D’oh! It’s DOOH/All the Young Millennial Dudes
I’m meant to be cutting down my blog titles. But in the same way that my doctor wants me to cut down on the amount of cheese I’m eating, that doesn’t seem to be happening.
Where the cost of producing dynamic digital campaigns used to be prohibitive, competition and volume of demand means that agencies are rethinking how they can charge and lower prices means more campaigns. We have gone beyond the tipping point from DOOH being niche and have entered the stage where it is about to become mainstream.
I thought I’d give you a two for one deal to cover up a lack of cohesive writing give you value for money this week.
Whilst traveling to and from Wokingham, I always pass through Waterloo. I sometimes stare at the old, large, four-faced clock, and ponder its utter redundancy, in a very melancholic and romantic way.
After the police move me on, I also often cast my eye along the vast length of the digital billboard there, which is known as motion@waterloo (operated by JCDecaux)
Unbeknownst to me, I was looking at an example of DOOH (Digital Out-Of-Home), which is a term I was not aware of until this week, and can be described as putting a large, often interactive, flat screen in a very public place.
It has quickly established itself as an integral part of outdoor advertising, and rightly so, as it can be extremely effective. Here is a great example, a massively imaginative piece done by the creatives at Grand Visual, for Pepsi, which makes a mockery of my irreverent DOOH definition in the last paragraph:
Clearly the costs involved mean it is somewhat still in the domain of the big-budget, but Andrew Newman, co-founder of DOOH specialists Enigma, speaks confidently of these costs coming down:
“Where the cost of producing dynamic digital campaigns used to be prohibitive, competition and volume of demand means that agencies are rethinking how they can charge and lower prices means more campaigns. We have gone beyond the tipping point from DOOH being niche and have entered the stage where it is about to become mainstream.”
Let's hope we see a lot more things that make you go ‘OOH’ whilst out and about, in the future.
All the Young Dudes: Don’t brand humans. It don’t work.
A pet Gasp hate here: jargon and vague, all-encompassing tags.
I’m sure we’ve all read an article that mentions Millennials. They seem to be quite important, often accompanied with percentage stats etc. As far as I can judge, I think Millennials are just young people who were born close to the Millennium, and are lucky enough to have received a good education, and have good career prospects.
But if this photo from Forbes is anything to go by, you can’t be a Millennial if you are ugly. Millennials: the sexy super-race that still live with their mums. You can understand why they are meant to be narcissistic if they all look this good.
Here’s a stat for you sunbeam: the percentage of Millennials that actually consider themselves Millennials is 0.00004%. We just have to pigeon-hole, don’t we? Some of us need to think of a different way of saying the same thing that makes us sound like we provide cutting edge thought-leadership. Then come the sheep.
Is a 25 year-old lad with bad skin, who is grafting as a labourer on the trains a Millennial? No. And I don’t think he gives a shit either. I don’t actually think many people do. So what’s the point of the Millennial tag? It seems a little white-collar elitist, if I’m honest. And a complete waste of time. You do know how truly diverse the human race is, don’t you, you big, vague, average-content-internet monster?
If you start to talk about such a large group of humans in a generic way, with business-project-like rhetoric, then you are never going to engage with anyone on a worthwhile level, nor contribute any meaningful content that really furthers our self-understanding.
And on that, the term is not really being used in relation to much decent content. For example: ‘Travel Habits of Millennials: Only 10% used a travel agent last year.’ Nice one. That’s probably because the other 90% had their parents organise theirs.
This Forbes article is close to sounding like a satirical charity appeal for Millennials. It’s ridiculous.
‘This poor Millennial has gone 24 months without a phone upgrade. Is that, truly, anyway for a human being to live, this side of the Millennium?’
A good test I like to do when gauging a new term is replacing it with something already in usage that is mundane and generic, and see if it makes a difference. If you replace ‘Millennial’ with ‘Young Professional Adult’ in this Forbes article, for example, you lose absolutely nothing in the comprehension of the article’s points.
People may accuse me of being bitter, on discovering that I missed out on being a Millennial by a year. Whatevs.
George, who I work with, is in fact a young Millennial. He didn’t realise until I pointed this out to him. The change that this epiphany has evoked in him is marked*. Like a true Millennial, he is both more altruistic and vain at the same time…
*Do not worry. I assure you that George remains unchanged.