Honk if yer heading to No Name!
Recently an article popped up on DigitalSignageToday.com, where several industry veterans and experts were asked to define the industry. This is not the first time this has come up, and I reckon this will continue for some time.
I personally know several of the experts mentioned in the article, and it’s easy to see why they were chosen to comment, but I think we can find better ways to spend our time than worrying about “defining” our industry.
I had a client one day ask me why we (we as an industry) call it Digital Out-of-Home. I gave him the boilerplate answer that it was a catch-all phrase to cover the industry of electronic messaging that you find outside of your home, but that there were several disciplines within it that had more direct titles. His response was that he always thought Digital Out-of-Home meant it was electronic messaging that originated from inside the home, like Digital Coming Out-from-the-inside-of-the-Home, not that it originated outside of the home.
Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, was quoted in The New York Times:
“I HAVE a DVD remote control with 52 buttons on it, and every one of them is there because some engineer along the line knew how to use that button and believed I would want to use it, too…People who design products are experts cursed by their knowledge, and they can’t imagine what it’s like to be as ignorant as the rest of us.”
Industry perception will be defined by the client, not by the expert. The only person in the room who really needs to understand is the person writing the check. And there’s a great chance that each client is different in needs and goals. If he wants to call it Digital Out-of-Home, he can. If he wants to call it digital signage, he can. If he wants to call it Little Bo Peep…well…I guess he can. What matters is whether or not he gets it. If he does, he pays us.
DOOH? Digital Signage? Those names work just fine. Let’s embrace them and start giving clients a terrific experience.
Great points, Paul. People tend to get caugh up in vernacular debates all the time. I think that for the time being, “DOOH” and the nomenclature surrounding it is sufficient, but will probably not suffice longterm. This is because as the industry expands in terms of collective footprint, reach, and targeting capability network to network, it is simultaneously contracting from an efficiency standpoint. I think that once we figure out how to maximize a singular platform of distribution, and when out-of-home will mean fully integrated, interactive, phased, consumer communication, I think that a sexier, sleeker term will then be coined. This will soon be the notion of “Digital Destination Advertising”, and refers to the wide range of elements that will be incorporated in a marketing strategy, being able to transform and harmonize content cross-platform, and to distribute consistent messages anywhere with a pixel. This is what we are working hard to achieve. Terminology and vernacular must be succinct with what the industry encompasses as a collective whole, what it can be, and what it must be in order to achieve that nirvana state of success we all want to experience within it.
[...] There are a few challenges the book faces. Overall, Mr. Kelsen makes the process and understanding sound much easier said than done. At several points in the book, I asked, “Okay, so how do I do that?” But, could not find an answer. As noted above with categorizing networks into three main sectors, the real understanding is in knowing that every single network, regardless of categorization, must have a unique and developed strategy. What works for one network will almost certainly not work for another. I feel it’s important not to gloss over this too much, to help the reader understand that it doesn’t matter if you own one screen or one thousand screens, this stuff is challenging and often nebulous. Industry veterans will attest to this quite freely. Perhaps that’s what makes the industry so exciting. (Heck, people continue to argue about whether or not we should call ourselves digital signage!) [...]