Billboards and Beyond with Jonah Katz

pharosIQ: Welcome to this week's episode, the podcast that is anything But boring each week, we examine a unboring campaign with a very unboring marketer in the B2B space, looking to take things to the next level this week. Really, really pumped to have Jonah Katz join us. Jonah is a growth marketing and demand gen expert currently doing some work with OneScreen.

Hi Jonah. Welcome. Good to have you.

Jonah: Good to be here. Thank you for having me, pharosIQ.

pharosIQ: So first off, tell us a little bit about OneScreen. ai, do a little bit of a plug. I think you guys work in, you sell to marketers as well too, so there might be some folks on the pod who may be interested in the services a bit more.

Jonah: Yeah. So we work with, specifically with brands and a little bit with digital agencies on, in the B2B and B2C space. To select purchase and measure out of home inventory. So someone can come to us and say, I have a budget, or I'm thinking about a campaign and we can present strategic plans, measurement capabilities, audience builds, whatever our planning team deems necessary.

And we get sign off from, from the client, from the customer, and we will go ahead and purchase that inventory. And we will also measure it, which is the big hurdle that a lot of out of home providers don't do is there is campaign wrap report. You get it a month after your campaign. Here's a number of impressions.

We don't do that. We still send, it still takes a little bit of time after the campaign, but we send exposure numbers, conversion numbers based on your website. There's a whole technical side of it that a lot of providers haven't adopted, but OneScreen has.

pharosIQ: So for those of us not familiar with the lingo out of.

Advertising. Is that like billboards or looking at the site? There's like the ads in the airport. How does that work?

Jonah: Yeah. So if I could get a list from our planning team of the number of the types of units, it would be a very long list, but the standard ones are going to be your billboards, your bus stops, your bus wraps, your transit hubs, your airport signage, all the way down to alternative things.

Like you could work with a provider. We could work with a provider that. would find street jugglers or people to spin signs. We can kind of source whatever skywriting planes, drone shows, those kinds of things. Those are the alternative placements, but the big ones are going to be your billboards are going to be a really large static units.

pharosIQ: The drone shows are amazing. I'm fascinated by those as did you see the Santa Claus in Dubai, like the walking Santa across Dubai around Christmas? It was Awesome.

Jonah: I don't think I did, but I did ask our planning team two weeks ago about how much that stuff would cost. And our director of planning said, well, those are expensive, at least 100, 000, all the way up to whatever number you can think of, depending on the number of drones and everything.

So that's if you got a lot of budget and you want to make a splash. Absolutely.

pharosIQ: Yeah. So has anybody reached out to sponsor the sphere in Vegas yet at what, 400, 000 a minute or something that that costs? It's crazy.

Jonah: Yeah. I haven't seen anything. I'm assuming there's some other process that the sphere has internally for that, but that is probably the biggest thing in the last couple of years, asides from these drone shows where everybody was, wow, this is a really big, big deal.

Advertising space. This is a really big out of home unit and everyone has come clamoring for it. And I think a bit of the shine has, has worn off slightly from a lot of things, but I remember seeing those prices for that to run ads on it. I was like, that's insane. It must work though.

pharosIQ: I'm seeing more and more B2B companies jumping into these types of units, which is somewhat.

Different, right? You know, B2B, you think digital and targeted ads online and email and things of that nature, but I'm seeing more just as a consumer of them, but also as somebody who's marketing minded and thinking of my messaging, you know, what, what, what trends are you seeing in B2B and attacking some of these mediums?

Jonah: I mean, I think the, the biggest thing is a Is a general frustration from an audience standpoint of being marketed to, Oh, marketer, I don't like getting ads before YouTube videos. I always skip them, those kinds of things. And I think you, you've kind of reached a point where I already get so many emails a day from B2C brands.

I already get so many pitches every day from other B2B brands, cold outbound. I go on LinkedIn and it's just ads, ads, ads, ads. And it just feels suffocating in a way. And out of home is one of those. Those mediums where you can be really strategic about where you place your media and it doesn't have to feel overwhelming because it is something that is consumed passively.

And I'm not asking someone to read an ad on LinkedIn and click on it and then go book a demo. I'm really trying to, as a B2B brand, make an impact and drive awareness for my ICP, as opposed to, I want you to take action by clicking on my billboard. And it is something that is, is meant to be. Present, but not overwhelming.

pharosIQ: Got it. So I'm assuming a lot of QR codes, if there are there, if you're doing any sort of direct response or, you know, is there, you know, you mentioned tracking and performance based early on, right? How is that done without your core direct response tracking mechanisms?

