Grow The Industry For Everyone
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Amongst senior executives in the UK OOH industry, “Grow The Industry For Everyone” is a much used phrase at the moment. It was a major part of Ocean Outdoor’s Tim Bleakley‘s keynote at The DailyDOOH Media Summit in May – “Growth or Cannibalisation, Which is it to be?” he asked (see here) and Exterion Media’s Shaun Gregory spoke about it at the same event and has again since on numerous occasions – Shaun in fact will discuss it in New York in a few weeks time, “how do we as an industry maintain the growth and achieve a bigger slice of the advertising pie?” as he flies into the big apple for The DailyDOOH Investor Conference to present “It’s Not OOH Anymore”.
It was nice then to see new Clear Channel UK CEO, Andrew Morley jump into the fray with an interesting interview ‘Morley stakes claim as outdoor’s ambassador‘ with Campaign’s Arif Durrani (19.09.14).
The real news of course is not that Andrew Morley has suddenly become one of the prominent outdoor ambassadors BUT that Clear Channel is facing some of its biggest contractual battles in the UK company’s lifetime.
Clear Channel’s near 30 year hold on the London street furniture contracts (via TfL’s exclusive 32 London Borough tender) is up for renewal (the ten year contract was last awarded in May 2005 and so would be newly effective from Spring 2015) and many observe that they are going to find it really hard to keep it – even with, we hear, the promise of cheap or bartered screens from Sharp.
Whilst the incumbent in any contract should surely have a slight edge in any re-bidding war, if you were a betting person the new TfL Bus Shelter contract has to be JCDecaux’s to lose with Exterion Media, most likely also in the running.
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