By Nick Coston
I recently a responded to a post on LinkedIn around 5 days ago that my brilliant friend Chris Gadek of AdQuick wrote up, it began with “live look at LinkedIn on the first business day of Q4, everyone posting the same ‘2027 marketing trends’ carousel”, it was supported by a futuristic looking video of thousands of robots marching to nowhere.
That was it. A quick hit post to remind everyone, or at least that’s the I interpreted it as, we all were posting the same sentiments of returning to work after a whopping three days off. Nothing new, just safe words to lull us back to our desks being thankful for or time away.
It was then followed up by a few clever posts like “AI is going to be BIG” and “AI agents negotiating with other AI agents while both companies’ humans attend a webinar about it”.
Some good chuckles indeed.
The photo tells it all.
That gave me an idea. Seeing that the term “AI” has become overused in our little OOH world to the point where it has almost zero impact, and being that I’m an opportunistic humor writer who most likely should be medicated, I commented that “I have one prediction: to be announced at CES, Las Vegas in 2027 that they’re changing the term from “AI” to “HeyEye”.
Makes it less robotic and intimidating.
‘HeyEye’. You heard it here first.”
Well, you heard it here first ‘cause I made it up.
Right now, when you see articles and posts that start out with the term “AI” headlining it, you wisely reach for either a pot of strong black coffee, a Snickers bar or some good old-fashioned speed. Whatever that is.
Because whatever follows is most certainly to be a snooze-fest. It also most likely would-be AI written and edited too. Endless sentences, points that never seem to get made and about 1000 words too many. You begin saying to yourself “I’ve read this before, I’m sure” because it looks so much like the other AI dribble that some peeps are putting out these days.
That’s why I introduce to you “HeyEye”, a lighter, sloppier version of the former, one that never corrects spelling, grammar or facts. Haven’t we learned by now to never to let facts get in the way of a good story?
“Wow, Nick, I never knew that about ABC Outdoor that real goats live and graze right below digital units, you know to keep the grass trimmed for free”.
Yea, that’s because I made it up so you would have a chuckle and be forced to check out the accuracy of what I wrote on your own. Maybe true?
Ok, so I’m embellishing slightly here, but the OOH industry is far from perfect. And when we try to be perfect, we become boring and irrelevant. We are signs on the sides of highways, screens hanging in dry cleaning shop windows, little digitals above urinals in sports bars, huge full-motion displays in the middle of Times Square, and T’V’s when you pump your gas or charge your EV.
Nowhere near perfect, but they work.
A few years ago, I wrote what I thought would be a killer piece, “The Case Against Programmatic DOOH”. It was a blockbuster. Or I thought.
Realizing that I would alienate a booming OOH category and quickly be banished to selling Valpack coupons for the remainder of my career under an alias, I bagged publishing the piece.
AI is an awesome selling tool, the tech writes perfect letters, edits almost anything, and makes mundane tasks easier and more legible. Great for business plans. But we are in advertising, we are selling creative, eyeballs, ideas, and magic.
We should be selling showtime. SHOWTIME, I say!
There’s no showtime with AI. Like the robots marching in unison in Chris’s post, we lose some autonomy and sadly our thoughts and words get replaced by our own creations.
Not with “HeyEye” though, where we keep things real, keep you awake, engaged and wondering what the hell did I just read.
You’ll can thank me at CES.
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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