Why Out-of-Home Is the Most Underrated Channel in Marketing with Olivia Oshry, CMO of OAAA | Ep. 409

0:01Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray. And join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. we are back with another episode of the market milano's podcast i am here with olivia um we're going to talk about a channel that has probably been around longer than most channels out out there um and but it's how it's still growing and it's still having a renaissance and i think people are still under utilizing this channel i would say and i mean there are companies that don't under utilize it like you'll you'll know like injury attorneys and stuff like that but there are a lot of tech brands that are in this space that are starting to come on to this channel but i'll let olivia introduce herself and give her a background and then we'll and how she got into marketing and then we'll get into the episode today awesome well thank you so much for having me i'm super excited to be here um it's so funny like how did i get into marketing i've only like ever been in marketing, you know?

1:22And it sort of at the same time, like fell into my lap a little bit because I went to NYU for undergrad. And I always say that NYU is a really tough place to go to school when you don't know what you want to be when you grow up because everybody there is like so committed and so driven. They have so many like specialty programs for, you know, you're in the Stern School of Business if you want to do business, if you want to do acting, you're in Tisch. I actually was like a history major, like more on the pre-law track. I thought it was going to to be a lawyer. I took the LSAT twice. I got the same score both times.

1:56And I thought to myself, oh, I'm not really like improving here. I don't think that this is for me. But one thing that people told me was that I should get some real work experience before I decided to stay in school a little bit longer. And so I actually started interning at AOL, America Online. At the time, they had just acquired like a Huffington Post, tech crunch in gadget. It was a lot of, you know, you know, premium publishers at the time, but then also they were building, you know, sort of a digital ad tech stack. And I worked on the marketing team and I worked on the marketing team there for almost eight years.

2:33And the second I got there from the second I got there, I knew, oh, I want to, I want to pursue this full time. I want this to be, you know, what my career is in and I want to stay here after I graduate. And I sort of have pretty much had every type of marketing role that you can have since then. Predominant focus on like B2B and advertiser marketing, but I've also dabbled a lot on the consumer side, of course, on the brand side. And, you know, at the same time, I shouldn't be surprised that this is where I've ended up because I've always been like a very brand-centric person. Like I love brands.

3:08I love marketing. I am very, like I'm obsessed anytime somebody like does a rebrand or like I've always just been really super into that. I remember being a kid and like watching Super Bowl ads like before YouTube even existed. Like how could you find them on the internet type of thing? And that Britney Spears one, Pepsi was my favorite. And I would just watch it over and over and over. So it's like, yeah, I've always been into marketing. Of course, this is how I sort of ended up. So I have a question for you. So you came through like companies that were, I would say, digitally first companies.

3:40And now, I mean, you made a bet to go to a medium that isn't really, I mean, it's coming up in the digital side, but so you made a bet to go into billboards. Why did you feel so strongly for that channel? Such a good question. And one that I get asked a lot because I did spend most of my career thus bar on the digital advertising side. In between AOL and where I am now at the OAAA, which I'm super excited to get into, I worked at a tech startup called Flowcode, which was a QR code company that was really started right, you know, sort of quasi pre-pandemic, but really took off because of the pandemic and just like the need for contactless connection.

4:23And a lot of what we focused on there was how do we help DTC brands like scale offline by trying to think about how they could potentially get similar metrics to digital metrics in the offline world by leveraging things like QR, on print, on out of home, on TV. So I started to dabble in the offline media space. And quite frankly, you know, I grew up also in New York City, which is just like, you know, the epicenter of incredible out of home. I've always loved billboards. I've always been somebody that has like really been aware of like the branded world around me as I sort of like experience life.

4:59So when this opportunity came across my desk, it was really like a no-brainer for me. One, because I love the medium. Two, because I had sort of already been dabbling in the space. And I also, you know, as a brand-centric person, and I saw the way that digital advertising, especially like social ads, were really moving to like, you know, ugly ads perform. And it just like wasn't for me. I was like, oh, that's like, had a visceral reaction to that sometimes. and I was like, why not like think about how to do like big, beautiful, creative, like in the real world. I also feel like people were sort of post pandemic wanting to like experience even more, you know, out in the real world as well.

