Digital & Dirt
00:00:01 · Ian Dallimore, Bobby Switzer
[00:00:01] S0: I'm Ian Dallimore, and this is Digital & Dirt. [00:00:05] S1: Putting up digitals left and right.
00:00:07 · Ian Dallimore
[00:00:07] S0: We're cutting grass around billboards. Twenty years of digital. Welcome back, guys. Before we we dive into this guest, I wanted to let you know this is gonna be a special episode. It coincides with Lamar's twenty years of digital. So over twenty years ago, we recognized as a company the potential for digital to transform the out of home industry. We knew that digitization could make out of home more flexible, give advertisers the ability to change their message instantly, and connect with audience in a more relevant way, while also serving as a valuable channel to disseminate information to communities. Driven by these beliefs, we created and debuted the first digital billboard in 2001 in our hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where our headquarters are, in Pittsburgh. By 2008, we had installed over a thousand digital boards. This year, we're celebrating the twentieth year of Lamar Digital innovation and industry leaderships. We now operate over 3,700 digital across the country, and that number continues to grow. My next guest is a very special guest, and he's accomplished a lot. He's helped from the transition into LED lighting and changed from traditional vinyl to recyclable product. He is the former VP of Operations for forty four years at Lamar Advertising. I've dubbed him and I think everyone who knows this gentleman will dub him as the godfather of digital out of home and that's what we're gonna talk about today. But I just learned and very interesting, he literally started at Lamar Advertising cutting grass around the billboards. My next guest, welcome Bobby Switzer. Hello. It's great to have you. We could talk for a long time about the renewable energy. I could talk to you about how much fun you had to have had when you were cutting grass around billboards. But today we're going to focus on digital out of home and how you literally brought this as an idea. So let's dive right in. I've always looked up to you and I've always been inspired by someone that came up with an idea that now is literally made my career and a lot of people at this company and many other companies. So I think a lot of our guests are gonna have a lot to thank you for this. So we have a lot of questions and let's dive right in. How did you come up with the idea of Digital Out of Home?
00:02:22 · Ian Dallimore
Let's talk about that and walk through how Bobby Switzer in your mind was like, hey, we should go from traditional static billboards to Digital Out of Home.
00:02:33 · Bobby Switzer
[00:02:33] S1: Well, first, it it wasn't just me, and it wasn't just my idea. There are a lot of characters involved with this, some with the company still, and some are on to bigger and better things. But the the value of a billboard is based on, you know, where it is on traffic. But as an overall value, it's how fast you can change it. That gives it the real value. So how fast and how much it costs to change it? And one of the problems that billboards had, we used it as our selling point was you have to put it up there for thirty days. And so back in the nineties, we were watching LED as a message board, and we were looking at putting up message boards because the blue LED wasn't bright enough to really create the RGB that you need to have full color visual artwork in in all the colors. So we were watching it. In in the late nineties, we started seeing the Japanese had developed a blue that was strong enough to withstand sunlight. And, you know, we had to figure out how to control it. And when we say control it, how do we send message to the board? And as you go along, the technology is not there, and you sort of get to a point where nothing's happening, and then all of a sudden, some new technology allows you to progress to the next level. And all these things have to come together, and all the stars need to line up for the first digital to happen. So we started off with cable, and we were getting an Internet signal through actually running a cable line to the... To every board, which was causing a huge amount of cost. And then the other one that was a big problem was the units were getting too hot, and so we had to develop air conditioning. And so we had to upgrade all our electric, and all these things have to come together for that moment to happen. So we started small, and it was a gentleman named Rod Rackley and Kevin Riley at the time and myself. We flew down to Miami to talk and look at a board that was done by Daktronics. And so it was a small board, but the company we went to see was a controlling company that would do it, and they wanted to do it through satellites. And on the flight back from Miami, we all agreed that we thought we could do that ourselves. So Rod went to work and developed the software that would sort of create the the ability to control the board.
00:05:38 · Bobby Switzer, Ian Dallimore
It's one thing getting a digital sign, the other thing is having complete control of it. [00:05:46] S0: Yeah. And I... Most of our listeners, Bobby, are are newer to the industry itself, and and it's kind of interesting because some of my friends that are in the space, they just find a great screen, find a placement. It's just like, oh, boom, boom, boom, plug in, play, control. And what you and for our listeners, Rod Rackley is now the president of Circle Graphics. And Kevin Riley is our chairman, former CEO while Bobby was here. And what's interesting is you guys were literally having to change as technology changed and piece things together. And I think the control aspect, that was the key. And I remember when I first started, we were I guess it was four, three and onetwo years we had had digital in our network operating center. So that's kind of what you and Rod had built out and others, Bill Rip included, who's still with the company. You guys built out this control center. And that was, at the time, game changer because no one else even had... Were controlling their own boards in the very beginning, but Lamar was.
00:06:47 · Bobby Switzer, Ian Dallimore
[00:06:47] S1: Yeah. That was... Bill Rip came in after Rod left, and we felt Bill was probably the best candidate to take the ball and run with it. And the good thing for Bill was it was an actual product. When Rod and I were fooling with it, it wasn't a real product. It was it was held together with gum and everything. And there's a lot of funny stories that go along with it, but one was we crushed ourselves when we decided to put trim around the boards because we wanted to make them look different than the billboards. And in doing so, they screwed holes all in the the frame, and we couldn't figure out why water was getting in. And so we just kept thinking Pittsburgh is awfully wet. And so that was a long struggle in getting through this because you had a lot of unhappy customers. [00:07:46] S0: Right. And so as you guys evolve the product, you're learning more efficiencies. One of the things that I often tell clients is it's a lot like a TV, right? So over time, I know when I was a kid, we had those big tube TVs and now they've evolved and they're literally the size of your hand turned sideways. And maybe touch on that a bit, having an air conditioning unit to keep the digitals cool because I'm sure we had issues with it powering down and powering up because they would overheat. Maybe talk a little bit about the different nuances. I know the louvers is a big thing that a lot of people aren't aware of. So it wasn't just put a screen up and figure out how to send a message to it. There was the elements of it being outdoor twenty four seven, which was very difficult.