Episode 6
Billboards Bets and a bit of Booze
Context and personalization in OOH ads play a pivotal role in captivating audiences’ attention! Tune in as host Jonathan Gudai and Esther Raphael, CMO of Intersection, explore the importance of the creator economy and hyper-localization within the OOH community. And who knows, maybe these elements might elevate your advertising strategy to new heights!
Transcript
Jonathan Gudai
There is an element of these kiosks that are dual-sided video-enabled on every single corner that when you combine those and you think about all the touchpoints that people have as they’re walking through the city.
Esther Raphael
It feels super powerful and like you’ve taken over a part of the city in a way that you would not otherwise be able to do without Link.
Jonathan Gudai
All right. Here we are on Billboards, Bets and a little bit of Booze. Welcome, Esther Rafael, Chief Marketing Officer for Intersection. Welcome.
Esther Raphael
Thank you. I’m so excited to be here.
Jonathan Gudai
And before we get started talking about our bets and talking about billboards and digital out-of-home, we have a tradition here of kicking things off with a little bit of booze. Let’s do it. I know it’s 9:00 in the morning.
Esther Raphael
It is.
Jonathan Gudai
I also know that you have a flight that you’re about to catch, to head across the country.
Esther Raphael
Well, some people would like a little bit of booze before their flight.
Jonathan Gudai
It’s true. Sometimes they do.
Esther Raphael
I’m just getting ready for the flight.
Jonathan Gudai
But so we’re going to honor that tradition today. And, you know, I thought, look, it’s the morning, it’s arguably brunch time. So why don’t we do a little bit of.
Esther Raphael
Yeah.
Jonathan Gudai
Mimosas. Yes. So, yes, we have a Dom Perignon.
Esther Raphael
I thought you were going to make me drink bourbon. And I. I would feel so bad for the waste of your bourbon.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah. I was like, oh, and we have action. Normally in Vegas, the lights would be off, this would be glowing. Everyone be happy about that. But here in our podcast, we’re just going to soak the table up and, you know.
Esther Raphael
Good job.
Jonathan Gudai
Let’s kick things off and talk a little bit about the future of the industry, the future of intersection, the future things that are getting you excited and so on. On this podcast, we really like to think about bets from like, where are you focused on a few different initiatives that you think kind of take things to the next level?
Esther Raphael
Yeah.
Jonathan Gudai
And for those who may not be familiar with Intersection, if you could start first with just a little background on your company and your role there and then maybe we can talk about some of the bets.
Esther Raphael
Well, I’m the CMO of intersection. And Intersection is an experience driven out of home media and technology company. And we have translated air and street media all over the country. You may know us from one of our flagship products, Link NYC, which is the largest, largest digital network in New York. And one of the pieces of media we are very, very proud to have in our portfolio.
Jonathan Gudai
Very cool. You can’t walk the streets of New York without literally seeing Intersection on every intersection.
Esther Raphael
Yes.
Jonathan Gudai
And the impact that that has. How many different units just take Manhattan or New York area? Like how many different kiosks or screens do you guys have?
Esther Raphael
Thousands!
Jonathan Gudai
It’s in the thousands. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Huge, huge footprint.
Esther Raphael
Huge footprint, which is what, you know, we love about Link. You can reach all of New York. You can reach a specific audience. You can tap into our dynamic capabilities. It’s a really powerful network and a major part of the city and the communities within the city.
Jonathan Gudai
Totally love it. There are also video-enabled.
Esther Raphael
They are.
Jonathan Gudai
Correct. So are you. Do you do a mix of video and static images or is it mostly video content that comes to advertising?
Esther Raphael
It’s a mix.
Jonathan Gudai
Okay.
Esther Raphael
And now we’re starting to play in. Of course I’m out. I was I lost the word because it’s so new. It’s like 3D.
Jonathan Gudai
Anamorphic.
Esther Raphael
Anamorphic. Yes. We’re starting to play with that. As you see obviously in Times Square on those huge billboards when like Nike shoe pops out of the screen and looks 3D. So we do a video capabilities and we, of course, have static capabilities on the screen as well.