5:42So it was a combination of a lot of things, plus the team there. I had known some folks for quite some time and like the leadership is just really strong. So it was like good people, a medium I loved, the opportunity for just, you know, real growth. And I think that the combination of that altogether was just really enticing for me to pivot from a very digital-centric advertising role to something that, to your point, over 30 % of out-of-home right now is digital out-of-home. So there is a digital trajectory, but it's really the combination of both. One sign that I think out-of-home is a big deal and technically an organic driver too is watching the billboards at Coachella this weekend and seeing Hayley Bieber reposting the Yahoo um the Yahoo billboard all these artists doing some funny plays as you drive into the desert because if people don't know unless you fly into Palm Springs it's a two-hour drive from LA or San Diego or Laguna to drive.

6:49And I just saw tons of artists, brands, people just posting billboards on their feed. And I thought that was like, okay, if you can do something creative like that, it has that digital, because nobody's screenshotting a Facebook ad and putting it on their story. Nobody's doing that. But you know, what's really interesting. There's so many different layers to what you're saying. And I wholeheartedly agree with all of them. The first is the Yahoo thing, which is that's not that's a mock up. Right. And so if you're thinking about Yahoo as a brand doing a mock up of a billboard on social that's getting reshared by Haley Bieber, like that just goes to the essence of how powerful the medium is, that it's not even an actual billboard.

7:32It's just a mock-up of a billboard. And Cracker Barrel did the same thing, actually, when they reversed their brand. They put an image of their old logo on a mocked-up billboard, posted it on social, and they're like, we've heard the feedback. So, you know, you have this medium that is sort of the symbol of trust and the symbol of visibility and the symbol of something that, you know, when people see it, they instantly know, you know, they instantly have, I think, a really positive feeling around it. Also, they just have a connection with it as well. So I love the Yahoo example because, first of all, that wasn't even a real billboard.

8:07Number one, they're just leveraging it for social and is amplified in so many different ways. Two, your point is exactly spot on. I mean, the road to Coachella is just like an unbelievable display of incredible out of home. And I think just, you know, further proves the power of the medium because, you know, it's not that it just lives there in the desert for only the people that are headed to Coachella to see. Like it is so amplified across so many different channels. And I think, you know, that's another thing that really makes the medium so special is just its ability to interact so well with other media.

8:41Like it doesn't just live in a silo. The whole goal of it is to really be like this sort of connection piece in the middle of your media mix to sort of connect to social and, you know, to any of your other digital experiences, potentially, of course, even TV or CTV. So, you know, I just think it's so cool to see. And I love that there's like certain times of year where people, you know, really get out of home its shine and its moment that it deserves. So, yeah, this is a cool time of year for us. yeah i i think i mean it's an incredible local channel too and people don't think about local as hard as other people i mean i grew i lived in la for eight years and you would see all like the local billboards of trying to get there um to be considered for like emmys and oscars and um so but i want to go into you recently got promoted to cmo um how are you trying to change this perception for people to invest in this channel?

9:46I think there's still, I mean, there are brands that get it and know that it's a channel, but there's a lot of brands that still are, I'd rather just go run meta ads. I'd rather run Google ads. It's measurable. It's this, it's that. I can't measure out of home. So how do you change the perception? Yeah, no, it's a great question. And, you know, OAAA is the trade association representing the entire out-of-home industry, and we are celebrating 135 years this year. So for 135 years, this organization has solely been dedicated to protecting, promoting, and advancing the out-of-home industry. And from a marketing perspective, I view my role as like having like two very clear goals, which is one, how do we better engage the broader advertising community to ensure that out-of-home is an essential part of the conversation, is an essential part of people's media mix, you know, the work that we do around that can be anything from showing up in all the places where, you know, big advertisers and all the agency executives are, places like, you know, CanLion and Advertising Week and CES, and then also, you know, putting my vertical hat on and making sure that, like, across the categories that are really doubling down in ad spend and in out-of-home specifically, you know, that we're making sure that we develop those relationships, that there's always an out-of-home conversation to be had.

11:08it's really just like inserting ourselves in there as much as humanly possible that's one piece of it the other piece of it is really just on developing those relationships with brands and agencies we have a brand council we have an agency council we do a ton of events whether they're local sort of discover out of home days in in specific markets we also put on our annual conference which is coming up next month with which is pretty much the largest out of home gathering in the world. But my goal with that event is also to ensure that it's not just out of home people in the room talking to out of home people, right?

