Wingate Media Uses Digital Billboards for Storm Warnings.

For years, Out of Home companies have been using their digital signs to provide safety notices to the public.  Last month Jim Matalone’s Arkansas-headquartered Ashby St Outdoor received great press for using digital billboards to display tornado alerts.  Wingate Media is getting good press for doing the same thing in Tennessee.  Look at this TV news video.  During the interview Ike Wingate says: “We look at billboards a little differently as community landmarks…it shouldn’t just be about advertising.  It should also be about providing useful and helpful information to the community.  And that’s why we’ve enacted these tornado warning alerts.”

Insider asked Ike to talk about the project.

Where’d the idea come from?

I definitely picked up the idea from Jim Matalone.  We don’t come up with good ideas, we just borrow from others, ha ha.

What signs are involved.

4 digital billboards.

How does the system work

The trigger is based on the TORNADO warning polygon area and if a billboard’s Latitude/Longitude is located inside that polygon then it will override the current ads with only the static Tornado Warning image until the warning is over and then resume ads.

You’ve gotten quite a bit of publicity

We did not send out a press release on this story. It was purely organic from a tweet we sent out on Tuesday announcing the new capability. Within a few hours I was contacted by 2 local TV stations and have now done interviews on all major tv networks in Nashville as well as the Tennessean. I have never received more interest or praise from the public in this business. This is a no-brainer effort for our industry to be involved in and shed positive light on how OOH can uniquely serve the community.  Here is a list of all the coverage so far. I think WKRN probably has the best explanation of how it works.

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