I’m fond of saying that a patent is like a poker hand. You can win a game of poker with a great hand and you can also bluff and win with bad hand, but you can’t win with no hand. So patents, even bad ones, can sometimes generate a win for their owners, even when they are at best dubious.

I received an email this morning regarding the invention and recent granting of a patent for a “cellphone changing an electronic display that contains a barcode”.

I know some folks think I’m opinionated about some things, especially when it comes to the use of QR Codes in DOOH, so it will come as no surprise if I say (again) that:

Putting an oh-too-small QR code on digital signage for oh-too-little time and ooh-too-far-away is a waste of pixels!

Even if a user can draw their phone from their pocket faster than the Lone Ranger AND have a QR Code app ready to launch AND and be close enough to the screen scan the code BEFORE the campaign spot changes, the campaign better deliver something so damn valuable that it pays for someone (not counting anyone at the network, brand or the agency) to do exactly that.

AND even if a patent application for doing exactly that kind of thing was applied for in say May 2011 , I’m surprised the patent office didn’t site prior art AND GRANTED PATENTS from 2004 that disclose:

A system and method of interactive, location based and presentation and advertising that enables users with wireless network addressable communications device to control multi-media content on network addressable screens and enables marketers to track, monitor and respond to users interactions in real-time. A Proxy Gateway directs a network addressable client PC, connected to a digital display, to serve a local content or pull content from one or more web servers. A wireless, network addressable device, typically a mobile phone, is used to communicate commands to the physically remote Proxy Gateway, The proxy Gateway bridges between the communications device, forwarding them to the client PC which may pull content from the appropriate web server or display native message content.

Even ignoring the above IP, leading “practitioners in the field” continue to leverage interactive OOH/DOOH techniques proven to engage the casual onlooker. I guess the patent office doesn’t read search the DailyDOOH or other stalwarts of our digital signage industry.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

AdWeek called me last week to ask my opinion about the use of Vine in OOH. I had been involved in a recent Tide social media OOH campaign, so could I comment on Tide using Twitter’s new Vine video format for a broad-based OOH campaign?

I didn’t know about the details of the campaign and thought it both interesting but also puzzling as Vine does not have an open API (Application Programming Interface) yet. I assumed (correctly in hindsight) that it would be unlikely that multiple OOH markets (especially including roadside billboards) would be able to display these videos.

I gave AdWeek a quote to the effect that I had not seen a broad-based social video campaign in OHH and that this sounded very innovative.

So what’s the story here, what’s it’s impact and what did get reported?

The AdWeek story includes links to some of the videos which are fun but these are NOT being displayed on OHH screens. The Tide campaign uses stills taken from Vines for roadside billboards (roadside regulations stipulate that each 8 sec spot is static).

I’m misquoted in the article but the campaign is really innovative and I haven’t seen Vine leveraged on billboards yet so anything like this that pushes the envelope is great for everyone.

Although Vines do not officially have an open API for developers including OOH applications, we can only hope that will change and attention to this campaign might help accelerate that.

Congrats to the team at Digitas and Tide for continuing to innovate around social and OOH.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

A few weeks ago I wrote that the OAAA published a standard and guidelines for the use of social media in Out of Home. That post is here.

As part of it’s efforts to promote the impact of social in OOH, the OAAA then launched a campaign using the call to action/hashtag #everyWhereUR. The campaign ran for two weeks from September 16 on OOH signage across the US and users’ tweeted photos would end up on a large screen in Times Square.

The results of this effort came out last week. The campaign only attracted 450 tweets and of those, less than 200 photos were posted in Times Square.

So what tactics could have been been used to get better results?

Well, the point of using social media to AMPLIFY engagement. Sorry, but we don’t get amplification simply by plugging in to Twitter, we have to “go where the party is”.

ONE thing that I would have thought would have been a better approach would have been to partner with a brand that has a large following on Twitter and Facebook and then leverage our screens as the reward. (When we did that with Paramount for Twitter, we got over 2,000,000 engagements.)

As I’ve said before, it’s not enough to have a beautiful Gibson Les Paul - you need to plug it in something LOUD to be heard.

I’m talking about how social amplification improves OHH engagement at a Location Based Marketing Association’s event on Wednesday 30th My deck is here.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

My phone rang the moment news hit the wires that Monster Media had acquired LocaModa. And it hasn’t stopped. Less than one month after that announcement, with my head still buzzing, I thought it would be a good time to open up about the rationale for the deal and the opportunity ahead.

The announcement can be found here but as you might expect, the real news was not really the mechanics behind the purchase, but the strategy.

Monster and LocaModa have been in competitive bids for a few years now - whenever brands wanted a dominant interactive solution, Monster would frequently be their choice. When brands wanted a solution on existing networks, inside a loop, their choice was frequently LocaModa.

Together, Monster + LocaModa can now run campaigns for global clients on any screen, any network and any channel. The agnostic and scalable nature of LocaModa enables this - but that’s not all.

Anyone who knows me or has had the dubious pleasure of listening to me speak about the DOOH space for more than a few minutes will know that I’ve been passionate and outspoken about a vision for what I’ve dubbed “The Web Outside” - a world where all screens are connected and more engaging. That vision was early, but today more brands are asking for what we have patented.

We believe the rising tide of social and mobile will only lift our market if networks can connect to those channels. Put another way, without a scaleable and agnostic solution, the rising tide of mobile and social media will create network islands out of many DOOH networks and erode the value of their proprietary platforms.

Monster has a mouthwatering client base and 70+ super smart people making award-winning media. Together we have a far more scaleable opportunity and we are gearing up to leverage our IP, knowhow and platform to reduce friction for brands and agencies to engage with DOOH.

My role at Monster is EVP Mobile and Social. Expect me to be as outspoken and passionate in that role as I have been at LocaModa.

I’d welcome the chance to chat about this and answer any questions. Feel free to email me at my new email stephen dot randall at monstermedia dot net

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

All this month Levi Strauss have taken over the new Van Wagner screen opposite Penn Station, NYC, at 34th and 7th Ave to run an extension of their #GoForth campaign. In this program LocaModa was asked to run curated real-time content from Twitter and Instagram, hashtagged #GoForth and #PostMe (the latter hashtag being an additional requriement to ensure the content was explicity intended by the user to be posted).

Instagram has not been used in digital out of home campaigns as extensively as other real time streams. As a source of beautiful looking content, it’s an under-leveraged platform and as you can see from the photos above and below, it’s a match made in heaven.

Levi’s #GoForth campaign and hashtag is attracting a lot of inspirational photos and messages and the LocaModa-enabled extension helps to sustain that activity, reinforcing aspects of the brand’s identity and provides a beautiful backdrop to the many millions of commuters that pass that screen every week.

The real time content runs for 30 seconds, 40 times an hour, 24/7 for all of October.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites