SPECIAL REPORT : Outdoor Advertising - Round Won; The battle between the Auckland City Council...

Marketers stayed well away from outdoor in quarter one of 2007, largely due to the protracted Auckland City Council vs billboards battle.

Months later, the out-of-home advertising industry has dusted itself off, buoyed up by the Auckland City Council's decision to make only small changes to

"It's a resounding victory for the industry," says Oggi managing director Gordon Frykberg. He says while the eventual decision preserved the status quo plus some extra guidelines, there's still ambiguity and room for abuse in the new provisions.

"If they now put the resources into applying and enforcing it, that's terrific. But the jury's out at this stage," says Frykberg.

"I feel we fought a smart battle against council," says Paul Kenny, outgoing managing director of i-Site media. "We lobbied, we used PR - we didn't stoop to personal attacks using billboards etc, which heightened tensions between parties. Ultimately common sense prevailed."

i-Site is a member of the Outdoor Advertising Association of NZ (OAANZ), also comprising Ad-vantage Media, Look Outdoor, Media1, Parking Space and Eyecorp NZ. While OAANZ pursued dialogue with council, Oggi made it personal.

"My approach was, we should be absolutely aggressive and as direct as possible - targeting councillors, targeting the stupidity of it," explains Frykberg. "We did a lot of billboards I will maintain forever had a resonant impact on a lot of the decision-makers."

Whichever straw broke the camel's back, the exercise cost the outdoor industry dearly, both in legal and lobbying costs, and in lost opportunities.

"I would guess over a million dollars were spent by people defending the existing bylaw against the council's proposal," says Tim Simpkins, managing director of APN Outdoor, parent company of Look Outdoor and Buspak. "We as an industry and all our supporters dedicated resource - not just huge financial input, but also the time involved. I personally dedicated 80 percent of my time from November to the end of April fighting this. We were fighting something that should never have come that far, and at the same time losing income."

Not only billboard companies were affected by the scare. Pauline Hanton, sales director of AdShel, says the entire out-of-home industry suffered from a trickle-down effect. "Everyone put their brakes on, got into a 'wait-and-see' position," says Hanton.

Duncan Harris, managing director of Ad-vantage Media and chairman of OAANZ, traces the causes of the ban proposal. "The people who continue to use illegal billboards put pressure on council to do something," says Harris. "There are definitely some people in council who don't like signs of any shape or form, but in the end it was too many people doing the wrong stuff."

Martin Gillman, managing director of Total Media, says even though the council overreacted, they did have a point. "Auckland has become an ugly city. The lack of control on outdoor advertising, including shop signage, has contributed to that," says Gillman. "It's really good the council are finally considering the way the city looks, but it's a shame the advertising industry's viewpoint was completely thrown out."

Gillman says the entire argument was fought on the wrong basis. "We never needed a complete blanket ban of all commercial activity in those areas," he says. "We need to start on individual elements."

Some believe there's an upside to the results. "The market's now focused on quality, not quantity," says Kenny. And Harris adds, "When we finally got the council to listen to us, we told them how to strengthen the bylaw so we can work together and enforce it."

A key part of enforcement is holding advertisers and agencies accountable as operators for using illegal billboards.

The industry is bouncing back, albeit slowly in some quarters. Kenny reports July 2007 was i-Site's second best month on record, and Simpkins notes outdoor's share of adspend has almost caught up with Australia's. Media1's gm Heather Galbraith says clients have mostly forgotten the proposed ban and are looking ahead, while Murray Davis, managing director of large format printer Omnigraphics, which prints billboards, predicts a positive outlook to the end of 2007, in line with growth in advertising worldwide.

Hanton also notes the market picking up, but notes marketers are cautious in planning long-term. "We're caught into a short planning and buying cycle," she says. "People are still planning 12 to 18 months out, but booking by quarter - or sometimes booking only a month out."

This caution may be because of nerves around the economy, or it may be reflective of the new advertising habits of highly reactive industries such as telecommunications and finance.

Talk of a ban aside, billboards are still popular. i-Site, New Zealand's largest billboard company, recently cut back its line of ambient products to focus on its core products, including billboards. "We needed to focus rather than have a wide range of fun, but ultimately less profitable lines," says Kenny.

Meanwhile Oggi, a billboards-only company for 18 years, is now stepping inside with a digital screen network throughout The Warehouse stores. (See box story, "Coming to a screen near you"). There are also plans to maximise inventory with scrolling billboards. "It gives us the opportunity to deliver more revenue from a single site, and offer more money to site owners," says Frykberg. "It's almost green - we're consolidating what we've got to deliver more ads. We're not creating any more visual pollution."

AdShel is also breaking new ground with a range of different "create" options for its bus shelter advertising. The options were launched in a recent Australasian roadshow, with 37 media and marketing people in Auckland (AdShel marketing manager Nick Martin assures us the low number was "purely because of the bad weather") and 73 in Wellington.

The most popular innovation was a scented AdShel, which sprays a scented mist at the press of a button. "Great for coffee or cookies," says Martin. Also popular was a bluetooth-enabled AdShel which sends out files such as wallpapers or ringtones. The more ubiquitous bluetooth replaces the Hyperfactory's Hypertag technology.

