By Nick Coston
Beginning this Sunday, a few thousand advertising and marketing execs, influencers, founders, salespeople and some just looking for new work will camp out either in or out of this year’s POSSIBLE Conference in the sun and fun capital of the world, Miami Beach. The lobby bar at both host hotels, The Fab Fontainebleau and its charming art deco neighbor, the Eden Roc will be buzzing for three straight days, an army of small delivery robots from a host of high-tech companies will be scooting inside the buildings and outside, digital mobile trucks will be put in position on Collins Avenue and or driving up and down the beach route and I have it on good authority that there will be a flying, two-sided digital bulletin in the air over the beach/ocean area. Add in plenty of digital taxi/ride-share digital toppers, wrapped vehicles, maybe some bathroom mirror and floor signage and voila, without a billboard in sight, attendee’s and party crashers alike will get their fill of OOH media.
I know that market well. The closest traditional OOH are some shelters as you get closer to Lincoln Avenue area and maybe some bus sides, but once you leave the highways that reach the beach bridges, there’s not a billboard in site.
No worries! Thanks to some very savvy new tech, we got these conference areas covered. As far as anything old school, there’s still airplane banner ads posting up from south to north over the tip of the beaches and which will stick out better, the 14 x 48 digital sign being hung by a helicopter or the old, Wright Brother’s era prop planes dragging their mesh messages through the air? Lots of happy hour specials advertised to watch for. And if you don’t feel like looking up into the big, beautiful blue beach sky there’s always those hard to miss digital boats chugging back and forth up and down coast.
By plane, by boat, by car, by truck, by bathroom door, we will find you.
I don’t guarantee much in life, but I will guarantee you this: anywhere you go inside and outside both historic venues that OOH will be all around you. You will not be able to avoid us. Charging stations for your phone with digital screens, we got ya. Take a seat in a potty stall, and boom, there’s a static ad inside the john door. Lobby kiosks too, changing copy with event news, where to eat, and some slick ad copy tossed in.
It would be quite a feat to see from the time a person gets close to and then onto one or both venues, how many ads they see in any given hour, or say day part, like a full morning or afternoon. How many impressions if you calculate all this eye-catching OOH would there be on one day, say Tuesday of next week? Between digital, static and mobile OOH products, wow, can anyone calculate a worthy CPM?
Doubtful, but then again who really cares. With the huge pass-along numbers from social media, me included, anything that’s posted, on wheels, flying over the beach or on the side of escalators will be seen for the next year, many times over. Or at least until POSSIBLE #5 rolls along next year.
Speaking of #5, I will guarantee you this my peeps: there will be even newer OOH products in our line of sight that we never even dreamed of.
Think low flying Tinker Bells taking drink orders buzzing around the world-famous Bleu Bar wrapped in old billboard vinyls.
It could be done, you know.
Insider’s Note: Nick Coston has been writing opinion pieces for the OOH industry for 10 years now. His weekly pieces also appear on Substack where you can view the last 2 years worth. Full-time, Nick is the VP, Sales and Sales Strategies for Moving Walls, the Singapore based media and ad tech giant, here in The America’s.
If you are interested, here is Nick’s Substack LINK
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