The dapper and energetic Jean-Francois Decaux, Chairman and Co-CEO of JCDecaux did a CNBC interview this week. He talked about going digital and going green. Here’s the highlights.
On the company’s digital footprint
We are the most digitized out of home company in the world. And last year we did about 25% of our revenues coming from digital…UK is the most digitized advertising market in the world. We generate about 70% of our advertising revenues in the UK from digital. It has become the showcase for the rest of the world. We have more screens in London than in New York…
On JCDecaux’s Digital Footprint
Digital is an opportunity for us because our audience keeps on growing. You have more than 50% of the world’s population living in cities. This number will go up to 75%…We are in areas like airports, railway stations, subway stations where there is a captive audience and more and more people are using public transport.
On digital billboards and being green.
This year we’ll cover about 75% of our electrical consumption with green energy. And we will reach 100% green energy by 2022. Which is one of the reasons why the CDP – the Carbon Disclosure Project – which is rating about 8,000 companies around the world…put us on their A list…We operate around 1.1 million advertising panels around the world and electrical consumption is a big thing…While we deploy digital we reduce the number of static traditional advertising displays. So we have less advertising displays but more digital. So net, net, net, the electrical consumption goes down.
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Hello Dave, Mr. Decaux’s comments regarding becoming 100% green energy by 2022 is very interesting. One of the biggest challenges every operator has is how to reduce energy cost, so I would love to learn more. Are they doing this by removing lighted static structures that causes them to be energy use neutral when installing a digital, or are they deploying other methods? For our plant to accomplish similar results by just removing structures, after deployment of LED lighting throughout our plant we would need to remove 4 – 6 structures. That would be a high price to pay.