Company: Look Billboards
Market: Southern Oklahoma
Headquarters: 1500 W. Broadway, Ardmore, Oklahoma
Phone: 580-226-0222
Look Billboards was started in 1997 and is managed by Chris Cowlbeck. The company operates 100+ traditional faces and 5 digital billboards in the following Oklahoma markets: Ardmore, Atoka, Caddo, Durant, Healdton-Wilson, Lone Grove, Madill, Springer and Sulphur-Davis. Most of the billboards are 12 by 24. The company’s digital signs were the subject of several industry write ups shown on the LOOK News web page in 2010, including being one of three Watchfire Madmen that year.
Look Billboards should not be confused with Look Outdoor Advertising, a Texas based outdoor company with signs in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Kansas.
Chris, how did you get into the outdoor advertising business?
Our main family business started 45 years ago now with my mother founding our real estate company in Ardmore. We have terrific response to our yard signs, and had one hand painted 12 x 24 bulletin beside our office (now a location of one of our digitals), which we knew worked well from anecdotal comments from folks. In the 90’s a grade school friend of mine and now business partner, Charlie Clowe, attempted to get the local tourism effort to build some billboards to generate revenue to promote the city, and when we couldn’t build enough interest, we said heck, let’s do it ourselves. Charlie operates a gasoline jobbing company and convenience stores, and he is a solid believer in the effectiveness of billboards from his own marketing efforts. Both with young kids at the time, we thought it would be fun and have a little nest egg for when the kids went to college. Little did we know how great the industry would be or where it would take us.
Tell us about Look Billboard’s plant.
My background from OU is construction management. When I returned to Ardmore (population about 30,000) in 1990 I ran our real estate company and build quite a few homes. Once we decided to launch our own billboard effort, I built the first few locations that we owned or had obtainable land leases with friends. In about 2001 we bought most of our poster plant from Keleher Outdoor and since have converted all locations to bulletins with the advent of large scale vinyl printing. In 2009 we attended a conference and some our our contemporaries suggested we look in to digital. We hired a consultant who told us that Ardmore would only handle one digital, yet we had three terrific locations. Given the traffic pattern we knew that we needed all three locations and if we could figure out how to turn our rotary traditional program to use digital, we should do all of them for efficiency and effectiveness. The only problem was at the time the software couldn’t handle rotating, so we figured out an algorithm to accomplish it outside the software and off to the races we went. The timing was also wrenching – we decided to launch and pulled the trigger on the three digitals during the March 2009 financial market swoon. We installed all three digitals in one day, with no pre sales for fear of community backlash, and rolled free ads that evening for all our existing advertisers. It was a huge hit and we wrote contracts for months thereafter reaching 120% of our profroma. We now have five digitals in Ardmore and offer the most affordable form of marketing in the area for the small businesses.
Have you been impacted by oil patch turbulence?
The oil patch has hurt our realty effort mostly with the loss of jobs but one of the nice things about outdoor is that it is a bit counter cyclical. Dan Keleher Sr mentioned to us when we were in negotiations, that he started just after the Great Depression and everyone thought he was crazy, going on to say that he always did better when the economy turned down. Guess what, he is a sage and we see similar benefits when things turn a little to the worse. Being one of the most affordable cities in the country, we have learned to operate in a lean fashion – the key is not having debt. Of course we all have less than perfect days, and I enjoy the rural lifestyle of running bird dogs, hunting bobwhite quail and a bit of fishing to take the edge of the ups and downs of the business world.
You’ve got 5 Watchfire digital signs. What have you learned about digital?
People love to see things change – they are curious and love to be entertained. While it’s a lot of hard work to manage them correctly, many folks get in to digital with only dollar figures in their eyes. We offer free design changes to encourage folks to change regularly, and the rotary nature of our method, makes the next design that appears to be virtually impossible to guess, much like a Rubics cube. We’ve also developed a win-win with our traditional bonus board program for digital advertisers that has made a nice difference to the bottom line for us.
You run the Independent Billboard Operators Association (IBOUSA). What is the IBOUSA.org and how does it help independent outdoor advertising companies?
Our group started out as a few operators that once were an eight sheet association in the Oklahoma area. LOOK was asked to associate about 15 years ago when the effort moved to include 30 sheets and I’ve loved the ability to interact with my piers in the industry. The group met twice a year to network, learn some about the industry and to figure out how to compete with the big boys. In 2009 we changed to our current name to better reflect our mission statement. By using a select process of referrals and sponsorship by existing operator associates, we have enjoyed a growth to about 70 operators with plants of all kinds up to 2000 faces, with an interesting flare that everyone brings something to the table. We still meet twice a year and invite limited vendors to participate to keep us up to date on equipment improvements, technology and all related topics. We don’t weave in to state-based legal or political issues and leave that to the multitude of state associations. It’s a great group of owners which many have become great friends, hunting and fishing buddies, and industry confidants. We have some innovative projects and activities that appeal to many of our associates that range from software to sales to design, all related to helping us run our plants more efficiently. Plus it’s fun!
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