Insider sat in on last week’s OAAA chief marketing officer roundtable. The OAAA’s Stephen Freitas asked each panelist to describe the past year in one word and this is what they said.
OUTFRONT’s Jodi Senese: Transformational.
Clear Channel Outdoor’s Dan Levi: Oi, meaning, when is 2021.
Intersection’s Esther Raphael: Cancelled. Time to move on.
Lamar’s Tommy Teepel: Defining. How your company responded to the pandemic will influence it for years.
Some other things caught Insider’s attention.
Jodi Senese on PSA’s in the pandemic (Insider’s take: remember this the next time your encounter opposition to digital billboards):
We have never in any period in our history received so many requests for PSA. And I think that is because every organization out there understood that if they wanted to get messaging out to communities we were the best mouthpiece…
Dan Levi on how the pandemic has changed selling.
It’s accelerated changes that are already in process of happening…Our customers, they are all transact for billboards. But they’re not really buying billboards. They’re buying a way to deliver a message to specific audiences to drive those audiences to take certain actions…we as an industry are not realizing that just selling industry locations and inventory doesn’t address the problems that our customers really have…It’s created an urgency around consultative selling…and really critically, it’s elevating the role of data…
Tommy Teepell says the pandemic was not a setback but a setup to a new way of selling.
When this thing first hit we immediately circled up in the board room… We were determined that we were going to follow a few guidelines. One is we were going to be incredibly sensitive to what was going on with our client base because we know it’s frightening for them…second…we have to learn how to over communicate with our clients and especially over communicate with our people..with our clients we figured that the first thing they were going to do is pivot by shifting, pausing or cancelling…we brought out people together and said…look, in the next 2-3 weeks we want you to make contact with every one of your clients. Don’t be afraid that they’re going to ask to cancel. Explain to them that we’re going to be there with them, we’re all in this problem together and so what we’re going to do is whatever the level of impressions that we promised them in the beginning, those are the level of impressions that we’re going to deliver. And if it means that we’re going to take 2-3 weeks longer to do it that’s OK…we decided from the very beginning it wasn’t going to be a setback, it was going to be a setup. And we were being setup to pivot and sell in a way that we never had before…and we were going to come out of it better…
Esther Raphael pointed to the recent study showing consumers are noticing out of home more post pandemic.
what I would say to a brand or to a marketing is that if you’re not thinking about out of home right now you’re making a critical mistake, if you are buying a mobile and desktop only strategy you’re reaching people and they’re really reluctant…69% of consumers that live in urban areas are feeling like they notice out of home…more than pre-pandemic.
Jean Luc Decaux says there will be life after the pandemic.
Today the Shanghai mass transit system is back to 95% of pre-covid traffic…There is a life after the pandemic. That’s my message…
You can watch the entire hour conversation below.
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