By Nick Coston
I don’t know about you, but I just noticed I have over 41,000 photos hanging around my iCloud. That’s just since 2001 and doesn’t include all the prints, negatives, pre-digital tech, scattered around both my office and on our third floor where we never go save for three times a year.
Interesting thing about all these photos, the 41,000 that I can account for electronically all were shot in from 2001 – current. Just when I entered the OOH media world. A mere coincidence?
I think not.
OOH is THE visual advertising medium. Whether it’s digital, transit, place-based, experiential, static posters, airplane banners, helicopter digital’s, boats, umbrella’s, fortune cookies and just recently I saw napkins with ads, which apparently unbeknown to this media guy, they’ve been around since 2022.
Napkins. Yep, they are a form of OOH media. In fact, I just noticed where they are looking for an SVP of Brand Partnerships. Really. Interested?
“Your ad on a napkin? Wipe away the competition” is their catchy tag line. I’m not making this up.
My point being what do they all our fab OOH products have in common? Easy answer.
They are all visual. Without your eyes, you can’t see them. As the peeps who run all the OOH conferences remind us constantly, “we are a visual medium”.
Heck yea.
Now you know why I have over 41,000, around 80% of which are OOH related, photos tucked away, stored forever and ever. I just can’t help myself.
We are a species that can’t enough of looking at stuff, especially other people. That’s why of these 41,000 pics of mine, guessing that 75% are of people, mostly OOH people. The rest are billboards, our pets our kiddies and my yard
So, I did a little test. I went in back in time to 2022, post-Covid era, going through all my OOH conference pics to date. And you know what?
Since 2022, more than 40% of those smiling and some not so smiley faces are no longer in the same job. In fact, some are retired, some are out of the industry and sadly, a few are goners. Morte. Six feet under. Nar’ to be seen again.
Any who, regardless of where they are now, one thing is for certain. If you feel the urge to snap a pic of your colleagues either at a show, at the office, in an Uber, or on the street, one thing I recommend you consider:
Do it now. Don’t put it off. A week later that person may be onto other things, or like me, get hit by a car, then you would have blown your chance for both yourself and the people in the photo. Photo’s make people feel good; it’s one way we say thank you for spending even an ounce of your time with any of us.
With digital tech, photos are timeless, they will never go away.
I cherish every OOH related photo I’ve shot, be it a billboard on Interstate 95 on approach into Baltimore, a digital screen in the window of an Asian Restaurant on 7th Ave in NYC or throwing back shots with colleagues at Casadonna on the water in Miami. They all have juicy back stories that if you don’t snap that shot, you’ll never record it, and you may never see it again
Like the famous line goes, don’t throw away your shot. Take it.
Then take ten more. You won’t regret it.
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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