OOH Uncut Podcast: Crystal Chou
Crystal Chou, Group Media Director, The Many, joins host Rick Robinson, CEO, PJX Media, on OOH Uncut, the podcast featuring thought leaders in the Out of Home media world.
August 7, 2023
Crystal Chou Discussion on OOH Uncut Podcast with Rick Robinson
Rick Robinson: Hi everybody, this is Rick Robinson again with PJX Media and another edition Out of Home Uncut. I'd like you to meet our guest today.
Crystal Chou: Hi, I'm Crystal Chou and I am the Group Media Director at The Many. We are a high-speed independent connection studio for forward thinking brands.
Rick Robinson: All right, high speed independent connection studio, that sounds good. We're thrilled to have you Crystal.
Crystal Chou: Thank you.
Rick Robinson: I'm going to give you the same question I give everyone in season one which is: What can out of home, do that no other medium can do?
Crystal Chou: yeah, I first of all thank you for having me here and such an interesting topic because there are so many things that out of home can do that other mediums can't do.
The first thing that really comes to mind is that it really gives you an opportunity to interact with the consumer in real life. Something outside of a screen or a page, which is typically how marketers can reach consumers, these days through a screen big or small, and it really brings that IRL aspect to the consumers every day lives. and then you really just can't avoid it, you're reaching consumers in a non-disruptive manner.
Rick Robinson: Mmm.
Crystal Chou: Typically, when you're on a screen, you're on a page and more traditional sense, you're trying to get to the content that you're trying to conceive consume as a consumer. But with out of home, you're reaching them in this natural behavior. That's not really disruptive, they're not trying to get to a different piece of content and…
Rick Robinson: Mm-hmm
Crystal Chou: it's just absolutely and serving yourself into their daily lives. and with the modernization of out of home, you're really able to bring in all these different data points to target them in real life as well. So there's this beautiful kind of like evolution of out of home that is traditional in a sense but also brings so much technology and data into the picture as well.
Rick Robinson: Wow, we should have you working for the Out of Home, Advertising Association and giving testimony. That was beautiful. you hit a few key points which I've been hearing in season one a lot that the IRL piece of the discovery someone used the word serendipity of home. the fact that it's kind of a way in when a lot of other media these days is sometimes seen as in the way
Crystal Chou: Okay. Yeah.
Crystal Chou: Yes.
Rick Robinson: there's this access that you get and there's something to be said for a brand that makes a statement in public space. there's a vulnerability to that. There's a confidence there. I want to ask you about the IRL part of it. Do you feel the public is craving more of that? even with things like AI? Is there this lean into craft and analog?
Crystal Chou: Yeah, absolutely, I think that there's this return to nostalgia that we're seeing in pop culture. Right now, coming out of the pandemic, I think a lot of people are craving real experiences, even though AI is very much a thing. And, you see people, abandoning things like augmented reality, Metas moved away from the Metaverse and stop concentrating their efforts on that because people are really trying to connect in the real world and that's an incredibly important to show up as a brand in the real world as well, right? having some tangibility to the brand allowing people to interact with it, touch it, feel it, I think it's so important because at the end of the day, the real experience is what people are buying not necessarily the digital experience, right? Unless they are an entertainment Brand. But, I think about the clients that we have. Pan Express, for example. They sell food, then you people will want to feel like they're tasting and smelling the food. So how do you really bring that to life and out of home is 100% away that you?
Rick Robinson: It's interesting that people may not wake up in the morning with a list of things to do that includes consume out of home media and they may not even know it when they're consuming it. Sometimes when they're out and about and…
Crystal Chou: Right.
Rick Robinson: just in that visual triage of just walking down the street or driving just looking at everything. All at once. What do you think is the key to get people's attention?
00:05:00
Crystal Chou: Yeah I think just making it relatable and more interesting. I think there's different ways into the audience and the great thing about out of home is that you can really guarantee reach with the people who are passing by that location. You're not having to pay additional dollars to make sure you're reaching that percentage of people, And then you're also guaranteeing frequency the people who are passing by several times a week on the same route that they're going about throughout their daily routines. So what's incredibly helpful from a creative messaging standpoint is like, Make it relatable, make it recognizable. we're constantly pitching ideas that you don't necessarily have to have so much text in the home space to make it resonate. it could be purely visual and you might understand what that brand you might be or just spark that interest for people to really dig into and search for it online, Or just make it super interesting and compelling that it's really creating a lot of buzz and you're creating a lot of earned media with that as well.
Rick Robinson: That opportunity to interact in the real world and the public space. In a non-disruptive way, all those things out of home can do and much more and you even mentioned the sort of nuts and bolts of, reach and frequency of, the necessities of a medium investment. Thank you very much Crystal. Really appreciate your commentary and your time, we look forward to speaking to you again soon, take care of yourself.
Crystal Chou: Thank you.