Also popular among roadshow attendees was lenticular printing, which, while not new, offers movement without the use of high-risk technology. Of special interest was Mobot, an Australian technology which uses photo recognition to recognise picture messages sent from a mobile phone. Effectively, Mobot makes it easy to enter a competition by simply taking a photo with your phone and sending it.

In the ambient space, there's one big name: Ambient Advertising (the company, not the medium). Since its launch at the beginning of 2006, the company, headed by Chris Monaghan, has represented scores of obscure and unusual media to ad agencies.

"When we came into the market, I was confident it would work," says Monaghan. "Our Australian parent company was founded in 1999 on the back of solid research showing online and ambient were the fastest-growing categories."

The optimism is shared by Gillman, who describes the ambient industry as "mushrooming". "There's an explosion in spend in this emerging area," says Gillman. "It's a form of media which tries to generate a stronger connection with the target audience."

Monaghan points out that in the UK, every media schedule has an ambient component. And here in New Zealand, "brands and agencies are starting to think outside the traditional media mindset", according to Monaghan. "They realise their business won't fall apart if they don't drop a huge percentage of their budget on TVCs."

Ambient's offering ranges from coffee cups to pizza boxes to New Zealand's largest (and only) advertising network of construction site toilets.

But some raise the question of sustainability for ambient media. Rachel Hunt, APN Outdoor's marketing manager, calls ambient a red herring. "It's sexy, it's interesting but it doesn't hold a significant portion of everyone's ad budget," she says. "Clients touch it for one campaign and then drop it. Because this market's so small you don't have clients willing to commit substantial budget."

Monaghan disagrees, saying his company is not experiencing one-hit wonders but instead finding strong interest, particularly from creatives, in unique ways to reach their audience. He does admit, however, the small market leaves relatively slim margins.

It certainly helps that Ambient owns most of its own media. The other media it represents, such as Parking Space and Agad, often also have a direct relationship with agencies.

"Agencies are busy," says Monaghan. "Ambient media has been the difficult child in the past. There's a little more logistics involved, and if it's busy it's eventually going to crawl to the side of the desk and fall off."

While some media - like coffee cups - are struggling to keep up with demand, others like Parking Space are facing advertiser indifference. "There's no magic answer," says Parking Space managing director Ian Stewart. "We have a medium that's a no-brainer for a lot of campaigns; it's just a matter of time until agencies see that."

Monaghan says the one-stop-shop aspect of Ambient Advertising has met an important need for agencies. "Agencies can come to us with a full brief or a one-liner," he says. "We'll give them ideas, case studies, ratecards, execute the campaign, and give them a post-campaign report."

It's the kind of service that's decidedly lacking in the outdoor sector. "Most billboard campaigns are no more than six strategically sited billboards," says Gillman. "Each company has a different way of installing, counting passing traffic, and sometimes competing billboard companies thinking they have the rights to the same site."

A one-stop shop has been an ongoing topic of conversation in the industry for some time. OAANZ chair Harris says while it's outside the remit of OAANZ - which is more focused on lobbying and regulation - there might be an opportunity. "For a smaller player it might be good," he says. "I don't think the whole industry needs to support it for it to be valuable."

The newly formed Outdoor Marketing Association - comprising AdShel, APN Outdoor, Eye, Media1 and Omnigraphics - is attempting to provide a united front to agencies and brands, but Hanton admits it's in its infancy.

"We have quite a large brand awareness job to be done," says Hanton. "It has to be included in sales collateral of each of the media owners."

Marketers and media buyers' lives might also be easier if there were greater consolidation in the outdoor industry. Oggi and i-Site media are set to deliver on that wish in the next 12 months, but remain tight-lipped about takeover targets. "Most companies get a phone call a week," says Harris, "asking 'do you want to sell?'"

Simon Young is an Auckland-based writer.

simon@simonyoungwriters.com

Coming To A Screen Near You

Screens are everywhere, from LCD screens at the supermarket checkout to the increasingly large screens on our cellphones. But are we using them correctly?

Who's doing what:

Billboard operator Oggi is rolling out a pilot digital screen network in four The Warehouse stores -10 screens each. If the pilot is successful, the network will be rolled out to the entire Warehouse Group - more than 50 stores, including Warehouse Stationery.

Mall media operator Eye is introducing eyestudy, a network of standard and hi-tech installations throughout universities - including high-resolution LCD screens. Eye's Australasian CEO is excited: "It gives us access to that really hard-to-reach audience of 18 to 24-year-olds. Technology is part of their everyday life; we've got to engage with them on their terms."

Rush Media has been running an in-store LCD TV network in Foodtown and Woolworths stores, and while the package is compelling, it seems it hasn't taken off, according to Total Media CEO Martin Gillman. "A lot of these ambient projects just bubble below the surface, not quite big enough to gain traction and become mainstream," he says.

Perhaps a reason for that lack of traction is that the new format doesn't directly translate from other formats. "People are moving; they're not going to engage with a 30 second TVC," says Tyquin, who realises, along with Oggi, that marketers may resist the extra cost of purpose-made creative for a new medium.

However, the ideal format - a six or seven second animated file - sounds just like (another medium that's not new) online banners.