In his 2004 essay What Makes An Effective Executive Peter Drucker listed this as practice #6 for effective executives:

They focused on opportunities not on problems. 

Effective managers do not view change as a threat.  They ask “how can we exploit change to benefit our enterprise and then they put allocate our best people to pursue the opportunity.  What changes are there in the outdoor business and how can they be viewed as an opportunity?

Newspapers blew it when it came to the internet.  They viewed the internet as a threat.  They adopted firewalls.  They hesitated to share their stories.  The hesitated to enter the digital content business because it threatened paying subscribers.  They surrendered the giant digital publishing market to Vox, Buzzfeed, Slate, Mic, Heleo, Medium, The Vertical…

How does this apply to out of home advertising?

Driverless cars may change the ways consumers interact with billboards.  A threat maybe.  People won’t look at signs as much.  The jury’s still out.  We have driverless cars right now.  They’re called buses or trains and lots of people on buses and trains look outside at billboards.  How will driverless cars be an opportunity?  If people in driverless cars are using their phones more, then microcells will become more important as data usage in cars increases.  Perhaps this translates into antennas on billboards.  If people in cars are interacting with their phones more than technologies which tie the billboard to a phone (e.g. beacons) may hold promise.  Maybe driverless cars make place based digital signage (malls, walkways and stores) a business worth pursuing.

Are driverless cars a threat or opportunity?  Tell Insider what you think by using the form below.  Happy to run your thoughts.

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