11:40Like, how do we bring a broader advertising mix into our mix to ensure that, you know, out of home isn't just sort of this like siloed media channel and like, you know, is an add on to some plans. I think to the point that you were talking about before with Coachella, when we sit sort of in the center of a larger plan, And you can see it worked just infinitely better, right? So, you know, from a marketing perspective, it's really about evangelizing the medium, building the relationships with the right folks to ensure that conversations are being had in the right place. And just, I think, you know, one thing that we can even do a better job as an industry is sort of like touting a lot of our success and a lot of our wins.

12:21I think, you know, things like Coachella or obviously this is a very big year for advertising in general, but specifically out of home because of things like FIFA, World Cup, there's obviously Super Bowl. There's sort of these moments a couple times a year, and especially this year, it's also an election year, right? Like a lot, you're going to see a lot of political out of home ads as well, or get out the vote ads. So, you know, there's sort of these like, you know, peaks in the year that essentially, I think really remind marketers that, oh, this is a channel that really works. This is a channel that has stood the test of time.

12:55This is a channel in, you know, undergoing transformation and innovation. And I think the more that we're super vocal about it, which is what I feel like is the essence of my job, the more you sort of open people's eyes to like all the different things that the medium can do, whether that's programmatically or, you know, like there's just so much innovation and transformation happening. So what's really cool i think about out of home and you're saying this i mean last year it was 9.46 billion dollar channel and it's had 19 quarters of like consecutive growth so at what point does out of home start becoming like stop becoming like a comeback story and becoming like a mature channel in in the mix because i feel like it is it is still at this like Like, okay, you've seen more big advertisers go into this channel because we'll talk about later what you call, you calling it the human median as well.

13:53So at what point do we start saying, and for some brands, I would say it is a mature channel, but I know you said that, but how does it stop becoming this comeback story channel? By the way, I think that's a really good question. I will say like in my two and a half years, like being in the out of home space, I personally have experienced, I feel like a fundamental difference in the way that marketers and the broader advertising industry interact or wants to interact with me from like two plus years ago until now. So I think you're sort of already starting to see that change for sure. I think on the flip side of it, too, and this is why, you know, from a vertical perspective, that we, especially for this year, are focusing on a couple of very strategic verticals because I think if we can prove out tremendous success in some of these areas that get a ton of attention, it will sort of open up the floodgates to everybody else as well.

14:47But I think, listen, at the end of the day, we sort of live in an environment and in a society where everybody's sort of chasing the shiny object all the time. And like, you know, there's aspects of that at home that it's not the shiny object because it's a 200 year old medium, right? Like something 200 plus years old is not necessarily going to feel new and shiny all the time, right? But I think that's where some of that, you know, innovation, transformation, programmatic development, digital development, and sort of the general digitization of the medium, the more that that happens at scale and the more, I think, you know, bigger conversations we have, the more, I mean, listen, take somebody like Alex Earle and what she just did to launch Real Actives, where like the billboard that she had in New York City with the puzzle pieces was like an essential part of the launch.

15:38Right. Like. I don't know if something like that would have happened three, four years ago. Right. It's like you sort of are starting to see this turn happen. And that's why there's a lot of amazing examples that we can talk about right now of just like really interesting things that are happening in our space because like the tide, the tide has turned, but it's like it's also at the same time still turning. So I hope that we get to a place in the next, you know, I don't want to even say years, I think shorter than years, where it's like we're not talking about this comeback story or, you know, like a renaissance for out of home, but more just like sort of the fundamental essential nature of it for any brand that is looking to, you know, build a meaningful connection with the consumer, tell a visual and like very powerful story.

16:26and at the same time there's also that both sides of it you hit upon it earlier which i think is so true it's like you can be a big you know advertiser like an apple or a verizon with you know just like a big brand awareness campaign or you can be a local advertiser and leveraging out of home directionally or you know like cracker barrel does that they're obviously a big national brand that uses it from a local perspective there's just a never-ending amount of things that you can do so I think the more we tell those stories and those anecdotes and show them off, I think the more that they'll just become ubiquitous.

