Company of the day: Roland Digital Media

Company:  Roland Digital Media

Markets: Tennessee

Headquarters: 2300 W. Jackson St, Cookeville, TN  38501

Phone: 931-528-8100

Roland Digital Media operates a a plant of over 350 digital, trivision and static billboard faces in Middle Tennessee.  In addition the company has a brand consulting and website design business (you can tell because the company’s website is well-organized, simple to navigate and easy on the eyes).  Roland Digital Media is an operator associate in the IBOUSA.  Dave Roland is the company’s founder.  Roland Media uses a bright red logo and Roland is fond of saying “a sign without red is dead”.  Insider talked with Roland last week.

Dave, how did you get into the out of home business?

After failing in my first job out of college as an engineer, I asked God for something creative and that I could make a living at.  Not long after that, a lady asked me to make a sign for her.  We installed our first sandblasted wood sign on January 1, 1984.  I did not even know what sign paint was. In October of that year, we went full time in the commercial and electric sign business.  At that time, I had never even  been in a sign shop, but desire, enthusiasm and long hours will make up for a lot of mistakes.  We saved our money, lived on a shoestring, and put $80,000 in the bank. In April 1987, we constructed 3 double-faced, monopole boards.  In October of that same year, we borrowed our first $100,000 the day after the stock market fell 500 points. We, like others thought the world was ending, however 30 months later, we paid it off.

Who’s digital signs do you use and what have you learned?

We did about three years research before deciding to go with Watchfire in 2009. Reliability, minimum downtime, technical help, overnight shipping on parts and ease of use are the most important factors as most of our business model  is based on digital. We have 35 digitals and counting, all from Watchfire.  Up front cost is least important… A less expensive display is useless if you can’t keep it running.

Have you used any of the automated programs for selling billboard space (e.g. Blip, Fliphound or Adquick)?

We used Blip for almost a year. We did make some money from several of our available spaces. But ultimately canceled it. The biggest draw back for us was the ads themselves. We rejected more ads than we approved because either the quality wasn’t there or the content wasn’t something we were comfortable posting on our boards. We are probably a lot more conservative than most companies. We also struggled having enough open space to give them in our local market. We currently don’t use any programmatic companies. 

Talk about your you Tasty Ad venture and what it does for out of home companies.

We’ve been using spec art or sample ads to sell billboards for as long as I can remember. It’s a great sales tool to be able to show a potential client some ad ideas. The issue with most billboard companies is they don’t have a full time designer or their designer doesn’t have time to create tons of spec ads for potential customers. So we created Tasty Ad to fill that need. Now sales execs can create their own spec ads quickly and easily. No design skills needed. We offer a quick demo if anyone is interested. You can request it here: https://www.tastyad.com/demo/.

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