Company:  DDI Media

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

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

Phone: 314-423-5040

DDI media operates a billboard plant in 8 states with more than 1,200 faces.  Vince Miller is the company’s General Manager.  Miller is a 28 year out of home veteran who also serves on the board of directors of the OAAA.  DDI is a member of the OAAA and Geopath and an IBOUSA operator.

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.

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

We have self-developed 21 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. 

You talked at length about the local regulatory environment at Geopath 2018.

We face the same regulations as our bigger competitors…In St Louis county alone we deal with 92 different sign codes and revenue collection companies…

It’s a continuous challenging environment.  We wanted to rebuild a 30 year old structure.  Our real estate rep worked it for 2.5 years and got six variances.  We were at the hearing and a neighboring landowner stood up to object…A landowner objected.  The city pointed out the objector lived outside of the city property.

You also mentioned at Geopath 2018 that the out of home industry has made progress on vegetation issues in Missouri.

In the state of Missouri we had something unprecedented happen.  We had a rule passed by the highway commission due to the great behavior of the outdoor companies.  They said we look at you as a partner to maintain the right of way.  They eliminated the fee structure and the 450′ limit on trimming.

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