Jonah: Yeah. So there's a technical answer and there's the easier answer.

And I'll do the easier answer is let's say you have a billboard. I'm in Los Angeles. So there are billboards everywhere. Let's say you have a billboard right off of the I 10 freeway, major thoroughfare. We can set what's called a view shed, which is basically just a fence around that billboard and measure the device IDs.

the count really of maids that enter and exit that thoroughfare that section where the billboard is and use that for exposure data and then cross reference that with site traffic lift through a GA pixel and a script. So there's, there's some technical things in there, but ultimately it's like we're bringing measurement into A channel into a medium where it is primarily just been you put flashy creative on giant wall on building for two months, and it's just a sunk cost.

I'm just going to throw money at it and it's going to look cool. And we're going to send it to our CEO. And he's going to say this looks awesome, but ultimately we're trying to turn out of home into a medium that actually drives results and affects downstream revenue.

pharosIQ: Very cool. I mean, you sold me. I think we're going to have to talk after it.

Um, just, I enjoy non traditional mechanisms, right? I've always, I've always been the, I've always enjoyed going left when everybody else is going right. And I think, I think would be to be as a nice segment to do that. So notice previously, you know, LinkedIn that you've held the title of growth marketing, right?

I'm generally candid. So I'm just going to ask the question, right? Isn't all marketing growth marketing, right? Why add the growth in front of the marketing in the title?

Jonah: Yeah, that's that is a good question. Yeah, I think if we're thinking of the modern day 2024 marketing, if someone has a title that says digital marketing, it also might as well just be growth marketing is really what you're looking for.

Are what levers can we pull to drive growth and what things can we start stopping, continue to do? It's a tactical analytical approach. That isn't just a general marketing of let's send some emails. Let's do a landing page or two. It's working. If you're a B2B product, it's working with the sales team to understand inbound pipeline as well as outbound, getting information from them on feedback, and then also maybe working with, if it's a SAS product.

Working with the product team to find levers to pull for growth that way, from a user signup standpoint, from a funnel efficiency standpoint, so I, yes, all marketing is growth. I think growth marketing is a bit of a, a more refined view into affecting the entire. user funnel and not just, well, once they talk to sales, then we're golden and we're going to keep repeating it.

I think growth is a bit more responsibility to ensure the feedback from sales and from product and from customer success is integrated into continuous campaigns in the future.

pharosIQ: Are the growth marketing roles kind of replacing the product marketing function? Because it sounds somewhat similar, but different.

Jonah: I think if my, my advice and my answer to that is if you're an early stage SAS product, you should not hire a growth marketer before you hire a product marketer, because your number one source of revenue, your baby, the thing you have to stand on is the success and value your product brings. So you need to Market the features and the benefits of that product before you worry about getting people in outside of like specific product features.

So I do think there's a world where growth marketing and product marketing are doing roughly some of the same things, but certainly the product marketer is more integrated into engineering and roadmaps and understanding what's going on in the market and how that feature or that platform that they're building from an engineering standpoint Solves the problem for the market.

And then the general marketing team can like take that and expand on it.

pharosIQ: Yeah, it makes totally makes sense. There's just, I feel like like the past year and a half has been the year of like the ad things in front of marketing title, right? Growth and revenue. And it's like, like, again, If you're not, I'm a revenue marketer.

I would hope so. So you spent a lot of your career in early stage, right? Series A, series B, right? That's kind of the startup side of the house, right? How do you think startup marketing is different from week to week? Growth demand type roles at larger enterprises.

Jonah: Yeah. I would say the, I would hope the answer, if you ask this question to someone who has been at a larger enterprise company, either like series C or later series dealer or public, I would hope their answer would be, there is no difference.

I would hope that they would have the same mentality and approach as an early stage, less than 5 million in ARR, less than a million. If you're seeing those kinds of things where they are taking big swings, but finding the areas that they can be really tactical in and make some calls on things. And if it's not working on it, as opposed to, well, we're going to run everything for a quarter and then evaluate after a quarter is over how it did.

And it did great. We keep doing it. If it didn't do great, then we take a month to figure out what else to do in place of it. I would say the earlier stages are more concerned about the timeline that you have, because ultimately you need to generate revenue and show that you're profitable and growing for you to raise capital from investors, which that's a whole other conversation based on the market now.

