DTC for OOH – A Q&A with Jeremy Flynn, CCOA
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands are disrupting traditional industries left and right, from Warby Parker in the glasses industry to Harry’s redefining shaving. These digitally native brands sell their products straight to the consumer, earning them the name DTC. Advertisements for their products are seen all across the internet, particularly on social media platforms. So why are these heavily digital brands a perfect fit for offline Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising?
We sat down with Jeremy Flynn to get to the bottom of this.
Q: Jeremy, tell us a bit about what you do in CCOA.
A: I’m the head of data products and strategy for Clear Channel Outdoor Americas (CCOA) overseeing the development of our CCO RADAR suite of data analytic solutions. CCO RADAR is where some of the most impactful innovations are happening in OOH including things like offering new targeting, measurement and attribution solutions that also incorporate a way to integrate a company’s own first party data, so OOH can do more to drive ROI for brands and make it easier for them to buy OOH. Part of my job also includes building strong activation solutions for our customers so they can maximize the benefit of our capabilities, such as CCO RADAR.
Before I came to CCOA, I was at a Silicon Valley start-up working on ad-tech solutions for publishers, brands and advertisers. When I started talking to CCOA, my thinking was that OOH was ripe for disruption. OOH has been such a strong and consistent and highly valuable medium for so many decades, but it needs to be more measurable and responsive. And with new data insights powered by some of today’s most sophisticated data, it is.
Q: Many DTC brands are digital-first or digital-only. OOH is quite the opposite. With that in mind, is OOH a good fit for DTC brands?
A: Many companies have built their brands on the strength of out of home – we’re highly visible and have mass audience. It’s not just the stalwarts like Coke and McDonald’s. Trusted consumer brands have long recognized a good branding opportunity with OOH; Apple built its iPod (remember those) and iPhone brands using OOH and continues to turn to OOH to promote its brands. Now, the same goes for Netflix and Amazon and lots of other tech titans that take their products direct to consumers.
OOH offers DTC brands an opportunity to build their brands by presenting themselves to customers in unique and headline-generating ways. Young DTC brands usually have limited budgets or strict performance marketing goals, and have to be conservative with how to allocate their advertising dollars, but the more innovative and successful DTC’s are realizing they need to leverage channels that drive the most reach in an efficient way. Digital brands can leverage data they gleaned from customer behaviors from the digital world to reach consumers in the physical world.
Cannot think of a better channel for them than OOH!
Q: What can digital brands find in the real world that they cannot in the digital one?
A: Digital brands can’t engage with customers in a physical way – and this can be a challenge for some brands. Some, like Warby Parker have figured out how to bridge this gap, and OOH offers all brands – but particularly digital brands – the ability to continue the conversation in the real world. Warby Parker is a good case study in driving brand loyalists to permanent or pop up retail locations. OOH has always been about reaching consumers where they are in the real world and engaging them. It’s much better trying a pair of glasses on in person than from just seeing the product online. Same goes for mattresses (Casper) and fashion (Bonobos & MMLaFleur).
Q: In what way has your experience with DTC brands been different than traditional brands?
A: A lot of DTC brands have this “online only” dilemma. A key question for them is how do they move to engage the consumer in the offline world? Online marketing can be a fantastic means of customer acquisition in the near-term, but less so at growing and building a brand, and at some point a brand has to focus on how they’re going to get a bigger share of the pie. One of the great strengths of OOH is that it’s a proven way to build a brand and generate awareness.
Rent the Runway knows this, and they’re a great example of a DTC brand that has figured out the value of transitioning from online customer acquisition and sales to engagement with consumers in the physical world via store showrooms of their products. This gets at an important trend we’ve been seeing with DTCs: a lot of the DTCs are setting up pop-ups to build out customer relationship platforms from the digital world for real world consumer experiences based on the brand’s digital data. Rent the Runway knows who their customers are and where they are and how they live, so they can create a pop-up store that appeals to them and in the right location to get them in the door. What OOH brings to this equation is that we can be the connective tissue that drives the real-world consumers to the pop-up store. This is one of the great advantages of OOH for the digital companies – we can enhance their brand appeal in the real world.
Q: Where do you see the future of OOH, and what part do DTC brands have in this vision?
A: The future of OOH is exciting for DTC brands but the industry I’m talking about is applicable to every brand. We’re helping brands have more data at their fingertips, so they improve the efficacy of their OOH buys – and of the own first party data that they acquire.
OOH has always had the captivating power to break through advertising clutter – it’s not at the mercy of the digital ad blocker and on-demand streaming services. While other advertising disrupts the audience experience, OOH will continue to have a reliable viewability story that more buyers will become attuned to as we get more and more sophisticated with our ability to integrate data into our solutions. Incorporating the best practices that have existed in digital, we’re moving past measurable outcomes and taking campaign learnings and insights and sharing them with our clients, so they can optimize their ads to drive even greater impact of their OOH media campaigns.
So when a brand asks, “Can we bring our data to you for planning and measurement?,” OOH companies will need to be able to answer in a resounding “YES!” so we can continue to deliver innovations that help us become more integral to the brand conversation by enabling brands to bridge the gap between the online and offline worlds. As a result, our industry will become more nimble with data and more responsive to our customers’ needs.
We’ve just begun that with our latest solution: RADARSync™, where we are developing an even more intimate understanding of ad exposure in the physical world and how it drives online activity through social and other connected platforms.
Q: Anything else you would like to add?
A: I think it’s important for DTC brands to not lose sight of the fact that e-commerce is still only 10% of the entire retail market. So even though DTC brands are “online” brands, they can’t just focus on where only 10% of the buying is happening. You have to be where your competitors are, and there’s no better way to compete in the physical world than by leveraging the offline real-world power of OOH.
For more information on the proven success of OOH advertising for DTC, ways these companies are using OOH, and the four steps to activating a successful media strategy, download Ubimo’s DTC and OOH – A Love Story report.
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