OOH Uncut Podcast: Judah Longrear
Judah Longrear, CEO, Nickelytics, joins host Rick Robinson, CEO, PJX Media, on OOH Uncut, the podcast featuring thought leaders in the Out of Home advertising world.
August 28, 2023
Judah Longrear Discussion on OOH Uncut Podcast with Rick Robinson
Rick Robinson: All right, here we go. Hello everybody. Rick Robinson here with PJX Media. And today's guest is Judah Longgrear, he's the CEO and co-founder of Nickelytics. Welcome to the show.
Judah Longgrear: Rick, it's a pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity and it's always great to see you my friend.
Rick Robinson: Absolutely mate and I'm excited to have this discussion with you. I'm going to ask you a similar question. I've asked everybody here in season one which is what can out of home, do that no other media can do?
Judah Longgrear: That's a fantastic question. And I think the answers are boundless, but for me, I think one thing that's recently came to my attention, is just the endless amount of innovation and opportunities that can literally be turned into and out of home advertising. piece of exposure, obviously digital play, space ads, digital street, furniture. and most recently, my company has been working with fully autonomous, delivery robots, kind of turning that into actually pretty productive out of home, medium format. So to me, that's what gets me fired up. There's tons of inventory opportunities, especially when you applied technology to prove the effectiveness of that medium.
Rick Robinson: It was interesting. And what you're getting at is that out of home is not necessarily a format. It's not necessarily printed or digital and I've heard this said before,…
Judah Longgrear: Thank you.
Rick Robinson: and I'd like your thoughts on it that out of home is where brands intercept the public visually. Out of the house.
Judah Longgrear: Yeah, they're spot on, So if we look over the past 20 years, obviously there's been a massive amount of digital saturation. I think with the younger generations, the gym, why There's a real affinity for real world, activities, And obviously what interacts really well with that is out of home advertising, That's outside. Of your home where you're at. I also think that it's such an amazing opportunity to be aesthetically pleasing when done correctly.
Rick Robinson: Deeper right.
Judah Longgrear: So, it really complements. And I think that's a unique medium in terms that, it's not as
Judah Longgrear: disruptive as some other forms of media that might be, Blocking your. news site that you want to see.
Rick Robinson: it's interesting to me is you're using the term, it's not as disruptive. what just fascinates me? Is that when I started in this business which was in the 80s, I've just dated myself. We were criticized for being intrusive and…
Judah Longgrear: but, Anyways. Yeah.
Rick Robinson: disruptive and now with the changing media landscape people, look it out of home as something. That's pleasing. That's polite. That's not in the way. I heard. Someone say that out of home is a way in and other media is in the way.
Judah Longgrear: I love it, And I think that's the thing where out of foam has evolved in terms of the creative side of stock, obviously you can put up a billboard very fact driven but really can connect with consumers in terms of Exactly, the story that's being told. It can be very kind of emotionally charged. And I think that's powerful, And again, Advertising landscapes change, right? So, in the 80s, the introduction of, a lot of television, commercials and then you got into the Internet where there was web lockers and in a Web ad. that's changed over time but obviously I think, in terms of out of home, that's not necessarily.
Judah Longgrear: A reality for us. I think we can be very kind of value-added, Obviously get our message across but also can be very aesthetically pleasing. And actually enhanced, our cities…
Rick Robinson: That's the goal,…
Judah Longgrear: where we live.
Rick Robinson: And what's interesting? Is someone said to me recently that with the rise of chat, GPT with the rise of just data coming at us from all sorts of things being curated for us,…
Judah Longgrear: No.
Rick Robinson: that will create and equal increase sense of value for printed static out of home because something that's just real organic confident.
Judah Longgrear: For sure.
Rick Robinson: Fixed that's out on the public space. that's committed. In that way, that's going to become more and more appealing but one thing I want to ask you about and I know this is in the commercial for your company but I'm fascinated with these delivery bots where they're delivering food like the last mile or…
Judah Longgrear: Yeah.
Rick Robinson: half a mile, where the drivers don't want to do it and then you're putting ads on them. That's such a contextual moment, speak to me who's
Judah Longgrear: Yeah.
Rick Robinson: Who are your first advertisers there and how is it working? And how do the bots? Not just get stolen.
Judah Longgrear: that's a great question, and one that we have gotten before, and I think, just to quickly kind of give a little context, my background in the space started back of 2017. When I started a share business, that was paid for by advertising. Basically, what I quickly realized was It's hard to run two businesses, you can't run it, Rideshare business and an advertising business and advertising business. Yeah, Rick and Rick as you know it's tough enough right. We got a lot to do that Our customers and make sure they're getting the world class experience but we build out a platform on the gig economy side, that's been a great business, we'll continue to grow. But, essentially what happened. It's kind of that original thesis was a lot of these mobility partners are looking for ways to monetize their fleas. So, we started partnering with server robotics, I think we've done five campaigns. Now, some of the early adopters were am trust, Fortunate, 500 and financial company. We did a campaign with
Judah Longgrear: At Council on Smokey Bear. We also done some work now with a directv on the MLB side of things and then also with most recently regal cinemas for the Transformers and that's super exciting because Not just is that such a meat. You're a delightful experience. When you're seeing these robots, that are very intentionally built, we hope to connect the analytics, but there's literally I kid, you not tiktok accounts that have over 400,000 followers, two million likes where they're just literally following the robots around, having some fun, just kind of interacted with them.
Rick Robinson: All right.
Judah Longgrear: And so I think it just goes to show how out of home while it might be looked upon a little bit as a legacy. frontier in terms of the other advertising mediums, there's so much opportunity for innovation especially as new technologies emerge.
Rick Robinson: So you heard it here What out of home can do that, nothing else can do is that almost anything can become a messenger, a carrier out of home in the public, space Judah, we thank you for your time. We wish you luck and take care.
Judah Longgrear: Appreciate you.