Jonathan Gudai
Sure. Sure. You know, a lot of times people when they think about out of home, they’re thinking about just Times Square, they’re thinking about roadside digital billboards. But there is an element of these kiosks that are dual-sided video-enabled on every single corner that when you combine those and you think about all the touchpoints that people have as they’re walking through the city, in some ways more impactful.
Esther Raphael
You know, we’ve done a lot of takeovers, takeovers of the city, takeovers of certain neighborhoods. There’s this moment called Manhattanhenge in the city where all of the I always think, like, I’ve never seen this all the years I’ve lived in Manhattan. And yet I talk about this campaign all the time. But I guess it’s when the sunset lines up with the skyline.
Jonathan Gudai
Okay.
Esther Raphael
There are certain streets that you can see it from. And Coke did a drop. It was a countdown to a new can release times with Manhattanhenge. So it was a countdown of when you were going to get to see the buildings line up with the sunset and the launch of the can. So to do things like that, Batman’s had to take over. Like the whole all of these streets are just Batman creative. It feels super powerful. And like you’ve taken over a part of the city in a way that you would not otherwise be able to do without Link.
Jonathan Gudai
Totally. And I’m just picturing, like we’ve done some campaigns in Adomni where we’ve done Link or we’ve done other, it’s kind of like street level and you can literally paint the streets like you could have if you have like a, like a prominent color. Like people are going to remember that brand just because of the colors literally emitting throughout the city and every single corner. It’s really cool.
Esther Raphael
Especially at night, the video at night is always so beautiful when you get to see that kind of take over the lights of the color up on the city.
Jonathan Gudai
So amazing. And it’s also a vertical format screen, which right now I feel like possibly is more popular than ever before just because our smartphones are vertical. Talk a bit about that, how important is that?
Esther Raphael
It is super important. And I think about this all the time as a consumer. And I think that we often lose as folks in advertising. And I’ve been in advertising my whole career. You sometimes forget that you’re a consumer. And when I think about myself through the lens of a consumer and when I think about how they reached me as the decision maker, there’s only two places and it does tie into what you just mentioned, which is the format also. It’s obviously out of home and into social media, and I’m not putting out of home in there because I work in the industry. It’s true. If you want to sell me something, you’re going to get me in out of home or you’re going to get me on social media, specifically Instagram. I will click through to buy and obviously TikTok. I cannot count the number of things I have purchased from TikTok. They have some work to do in terms of being able to shop off of it.
Jonathan Gudai
Right. But but it’s it’s influential. It’s influential. I mean, the data certainly supports that people’s attention is going there. And we in the out of home industry also have all this time of people spending, traveling through. So it kind of makes sense that from just a time spent, like those are the places that that influence. But I think what excites me and some of the initiatives we’re working on, and I’d love to hear kind of how this might dovetail with your bets. I usually like you guys to have the first, the first, you know, statement of what your what you’re betting on. But the idea that these things actually connect and that we’re in this world of overstimulation, you know, it’s just crazy how many things, ideas, advertisements, just like pings we have in our world. How do we break through, cut through the noise? And, Intersection literally is everywhere in the markets that you guys serve. And so that helps in a big way. I mean, that ubiquity, you know, that on admissibility, I’m sure is is a big piece of that.
Esther Raphael
Well, there’s something, too, out of home as you talk about breaking through the noise. You know, there’s there’s few times in your day that you’re in silence or you try to be in silence. I’m not in silence often. But when you’re walking down the street, even this morning when I was walking to get here in my Uber, I thought to myself, like, just put your phone down, like for five freaking seconds, put your phone down. And that’s when out of home works best. And that’s a lot of the research that came out at the end of the pandemic, talking about how people felt more engaged than ever, because it is this moment of like, I can’t look at the screen anymore. I have to put the phone down or I have to leave my desk. And then what you’re left with is like this breath of fresh air. You want to be outside, you want to be in a moment of silence, and you’re more willing to absorb what’s around you because of it.
Jonathan Gudai
Totally. And I think people are starting to wake up to that idea that there’s like a value system that we somehow drifted off of. And I think that’s actually where out of home can play a really important role for marketers and even for consumers. And so I’d love to you know, when I was on your website, just doing a little browsing the –
Esther Raphael
Some light reading.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah, just some light reading which I know this is part of your work or that, you know, part partly your voice you describe Intersection as an experience driven out of home media and technology company. And so I thought that would be something I’d want to kind of probe further. When you say experience driven, what do you mean by that?
