The BING KIMPO Show.: 5 Years, 3 Conferences & Hours of Talk Later, My Takeaway: To Promote DOOH, Pitch Projects & Ideas

A few days ago, I stood as the emcee atthe 2nd Philippine Forum on Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH) Media.

It was a fascinating Friday forum. We saw a lot of amazing executions from around the world and some from the Philippines that seemed to have opened the eyes of most participants. Excellent presentations, Lloyd Tronco, Manolo Almagro, Bob Michaels, Ricky Baizas, Christian Besler, Brian Siy, Carol Sarthou and Myrel De Castro.

Zooming out, the refrain was coming to me loud and clear, if we plan to take this medium forward - as individual businesses and as an industry - we must stop thinking that it is already a veritable medium that is understood and appreciated the way TV, radio and print are; instead, we must allow it to earn its merits a step at a time.

For now, we must pitch projects, campaigns and ideas - NOT the medium itself. We just can't afford to. Not yet, at least.

It seems that thinking of DOOH as a medium pre-supposes a few things: 1) that we know what we are selling; 2) that media-buyers and advertisers know what they are buying; and 3) that there is an agreed-upon currency or valuation system that allows both parties to perceive that they are coming to a fair transaction.

Based on my experience, I'd say these three pre-suppositions are not present at this time - on an industry-wide scale that it.

Which leads us to the recommendation to pitch projects / campaigns. Why? Because they have objectives of their own, and a timefame for achieving them. Projects / Campaigns do not necessarily rely on having industry measures such as Opportunity-To-See (OTS).

Instead, they have defined project / campaign objectives, which at the end of the run, may be judged to either have been met or not.

It was very interesting that several resources recommend that DOOH be tied-in to its more accountable cousins - Web and mobile. These siblings will certainly be able to produce clicks and hits that can make the numeric case for DOOH. Of course, the metric can be as plain as say... a 30% increase in surrenderees from para-military insurgents, as one of the case studies / examples below will show.

DOOH at this stage seems so enamored with technology, that we need to pull back and ask what all these new-found capabilities and facilities are for.

At the end of the day, we may do well to take a cue from the learnings of mobile. It's no longer so much about the phone these days, but the apps.

Let's pitch an idea, then round up the DOOH tools to execute it. Advertising is about the audience - the advertiser or media buyer listening to our pitch. Let's ask them what they need, come up with a plan, then harness DOOH tech to achieve that.

"A carpenter isn't buying a drill, he's buying a hole."

Some of the amazing projects / campaigns that blew our minds:

http://gizmodo.com/5302856/anti+abuse-bus-stop-ad-only-batters-women-when-nob...

http://www.facebook.com/nidofortified.ph