As we all continue to navigate the aftershocks of the COVID-19 crisis in our personal lives and our businesses, OAAA has quickly shifted our priorities so we can deliver to members what you need right now.
We recognize that you need support on multiple levels to get through this crisis and to prepare for what happens once we emerge. To this end, the OAAA is laser-focused on three priorities:
1. Legislative and marketing initiatives that help
2. Gathering and sharing insights on the current crisis in real-time
3. Developing a roadmap to help our members prepare for business post-crisis.
1. Legislative and marketing initiatives
I wrote to you last week about the many different legislative responses OAAA is taking to protect the industry’s interests as the crisis plays out.
These efforts include educating OAAA members about stimulus relief, as well as new lobbying efforts for stimulus. As states and localities issued orders to stay at home except for essential business functions, OAAA outlined the building blocks that designate out of home media as essential. Working with the Administration and Congress, OAAA was proud to partner with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to post authorized public-health messages nationwide.
You can read more about each of these efforts here.
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and the OAAA is rolling out a number of new marketing initiatives designed to promote and explain the power and relevance of OOH (even) in the COVID-19 era and to help you emerge from the crisis ready to capitalize on pent-up consumer demand. These initiatives include:
New webinar series “OAAA Lunch Break” – We’ve expanded our regular webinar programming into a new, twice-weekly virtual learning series “OAAA Lunch Break” to arm you with the marketplace insights and analysis your business needs right now. The series launches April 2 and the first episode will highlight some of the strongest selling points and latest trends in OOH. Additional webinars will focus on topics such as identifying categories that are thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as marketplace and legislative updates. Register for future webinars here.
Helping you stay relevant during the crisis – OAAA is helping ensure that our medium is viewed in the best possible light during the remainder of the COVID-19 crisis. We are muscling up our public relations outreach on behalf of the industry to provide new data and insights that can maximize the relevance and effectiveness of OOH.
Continue to serve as the industry’s convening forum for knowledge sharing – OAAA is committed to our role as the industry convener. While we will miss seeing so many of you in live gatherings as originally planned, we will provide members with multiple virtual forums to meet, share, and learn.
Lead the industry’s effort to speak – We are managing the industry’s positioning and messaging to mitigate the impact of the crisis and prepare for the return to normalcy.
2. Gathering and sharing insights on the current crisis in real-time
We have undertaken a number of efforts to gain an understanding about how our members are being affected by the crisis including direct member surveys and collection of metadata to understand trends (such as mobility), learning what is working and what isn’t, and analyzing the feedback so we can report back to you. We are planning to release the first survey results of this survey work on our webinar this week. We have several other efforts underway to capture information in real-time over the coming weeks and will keep our members updated as we progress.
3. Preparing the industry to capture the opportunity post-crisis
We know that the end of the crisis is going to present an exciting opportunity for OOH to help brands re-engage with consumers and jump-start their businesses. Preparations are already underway at OAAA to develop a roadmap for the industry so we are set up to win. Efforts include rolling out consumer sentiment surveys at regular intervals for the remainder of the crisis with the assistance of an outside research firm. In addition, we are analyzing how the industry has bounced back following other downturns for perspective. Finally, we will, of course, be speaking with many of you to zero in on what might be most helpful to you.
In closing, I want to reiterate how committed we are at the OAAA to fulfilling our industry’s critical mission to support our communities, our families and everyone who is serving us on the front lines of this crisis from healthcare professionals to grocery store clerks.
I’d like to thank our members who have provided pro bono inventory for critical CDC messaging. The campaign has received considerable pick-up including coverage in AdAge, numerous LinkedIn posts, and social sharing overall, and we were grateful and pleased by the overwhelmingly positive feedback we received from many of our members.
This effort remains ongoing. Just last week the Ad Council in partnership with CDC launched a second COVID-19 prevention campaign encouraging sheltering-in-place. OAAA is currently distributing this messaging to members.
Thank you for your continued support and collaboration. The days ahead are going to be challenging for us all. I want to reiterate that throughout it all OAAA has your back and I look forward to being in touch again in the coming days and weeks with regular updates on our efforts on your behalf.
Published: April 1, 2020