17:00Yeah, I mean, a great example of a brand that does very good local is Buc-ee's in Texas. As you drive and there's a bunch of billboards saying, like, you're close, like, 101 miles to this and you can get this at Buc-ee's and this, like, funny things at Buc-ee's and bathroom. But it's like the whole drive, you're just reminded that you can go to a Buc-ee's. And that's a great example. And when you're ready for it, like it's like was right there at the top of your mind. I wanted to ask you, cause I think if I'm not mistaken, digital out of home advertising is now a third of the revenue of all out of home.

17:40Where does that ceiling sit comparatively to just like regular out of home advertising? Cause digital, the cool thing about digital is you can run a spot for an hour or you can run a spot for three weeks if you really want to. And you could run it. I see a lot of like when SaaS brands now during conferences, they run quick digital out-of-home targeted at like San Francisco or Boston or something to get quick advertising. So where do you see the ceiling of digital out-of-home versus traditional out-of-home? Yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily know if there's a ceiling per se because the more signs that are digitized, the more opportunity there is.

18:24So, you know, obviously there's like hundreds of thousands of different signs and formats across the U.S. and the more that those transition from static to digital, the more opportunity there is for digital. So it's kind of a really super exciting thing because there's not really, I don't think there really is a ceiling on it. There's also so many different types of formats within the out-of-home ecosystem that are digital as well. Obviously, like cinema is a piece of that too, right? And like that's sort of, you know, when you think about out of home, a lot of people just think about billboards.

18:56So they're just thinking about digital billboards. But there are so many different signs. Of course, there's transit and street furniture, there's airports. So the digitization of any sign in the US, like, to me, that ceiling really doesn't exist. Or it's exciting that, you know, it's feels like it can be potentially, you know, infinite. because we're sort of just underway in terms of the digitization of the entire medium, which is many, many different formats in our overall ecosystem. I know we're in the age of AI now, and I think billboards are in the real world. They're not on your screens.

19:37You pass it driving to work, you pass it walking, you see a bus or a car or have these digital, You go into grocery stores, you see digital, I mean, out of home advertising. I want to go into your positioning of this and the thought behind it. And what are you trying to get with calling it the human medium? Yeah. No, thank you for asking that question. Because since I joined OAAA two plus years ago, we've sort of been endeavoring on this positioning work. And I think a lot of it stemmed from the fact that, you know, as an industry out of home is so many different things. and there are, I mean, listen, just the OAAA has 850 members, right?

20:18So it's not like when you're going up against search, you're really going up against Google. There's not like one, you know, we are a conglomerate of a lot of different amazing out-of-home companies. And, you know, at the end of the day, the importance of us being unified as an industry, aligned on our talking points, aligned on our core value proposition in terms of like what makes the medium great and a worthwhile buy. I mean, the reality is, and I'm not just saying this because I work in the out of home space, but there's, I mean, there's probably like dozen and any different company could have, could, could put together, you know, their own set of, you know, core beliefs as to why, you know, out of home is, you know, a worthwhile media buy.

21:01And I think, you know, what we wanted to do was sort of sit down and pull all of that together in a way that any of our members and And really anybody in the advertising industry could really just like come to an understanding of like what really makes this medium so special in sort of a singular way, which, again, is a very daunting task. And it was a massive undertaking just because, you know, I wanted to ensure that there wasn't like a reductive element to it, too, because there just is so much positive things to say about the medium. But that being said, you know, we spent a lot of time talking to brands, to agencies, to technology providers, of course, to out-of-home media people.

21:42You know, just really getting a lay of the land of just how they view the medium. I think also the gap that we were trying to solve between, like, how out-of-home people view the medium themselves versus how buyers view the medium was just another, like, area to solve for here. But, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of this sort of like real world notion and the really deliberate like impact and connection, it just kept coming up over and over and over, of course. And I think, you know, in a very AI centric world that we live in and listen, I love AI. I think AI is well, I shouldn't say I love AI.

22:19I think AI makes people's lives a lot easier. I think it's an amazing enabler. And I think it helps people. I'm not one of these people that thinks that like AI is going to take everybody's job I think AI is going to make everybody better at their jobs and I think like that's where I say I love it because you have to tell AI you love it just in case there's a chance yeah just in case AI does take over the world you you were spoken on a podcast yeah yeah just reference this podcast that was exactly right um but you know at the end of the day especially because you know think about like during the pandemic times too, which like I always hate like bringing up the pandemic, but like we have to be real about the fact that like digital consumption skyrocketed.