Esther Raphael
So Intersection and actually Link we’re talking a lot about Link today. I was the first to put content on our screens. We actually have a team of editors that write content for our screens. It’s not, you know, someone’s side job, it’s their full time job. And we started it and that’s the why right? The experience part. When you think about all media, it all comes with the consumer experience. It starts with that, right? You turn on your TV because you want to watch whatever’s on and then you’re willing to take the ads right where you’ve paid to make them go away, which does work in our best interest as an ad, as a different type of media. Magazines, newspapers, even social media. You come for the content, you come for the experience, you stay for the ad, right?
Jonathan Gudai
Right.
Esther Raphael
When we launched Link, we realized we were going to have thousands of screens across the city. We thought about innovating and taking a bet. We used some of your own language and what that was going to look like and how it was going to be different than other out of home media properties. And we started immediately with content. So the way that we think about content on Link is almost sometimes down to the very screen in a neighborhood. It’s very it’s done to service the community and to serve New York. So we have different categories know, do, inform, and we program the streets in the same way that you would go to any other media to get information. There’s a value exchange there. We’ve also done a lot of our own research that our consumers and the people who are walking around the city tend to welcome an ad more because they’re also looking at the weather, which that one always makes me laugh. People love the weather and I always think to myself like, Did you really go outside and wait to find the weather on Link? Like, What are you going to do now? You’re going to go.
Jonathan Gudai
Change?
Esther Raphael
Get a coat
Jonathan Gudai
Go buy a jacket
Esther Raphael
An umbrella? like I always have the first one to be like, Are we done with weather now? And it’s not going to happen. It’s staying, so it will outlive me. But then we also on our transit properties, we do a lot of work with our advertisers to create experiences within transit hubs. So we’ve worked with Blue Bunny to turn a station into an ice cream station. So you’d walk out and you’d get ice cream and you’d talk to the, you know, the ice cream person about what would an ice cream server be right about the new flavors while you’re getting on the subway on like a hot day in Chicago. We really want to think about our media and we do think about our media differently than just a screen. It is about the consumer’s experience in a really contextual environment when they want to participate.
Jonathan Gudai
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And that’s. I feel like you’re touching upon something that, you know, when the world went from painted to vinyl, vinyl to digital, there was this huge leap on the amounts of content and the amount of messages that you could put. When all of a sudden you are in a loop and you’ve got multiple and you’ve video support, right? And the element of, you know, how do we ensure that people want to look at the screens and or how do we ensure that we’re not pissing people off because everyone’s bullshit meters higher than it’s ever been before? And when it’s just ad after ad after ad, and even if it’s a hyperlocal, relevant ad, it still becomes something that people maybe dismiss. And so I’m hearing that’s what part of that experience is, is where you’re mixing it up so that people aren’t just looking at it as purely a one way to sell you something, but actually it’s something that delivers value back. Yeah, that’s awesome. You know, we, we, you know, I spoke last at the last EPA about the blend of how the social platforms like TikTok especially do content and advertising in such a really unique way. And I know you said you’re a big Instagram person and you buy a lot of stuff from Instagram. So it works that we’re feeding and people’s, you know, what your friends are doing and then also all the relevant messaging.
Esther Raphael
I mean… Jonathan’s didn’t give me any like prep for this podcast. He just said, we’re going to talk about what your bets are for the out of home industry. So I’m going to have to, like jump into my pants because you’re touching on all of them.
Jonathan Gudai
Okay. Let’s do it.
Esther Raphael
Like.
Jonathan Gudai
One.
Esther Raphael
I can’t make good points unless you let me do my bets.
Jonathan Gudai
That. Let’s go. Let’s go. That one.
Esther Raphael
Okay. That number one is right on topic. I think it’s personalization 2.0. So personalization to me is like a buzz word that like all CMO’s have been saying for a while and it kind of became one of those words that really annoyed me. But what’s special about Out of Home And this is so top of mind to me, because I have an experience from Vegas, from this trip that made me think about the significance of personalization in out of home and why I’m betting on it being the 2.0 and taking it a little bit more literally in this space is the beauty of like the context of audience and location. So I arrive in Vegas. This is a true story.
