DailyDOOH

Guest Contributor, Natalie Waddell

In 2016, I was proud to submit what I believed was a first class application for oOh’s Future Thinking award, which recognises employees who embody the innovative spirit of oOh!. One of the prizes was something incredibly dear to me, a trip to #SXSW.

I’d learned innovation was about getting uncomfortable and committing oneself to self-improvement – realising I had to practice embracing the hell out of change because it’s inescapable.

This was the core of my application and given oOh’s passion for innovation I was unbelievably honoured to be crowned oOh!’s first Future Thinker and ambassador of the year long program.

I’m a fiend for knowledge, development and human interaction and that’s why it meant so much for me to attend SXSW. It’s a haven of mixed encounters, but I was curious if this was purely a flashy industry façade.

I made it, I got right amongst it, and it was absolutely mind-blowing – but not for the reasons you’d expect. But what to pursue, how to handle, which to pick, where to play, why to seek, what to deduct?

Everything from neuroscientists, celebrity personalities, start-up gurus, bigwig tech-heads, genre diverse bands, entrepreneurs, astrophysicists, PHDs and media experts through to activations, demonstrations, shows, interactive media, robots, gadgets, goggles, screens, gaming, dancing and playing.

Thousands of sessions on offer – #SXSW really is one of the most diverse, collaborative, and inventive communities to ever be a part of. Call it the king of interaction, engagement and discoveries, or call it the sassy temptress of scale, FOMO, and mental exhaustion – it’s an unforgettable and exhilarating behemoth of an experience.

Why was I so keen?

To be the catalyst for change and growth both in my life and my career, I’d pledged to immerse myself in opportunities and uncover the practices and guidance from people I aspire to be like or initiatives I wish to represent.

I’ve been deeply intrigued to attend SXSW since my first gig in media because of the scale of things to learn, the global tales of surprising discoveries, and the diversity of eager people and topical showcases.

In Austin, my strategy was simple. Take each day as it comes and learn from each moment. Stay present, give your full attention, absorb the information/activity, contemplate it, critique or question it, decipher your own meaning and then regurgitate to others for witty chats or write it out to re-evaluate and reinforce.

What were the wisdoms along the way – personal and professional?

The SXSW experience is invaluable for personal and professional life. There’s a real joy in being contained in a momentous bubble for days and days. I believe individuals rise up on the shoulders of giants and one’s circle of influence determines their output.

Well, SXSW was a sphere of not only influence but intellect and interaction too. Being exposed to an overabundance of worldwide trends with their expert advocates, allows some considerable insight to be drawn and, boy, did I get a taste of being a mad scientist lost in experimentation phase and hunting for answers.

Every insight is repurpose-able. Every message relates to something closer to you. It’s a personal challenge to keep the enthusiasm alive, but a mental delight to engage in new encounters.

What’s in it for the OOH Industry?

OOH is a growing medium, there’s no denying. What we can learn from other industries is that the quest for quality and quantifiable data is still in such early stages.

Legislation can’t keep up with the exponential development of information and there hasn’t been enough time to decipher legitimate and accurate patterns yet.

There’s no escaping the VR, AR and AI trio, and the revolutionary impact they will have in our society and the future of the media industry, Out Of Home included. The media landscape is in for a rude shock when these truly take off.

The biggest companies have invested, the scientists and data engineers are onto it, the hypotheses are set and being tested. It’s now a waiting game for the processing power behind all the science and technologies to catch up and become scalable. But the answers are coming. And OOH needs to brace themselves.

There’s risks still not being pursued, due to a long standing hesitance to implement quickly, and this will be detrimental to OOH if we follow rather than set the benchmark. We need to mindful if we focus too much attention on the technologies and not enough on the creativity, the medium will lose its core value proposition.

Therefore, we have the opportunity to enhance production quality, creativity and storytelling capabilities because of the advances in technology.

But let’s not forget that capturing consumer attention relies on effectively marrying brands with relevant audiences – and human evaluation is still essential.

For content to instil a deeper human resonation and connection – lose the obsession with audience demographics (e.g. males 25-54 living in Sydney), and deliberate on character traits (e.g. people with tendencies of perfectionism or introversion). It’s a promising head start in lieu of programmable Artificial Intelligence processors.

Three months ago, young Australian marketing executive, Nat Waddell, won Australian Out Of Home company – oOh!media’s inaugural ‘Future Thinker Award’. Her prize was a trip to Austin, TX and a Platinum VIP pass to #SXSW.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2017 at 07:59 @374 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.