The Great Equalizer
The U.S. Out of Home (“OOH”) landscape is shaped like a pyramid, with publicly-traded companies at the top, large independents in the middle and many small operators at the bottom – the true foundation of our industry. The largest OOH company owns more than 150,000 faces, while the 100th largest owns 249. Due to obvious advantages in size, scale, and resources, it's been challenging for smaller companies to break out and compete, especially at the regional and national level.
However, there is one great equalizer that levels the playing field, by helping smaller OOH brands look, act, and feel bigger. It is brand marketing. Brand marketing can position smaller companies as more creative, more innovative, more responsive, and more customer-focused than competitors. All else being equal, customers want to buy from brands that they admire and trust.
In fact, brand marketing can be the secret sauce that moves smaller companies up the pyramid to become bigger companies. Brand marketing gives smaller brands a megaphone to communicate what they stand for, why they’re different, and why people should care. Brand marketing brings focus and clarity to a mission, rallies people around a vision, and acts as a strategic roadmap, helping guide decision-making. Most importantly, brand marketing can help smaller players deliver better ROI, by staking out and owning profitable opportunities where they can compete more successfully.
Over the years, I’ve successfully named, branded, and launched a range of small, medium, and large OOH brands as a Fractional CMO:
Geopath rebranded from the Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement (“TAB”) more than 7 years ago. Its name, strategy, identity, and messaging reinforce the narrative that Geopath has transformed itself from an old-fashioned impression counter to an agile audience expert providing trusted intelligence that helps OOH buyers and sellers “transact confidently.”
BOLDSITE is a “destination media” expert that partners with real estate developers to place OOH and digital OOH media in high-traffic, public spaces like stadiums, arenas, and gigantic shopping and entertainment destinations like American Dream. Its brand voice and narrative represent a highly differentiated and ownable position in the industry.
NextGrad is the only digital media platform located inside public high schools that promotes college and post-secondary career opportunities to students exactly when and where they’re making decisions about what’s next. Through targeted promotion to budget-constrained high school districts and eager college marketing departments, this “high school opportunity network” has expanded dramatically across the U.S. and Canada.
Bottom line, most OOH businesses whether they are media owners, agencies, platforms, data, or Ad-Tech providers, can greatly benefit from smart brand marketing. But many organizations lack the staffing, the resources, or the organizational structure to hire a full-time CMO or to build out a full-time marketing staff.
That’s where a Fractional CMO comes in. Fractional CMO’s are on-trend in the sharing economy and a win-win for our industry. Fractional CMO’s provide executive-level expertise that many companies cannot afford on their own. They offer marketing leadership. They are data-driven and digitally fluent. They employ proven best practices. They build and lead marketing teams. And they can hit the ground running, making an immediate impact in weeks, not months or years. In many cases, a Fractional CMO can achieve better results in one or two days a week over a six-month period than a full-time CMO ever could. At a much higher ROI.
We’ve been working as a Fractional CMO since 2002. Founder Lee Rafkin has consulted with over 100 clients on four continents, including Fortune 100 companies like Discovery Communications, Fox Sports, Starbucks, Pepsico, Nestlé, Estée Lauder, and American Express. For the past 12 years, Rafkin has consulted as a Fractional CMO in the OOH industry, working with organizations like OUTFRONT Media, OAAA, Geopath, BOLDSITE Media, Trailhead Media, NextGrad Networks, and Motionworks. Rafkin is a highly creative OOH evangelist and an expert marketer who’s eager to share his expertise to help small and medium-sized OOH companies get bigger.
To discuss Fractional CMO opportunities, please contact Lee Rafkin directly at 917-533-1377, email him at lee@rafkin.com, or visit www.rafkin.com.
Lee Rafkin is a leading branding, marketing, and strategic communications consultant based in New York City. As a Fractional CMO, Rafkin has named, branded, and launched numerous OOH brands, including OUTFRONT, Geopath, BOLDSITE, NextGrad, and Motionworks. Lee can be reached at lee@rafkin.com.