Jonathan Gudai
Fresh.
Esther Raphael
A fresh story. I arrive in Vegas. My husband and I are going to a store. We’re getting to the store. And I’m like, I don’t know, maybe we should go to a different story. I always go to this store like, what are their store is there? And then I look up and there is a billboard and it says, New store opens on the street. And I’m like, Oh, let’s go there. So we make a right. And then the next billboard says, Make a left.
Jonathan Gudai
No.
Esther Raphael
Yes, and then I make a left. Now, if I didn’t work at out of home advertising, it’d be like, Oh my God, God is speaking to me.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah, exactly. It’s like, so it’s my name and Minority Report, like the 2023 version-
Esther Raphael
So we follow this billboard, and I’m like, damn, like, this is the definition of personalization. And I get to the store and I look at it and I’m like, I don’t want to go to this store. And then I see a car wrap. This is not a joke. There’s a taxi wrap. It says, go to this store is the most magical store in the world. And I’m like, Let’s go to that store.
Jonathan Gudai
Don’t give up.
Esther Raphael
And we went to that store and I thought to myself, like, this is the power of out of home, right? And it’s not like I’m not participating in it because I work in it like I’m participating in it as a consumer like this just happens. That is, you know, when you think about TikTok and I know because I’ve a lot of friends that work there and I spend a lot of time more than I should absorbing TikTok and thinking about the creator economy, their business tagline, and I’m going to watch it. It’s not exactly this, but it’s make Tiktoks not ads. And that is it. That is personalization. 2.0 for out of home. It’s not just make an ad this the sign didn’t say store right it said new store right here like you you this store knew where I was going and it was like, don’t go there, come here. And then the next sign was like, and this is how you get here. That is personalization in the out of home space actually giving me what to do, where to go, how do I get there, what am I going to experience when I get there? That’s going to make me change my mind and pivot. And I think it had a car and I went to the last store. Right? That’s personalization. And to me, if we can do that, right, that’s our version of Make Tiktoks not ads. Don’t just slap up the ad like tell me what I’m going to get right. And use the context of location and audience. And we know as out of home media companies and all the, you know, pieces of the business, we have very specialized information about who you’re going to reach when they see that sign. We can help brands and advertisers get targeted and with their messaging and really personailze it. And to me that’s that’s bet number one.
Jonathan Gudai
Awesome. So bet number one is around that hyper-localized personalization 2.0. Bet number two.
Esther Raphael
Bet number two is going to be around the creator economy. Now, I know this is a space that you think a lot about too, to me, the creator economy is something I’m so fascinated with. It’s really changed what a celebrity is. You know, when I think back to who a celebrity was to me when I was younger, it’d be like a movie star and like a pop star. And I don’t think that that’s who a celebrity is today to Gen Z. A celebrity is like Addison Rae or Dixie D’amelio or like these are creators who in their own right now have Netflix shows and albums. And I really like if I was 20 today, I feel like I would be a really successful TikToker. That’d be my new job, like calling, you know, Gen Z or just to start making videos if you won $20 million by the time you’re 20. But they’ve changed the landscape in this way that is so amazing to watch and they’ve changed advertising. It’s changed the way that consumers engage with brands. Because now does it really matter if Katy Perry tells me to buy lipstick? No. The next generation wants to hear from a more authentic voice and a voice that actually tried the lipstick and maybe didn’t get paid to tell you to wear that lipstick. Maybe not yet. They’ll get paid at some point, but not yet. And it’s a $100 billion industry, already. It’s only going to go up. It’s only going to continue to change the way that we consume that we are influenced and I know all these people who are listening because I’m never influenced your influenced every day, absolutely everything around you. I am happy to admit all the ways I’m influenced by influencers and content creators. So now what?
Jonathan Gudai
And so one of our big experiments is how do we translate what happens on your phone that people are doing and all of these individualized personal moments to, to complement that in the physical world, in the real world.
Esther Raphael
I love that. And you know, I love Shoutable too.
Jonathan Gudai
Thank you and like let’s just let’s just for the record know that you guys created Shoutable.
Esther Raphael
Well, I wasn’t going to say that.
Jonathan Gudai
We didn’t create Shoutable. You created Shoutable.
