00:37:15 · Ian Dallimore, Charlie Lamar
[00:37:15] S0: them. [00:37:15] S1: You're probably too young to even remember trim. But it basically was a picture frame. Billboards were a picture frame. I remember when I was in college, so that's 1968 or so, I saw that the billboard company in Boston where I was in college, they had removed the tram and it was really radical looking. And I remember telling Kevin Sr. That on vacation and it was funny, he just kind of thought about it for a minute and he was actually from Boston. And he said, Oh, well, that's just a fad or something to that effect. He kind of dismissed it. And of course, probably five or ten years later, there's no trim on any bulletins. Now the posters actually had trim until probably twenty five years later. And so that was a big deal. The other big deal was when we went from paper to vinyl and from painted sections, which probably many people that hear this broadcast don't realize that until very recently, the big billboards, the bulletins were painted onto metal sections and then reassembled from the shop and onto the on-site section by section, which that was one of my summer jobs was painting billboards. [00:38:32] S0: Billboards, tub.
00:38:32 · Ian Dallimore, Charlie Lamar
[00:38:32] S0: Billboards, tub. [00:38:33] S1: And that is just radically different. But again, neither of those big changes were as comparable to the digital. And I remember the whole idea of digital coming along and about if you take a longer view, digitals kind of grew out of the concept of the new television screen. So televisions used to have a real big box with a cathode ray tube in the back of it and it had to have the depth so that they could shoot the image through. And then they came along and television started being produced with all that we have now, basic and plasma vision and all that stuff. Well, some advertisers after a while started figuring out how they could use that technology for out of home. But there was no way to put those on the highway. Because in the sunshine, some listeners may be old enough to remember, when you first got your first plasma television, you had to be careful that you shaded the because otherwise it would just blank out on you. And so needless to say, the digital it took a while for that technology to catch up with the intensity of the light. But when it did, I'm proud to say that Lamar Advertising was the first in the business to actually devote the resources to building them out and marketing them. And also say that I was a skeptic. Really? It was extremely So you're expensive to build one [00:40:08] S0: of
00:40:08 · Ian Dallimore, Charlie Lamar
[00:40:08] S0: of [00:40:08] S1: And these there was no way what I was really skeptical of, maybe I shouldn't say this on air, but what I was really skeptical of is that we were told on the management side from my cousin, Bobby Switzer and from Kevin Riley Jr, that, oh, not only is this gonna work, but we're gonna get almost as much for a slot on the Digital Board that we do for a permanent. I thought it was crazy. The idea that you would get a third would still make the board much more lucrative than the old permanent board. But it's worked out that the power of the digital boards is, I guess, the attention span or the impact, the visual impact of the digitals is shown over time that it really is effective. And the other side of it is, which you deal with all the time, is that we went from being the slowest medium in the country to the fastest. So you can press a button and change your copy now. In some places, you have, it's my understanding and you have to correct me, when the agencies or the advertisers get pre approved, which they have to do to put their library up, they actually can press the button to change the copy. [00:41:36] S0: Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like we're plugging podcasts within the podcast, but Bobby Switzer's cousin is a cousin, correct? [00:41:43] S1: Another cousin. [00:41:44] S0: Yeah, another cousin. And he's a great episode. And he talks about it because Bobby was the visionary or so he says, which I believe- [00:41:51] S1: He was, he was.
00:41:51 · Ian Dallimore
[00:41:51] S0: He was the visionary behind the rollout of digital billboard screens over twenty one years ago. And it's what I love about it again, because if you look back at the company itself, there's, and Sean talks about this all the time on earnings calls and boards meetings, and I echo it as well. We've been innovating since 1902, whether it's flip of a coin and changing from bill posting to hand paint and the next thing you know, you're evolving. What digital has really allowed us to do is obviously from a revenue perspective, it's fantastic from a visualization of the medium, it allows for the immediacy. But what I love in my eighteen years of doing this as well is just watching the evolution of the tech companies that have developed solely around digital billboards. We have companies like Vistar Media, PlaceExchange, these, we have the largest DSP in the world, Not Wall Garden, the trade desk that is now interacting and connecting to our screens where had we never made that decision and that jump twenty one, twenty two years ago, the evolution of the space may not have ever even happened. I would argue also there's a lot of what we call play space vendors that have screens in malls, they have them inside of elevators and health clubs. I would argue that most of that came from the evolution of the roadside billboard that then has really kind of opened up significant amount of tech companies brands, and it just continues to happen. I mean, the fact that Google is connected into our space is something that's very significant. When you look at the top five advertisers in the at home space, I think three of them are technology companies. You have Meta, you have TikTok and you have Apple that's spending in the oldest medium since the cave days, right? And we get to continue to evolve. So, it's gonna be fun for me. And it's my last question for you. It's gonna be fun for me. People ask like, what does it look like in twenty years when you retire and fifty years when this company's another level? And I'm like holograms, ads inside of cars. But like, could you think of the day when you were eight, nine, 10 and you realize your dad was running a billboard company, which sidebar, I think it's funny because when my kids were super little, they thought I owned billboard company.
00:44:09 · Ian Dallimore
I was like, no, dad actually drives a car to work every day and I'll work for that company. But it has to make you feel good as a small child being around that knowing this small little billboard company has evolved. So kind of a more personal family question, like what do you think your father and grandfather would think of where the company is today? I mean, yourself, would you have ever expected it to be to where it is? Not even from a revenue perspective, just people, technology.
00:44:39 · Charlie Lamar
[00:44:39] S1: Yeah, I never would have. And I'm certain that my... Well, I'm not certain. My grandfather and my father were visionaries in their own way. So in kind of a theoretical scale kind of way, they could maybe see it. I don't really know. But if they did see it, I know they would be blown away by not only the industry and how different it is and especially the digitals, but all the other aspects of the industry and how it's sold and how it's delivered up on process of calling on a client to having in their ad up on a image somewhere, whether it's permanent or digital, is just as tremendous. But as far as our company itself, that's the one that would really be even more amazing to them, I think, is just the access to, or just the fact that we're such a large element in the industry from their back to the old story, very old story in 1927. They were such a small element that the big boys just basically kicked them out of New Orleans. And there was absolutely nothing they could have done. It turned out to be good fortune, but they were gonna get forced out one way or the other. And that's not true today. Not only is it not true, not that we're forcing anybody else out of anywhere else, but we certainly have the resources both financially, but also talent wise. We're very fortunate. The family has been very fortunate to have talented people within the family. And we've been very fortunate to have very talented people on our team. So, it's beyond imagining the reality of today.