23:03People got really used to like just doom scrolling, being algorithmically driven, finding like discovering new products. Like everything was so digital mobile centric. And I think like what we're seeing now is sort of this visceral reaction to people just wanting to be like out in the world and living their lives again. And, you know, I remember even like pre-pandemic, there were so many studies that came out that were talking about millennials. And this is the Marketing Millennials podcast. So it's relevant. But, you know, people were talking about how much millennials loved experiences. Right.

23:36And I still think like that's still innate with like this whole cohort of a generation. They just had to take a few years off because of like the state of the world. And so everybody's coming back with a vengeance, essentially. And so when you think about all of these things together where people like want to be out there in the world, but like we live in a very sort of like tech immersed, like digital centric world. And you don't know like the things on your phone, if it's real, if it's fake, if it's an AI video, like, you know, you just want to exist a little bit. And I think like that's sort of all of those pieces we put that together to really just land on like out of home is the human medium.

24:16And it's for humans, right? Like, you know that a human being with real eyes is going to see your message out in the real world. And I think, you know, there are other channels that do have issues with that, just if we're being frank, right? And so I think playing to our strengths, but also playing to that sort of like emotional connection. You know, there's a lot of aspects about humanity in general that I think also lend themselves really well to out of home, too. Like we think a lot about and we've talked a lot about on this podcast about it, you know, how out of home works better in concert with other media.

24:51Right. So, too, like other human beings need other humans. Like people function better, you know, when they're in a community or, you know, when they're around and surrounded by others. So there's just a lot of things in terms of like personifying the medium with really human qualities, but also the essence of the human being being the one that is, you know, really being targeted and really the person where these messages are being delivered to sort of all came together. And we just thought it was a really beautiful way to start talking about the medium in a way that could exist, you know, well into the future.

25:27I think what you said about the real life thing, making it advantages, because this is, I used to go to Coachella like 2014, 2015, 2016. And I, till now, I saw people going, but I never really saw like the hype that this Coachella brought versus like the last 10 years. And I think it was all bringing back like to 2016 vibes, 2016 headliners, like 2016 music, all millennial stuff that was what Coachella was. And that's what I think that like this Coachella with ticket prices being so crazy. It was never like that 10 years ago. 10 years ago, it was like that. Getting a Coachella ticket, it would sell out and you would have to go in the market, sell it in an hour in the market.

26:14The last 10 years, you could buy it on the site until a week before it happened in this year. But I wanted to go into one thing. I think based on all the billboards you've seen, and you've seen a lot, how could brands win on this channel? What is some tactical things that if a brand wanted to enter the space, how could they make their billboard actually produce, let's say, brand awareness or on the other side, actual conversions to sites? Yeah, that's a great question. And by the way, speaking of 2016, it just got me thinking about how like that whole social media trend of everybody like posting like where they were in 20, like there is sort of this like return to a different time, but like a previous time.

27:00And I do think that our medium is benefiting a lot from that. You know, when it comes to out of home or really when it comes to any media, I always say like, what is your KPI and what is your call to action? I think a lot of times people put a message on a billboard and they were like, well, did it work? And it's like, well, what did you want to happen, right? And they can't really ascertain, you know, sort of like what the proof of performance or what the metrics were that they were actually looking for. And I think, you know, we talked a lot about on this podcast as well that there's just so many different formats of out of home.

27:35And I think, you know, you could leverage it from a proximity standpoint. You could leverage it from a big brand awareness campaign standpoint. You could have an amazing, you know, discount or offer. You could build out a unique landing page. Like you could partner with a creator who shares it on social. Like, what are you trying to do? And I think a lot of times people just sort of slap a message on a sign and they're like, we did out of home, but we don't know how it performed. And I would say some of the rigor that brands really do apply to other channels. I think that sometimes that does get a little bit lost with out of home just because some brands are potentially viewing it as sort of an add on to a campaign.

28:17So I would say being really upfront about like, what are you trying to get out of this? How are you using this particular sign? What's the message for this sign? And then going from there, because I think you do see, you see a lot of brands used in a lot of different ways, but the ones that keep coming back to the medium have cracked the code for themselves essentially, right? And I think that's because they have really strong KPIs and they have a really strong call to action and they know exactly what they're using, which sign to do what for. And so I think if you're strategic about out of home and your plan up front, you will have the same results.