Esther Raphael
Intersections did create Shoutable. You know, it’s one of the things that we always do at Intersection, which is to innovate and try new things. And we didn’t create it for the same intent that you use. Well, similar in some ways and different in others, but it’s an awesome product. And I do think that that’s probably the closest thing right now to how we might be able to see.
Jonathan Gudai
A Crossover.
Esther Raphael
A crossover. So that’s particularly interesting to me to watch how that will grow and develop. And obviously as somebody who touched Shoutable at one point, I’m a huge fan and want to see it have a smashing success of a crossover. So.
Jonathan Gudai
What does that look like? What is that success or what does that vision look like? I know that.
Esther Raphael
I mean, I would love to see I would love to see creators use Shoutable to create the out of home campaign. So instead of like just that and again still there’s Link challenges we have to work through even in what I just said. But to be able to say to a creator like you just created this campaign for Maybelline, now you Shoutable to do the out of home execution. That is very interesting to me. I mean, I don’t see creators like sitting there and picking their billboards. So you’ll have to come up with the next version of that. But using it as a platform to create and to disseminate, that could be very interesting.
Jonathan Gudai
Totally. And that’s the power we were looking to put in the hands of creators, really everyone.
Esther Raphael
Well, I have not used Shoutable recently, but a friend’s purchase me a billboard on Shoutable. So for me I have a side podcast as a passion project with a friend and over Hanukkah, Christmas, she kept going live on her Instagram and saying like, I bought you something and the elves are coming. And I’m like, What is going on? Like? And it was like taunting me in this very annoying way. She would not tell me what it was.
Jonathan Gudai
That is kind of ominous.
Esther Raphael
And then I assumed it was going to be like flowers or balloons. I don’t know what was going on. And she ended up buying us a billboard through Shoutable for our podcast. And she had my daughter filmed me. My reaction to seeing the billboard now again, like going back to where I started. It’s so hard when you work in media, like just live as a person, as a consumer and like just be in that moment. And that was one of those moments in the same way that I just said, like, I experienced the Vegas billboard standing me to the store. I see the billboard and I’m like, and I know what it is and I know how much it costs where you take yourself out of knowing that. And I died. I was like, I bought a billboard. It was like the same feeling that I imagined. Like, like when you see all the celebrities who are still posting pictures of themselves with their out of home ads like, you’ve seen your face on every screen, magazines.
Jonathan Gudai
Magazine.
Esther Raphael
In the movie theater.
Jonathan Gudai
But it doesn’t compare. It, does it? There’s a technical phrase for that. I don’t know if you’ve heard that. Is it called the fuck yes moment.
Esther Raphael
I love a fuck yes moment.
Jonathan Gudai
That sounds to me like that was your fuck yes moment. .
Esther Raphael
I guess so. It. It was so cool and so amazing. So that is also the power of Shoutable, I think, to be able to give the gift of like having that like, hey, look, my made it moment. It’s an awesome it’s an awesome.
Jonathan Gudai
Totally. Yeah. And it’s the first time that we’re able to show off our product and everyone knows at Adomni we have, you know, all these screens and technology that connects audiences. But to actually be like in here, here’s a coupon code. Yeah, I want you to experience this. It is something that once you do have an experience like the first time when we launched it in May, I took my mom, my grandma and my wife, all of them. I did Mother’s Day billboards with different photos and all that. And we went on a billboard safari and we went to all these different billboards and we waited for it to come up and each of the reactions a little bit different, but they were all the same, and that there was just like this emotional outpouring that our channel Digital out of Home and out of home creates that’s so unique compared to everything else out there. So you put that in the hands of creators, and when they’re thinking about what they’re going to do that’s built for Instagram or TikTok, them also thinking about how they can also adapt a piece of that that can be on Link NYC screens. And when they go see themselves on there, it’s not just the did it show up in was it effective but they’re going to post it, they’re going to capture it and they’re going to throw that back up to TikTok and Instagram as an organic, sharable moment of pride for them. And that’s the part that really kind of lights me up when I think about what we’re trying to do there. So it’s awesome that you share that vision and we do. Thank you for blazing the original trail with Shoutable and we hope to make you proud with.
Esther Raphael
I’ll be watching-.
Jonathan Gudai
Stuff that we’re doing.
