to our daily workflow.

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