On last week’s Bell Board Podcast out of home sales expert Kevin Gephart said this about selling short term versus long term out of home contracts.

I wrote an article about that, and I got an email from someone well-known in the business who said, “Kevin, I agree with you on 90% of your stuff, but you’re dead wrong on avoiding short-term deals.” I pushed back: ask the advertiser who wants to be up for four weeks how many other weeks this year they want business. The creative should be short-term — really, it should change minute by minute, hour by hour, because that’s how you address client needs — but the media choice and placement should be long-term, because the advertiser’s business is long-term too. They’re going to be here next month.

Kevin makes an excellent point that you should keep your eye on what’s good for the client in the long-term.  We push back when a client gives us bad creative.  We don’t say “give the client what they want.”  In the same way we should push back when a client focuses on a short sales campaign that isn’t in their long term interest.  Many people think it’s ok to go with short digital billboard contracts.  But what if we focused on long term contracts but allowed the client to use short term creative which changes with weather, day of the week, time of day or by season.

What’s the minimum length contract you’ll accept?  Take our poll below or email davewestburg@billboardinsider.com and we’ll run a followup article.

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