Esther Raphael
Watching and cheering. Love it.
Jonathan Gudai
Thank you. Bet three before we close out here.
Esther Raphael
Okay. bet three is a lighter one. I mean, I watched the podcast you did with Anna and how she talks about just having chutzpah and more balls and selling out of home like and that’s bet three to me is like just celebrating who we are would get us so much further. You know, there’s a lot of I’ve been in the industry long enough now to watch people say things like, well, we’re not out of home, we’re digital, right? Well, we’re not this, we’re that. No, no, we’re none of those things. We are out of home. And that is what makes us special. That is why we are one of the only platforms that still works. That is why we are the only platform that lets you Reach as a consumer speak to them. You could get them in mass, you could be personalized, you can target people. There’s so much we can do and we will continue to innovate and grow and develop. But we should really own and have the chutzpah behind being proud to sell out of home and be a part of this industry. To me, like if we would all just own that and live in that, there’s a great, great power to that.
Jonathan Gudai
Totally. and we talk about how what we’re doing is providing you access to the real world. And, you know, there’s all of what you can do on the phone and on television or whatever. But like the real world is this amazing canvas that is being underutilized. And I think that’s what excites me. And what we’re doing at Adomini and Shoutable is like, how do we make it more utilized? And how we partner with Intersection, who is always been forward leaning when it comes to technology. You were one of the first programmatic publishers, early days with Ari and and then Place Exchange that got spun out, which is, by the way, such an amazing company run by amazing people.
Esther Raphael
Run by amazing people Ari and Dave are awesome. That’s the best of the best.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah. So there’s a really good thing going and it’s important that no one gets really comfortable with where things are at. We’re constantly challenging, but it also for you guys, you have a big business that has sort of some traditional elements to it. So it’s also really cool for us to see that you guys understand that there’s the legacy. But there’s also, yeah, what needs to happen where we might have to break down some things and you know, ways to do that.
Esther Raphael
We do that really well at Intersection. One of the things that I’m most proud of, I’m really proud that we’re able to say, like, these are the traditions and the traditional pieces of business that we hold really close to our heart and that we won’t change. And then these are the ways that we continue to innovate every single day. Like just think about the things we talked about on this podcast, all the ways that Intersection innovates, it’s mind blowing. It’s amazing. But not only Intersection, the industry as a whole, we are all doing it together. It’s awesome to watch. I at the Out of home at the OAAA conference in Nashville, I was interviewed. I was going to be interviewing a client on the main stage. So the night before I took him out for drinks so we could get to know each other. And he said to me something which is true. It was so interesting to him to realize that we were all competitors. Like when I was describing who was at the bar, it’s like you’re all competitors, but like there’s this real camaraderie and real ability to just have fun together and be pals and then also like go compete against each other for business or for whatever you’re doing. And that is who we are as an industry, right? Like we want, we want each other to win. Yeah, like, sure, we compete, but we’re doing it together and we’re in it together and that is a win for all of us.
Jonathan Gudai
All of us. And that and that you feel that, you know, the fact that Lamar just celebrated 120 years in business.
Esther Raphael
Yeah.
Jonathan Gudai
And you think about the next 120 years, they’re still going to be out of home advertising. There’s going to be digital content being served out in the real world. So we’re not going anywhere. It’s just how do we keep making a better and better and bigger and bigger and and it’s going to be fun. Continue to innovate with you. So thank you for coming on the show, thanks for stopping by.
Esther Raphael
Thanks for the pre-flight Dom.
Jonathan Gudai
Absolutely. Absolutely. I wish I could give this to you to take for your airplane.
Esther Raphael
Just put it in my water bottle.
Jonathan Gudai
If you don’t mind counting that at the curb right before we drop you off.
Esther Raphael
Yeah, that’s fine.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah. And then we’ll take that with you. But it’s awesome to see you. Thank you.
Esther Raphael
For that. Next time I come, though. I do want everyone dressed like Elvis or something.
Jonathan Gudai
All right. We’re going to. Yeah, we’re going to raise-
Esther Raphael
Seattle? I’m not getting the Vegas vibe. Okay.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah, we definitely can throw some more neon and skin into the game.
Esther Raphael
Amazing. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan Gudai
Absolutely. See ya.