Company:  DDI Media

Markets: Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennesee

Headquarters:  8315 Drury Industrial Parkway, St Louis, MO  63114

Phone: 314-423-5040

DDI media operates a billboard plant in 7 states with more than 1,100 faces.   Insider sees lots of great looking DDI billboards when he visits his son at Washington University St Louis. Vince Miller is the company’s President.  Miller is a 27 year out of home veteran who also serves on the board of directors of the OAAA.

Vince how did DDI get into the out of home business?  

The Drury family used billboards for their hotels.  When they started building hotels in St. Louis they thought the prices were too high so they started developing sites.  They planned to use one face and sell the outbound to another advertiser.  They offered an operator a chance to manage the faces they didn’t need and the operator started playing permitting games on sites they were trying to develop.  The Drury’s got mad and it became personal.  The rest as they say is history.

Talk about your plant.  

We are St. Louis based, bulletin focused and heavily skewed to interstates.  We believe our plant needs to project a positive image for our clients so we spend more than most on structural maintenance, painting and lighting technology. 

Whose digital billboards do you use and what have you learned?   

We have self-developed 19 faces solely utilizing Watchfire.  We started with them and have had so few issues it is tough to want to try someone else until we have issues. 

You’ve got a creative program for recycling your vinyl.   

 We want to keep vinyl from reaching a landfill.  We partner with farmers, landscapers and roofers to repurpose vinyl without displaying the old advertisement.  It’s a win-win. 

Vince you entered the out of home business out of public accounting. Has this been helpful in your career?  

The business foundation provided by my training as a CPA and prior work experience make my job a lot easier because I have a solid grasp of where we are financially in the deals we do.   The only drawback is I may be more conservative than more entrepreneurial operators.   

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