But if your earlier state is like you're really thinking about how do I make step function changes to go from 200, 000 ARR to 400 or 400 to 700 and not, all right, how do I go from 1, or 10, 000, 000 to 10 and a half million and a quarter? Like, really, you're trying to find those levers that you can pull that it really feels like things have changed and not, well, last quarter was 5 percent better than the quarter before it.

It's, you want larger changes.

pharosIQ: Yeah, I mean, I love the concept of taking swings. I wish it was more prevalent outside of the startup space, right? Because again, it's, I don't, I don't think there's a conservativeness to it or just paperwork, right? Sometimes it's just red tape, right? Like getting a P. O. in an enterprise can, I've worked with customers where getting P.1s can take six weeks. You get your budget two weeks before the quarter starts, getting a P. O. takes six weeks, right? Right, so best case scenario, you're starting your marketing for that quarter four weeks behind schedule, unless you can convince your vendors to kind of kick you off before you get your official PO, right?

And that's just really, really tough. But I think there should be more swings in B2B, right? It's so conservative. Again, hence the name of the podcast, right? Everything's so boring.

Jonah: Yeah, I mean, and if I can provide an example of boring is I have a twin brother, and he is also a marketer, but he is a public company marketer.

He works for a company that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and does marketing for them, and they Still, I mean, it's, it's a different styles, a different product and things, but they do direct mail religiously, regardless of it, of whether it performs or not, it is just something that they do and they continue to do.

And they will always continue to do because that is just something that they've always done. And that is not a company where somebody in his role or even his supervisor or somebody even above him could go to the C suite of a massive, you know, company and say, I think we should go all the way on other channel.

Those swings do not happen quarter that takes Significant time and resources and energy and planning and consultants and all those things. That's why I prefer startups. I can take a bet. I can make a decision. If it works out great, if it doesn't pivot.

pharosIQ: And if I would have known of the twin factor, I would have had the twin on the same podcast to make it the ultimate unboring podcast, right?

The two marketers, one startup, one large enterprise. This would have been amazing. You didn't get it from me until we got here because you knew it would happen. You knew I would go down that road. Oh, awesome. But I mean, direct mail, speaking of, I speak a lot about it on my LinkedIn. It's really having a resurgence, right?

Even the startup, even in the baby, in the digital space, right? The, uh, one, you know, I have a colleague who says it all the time and I stole it and I like stealing it. It's like the inbox and the desktops are full, right? But the mailbox is very much wide open. And believe it or not, some of my customers have the most success targeting higher titles, director, VP, C suite folks with direct mail, because while they might not get the mail, right, there is someone who usually takes it to them.

Yes, and nothing, like nothing more direct than like a warm handoff of something that has your, so like, it's been really interesting when I started at MRP, we have, you know, we had this direct response lead generation. Mailer product. And I was like, what the hell is this? Like, who's buying? Like, what? Are you kidding me right now?

And then I dove in and I was like, okay. And now even internally, we use it as one of our, our number one. Lead generating meeting generating tactics that we use internally in house as well, too. So it's I'm enjoying it. I like different stuff and it kind of nice to be able to showcase to a customer a different idea that they're like, oh, shit.

I didn't think of that.

Jonah: Yeah. And there's I like your analogy around the inbox is full and the desktop is full, but the mailbox is empty. And that Like there are companies out there. There's a company I interviewed with years ago that they're still around and they're crushing it. And it's called posty, a posty.

io perhaps, and they do programmatic direct mail, where, like, if somebody enters your CRM, it will send them a piece of physical mail, or you can build audiences and build lookalikes and do all those things. And it handles, uh, The creative and the, the outsourcing to printing and processing and mailing. And it does all that, which is a huge value.

And if I'm a marketer and I'm trying to explore a channel and I have no idea that the timeline or the constraints or the resources required for me to do it. Same thing without a home. It's like I could spin up a Facebook or a LinkedIn ad in five minutes and hit publish and it'd be done. But for a billboard, I don't know what kind of creative I need for that.

I don't know what the timeline looks like. So many different variables there. And I think that's, that's where having a vendor like poster, having a vendor like one screen comes in handy because it is not something that is meant to be self serve

pharosIQ: a lot of and a lot of out of home or there's channels and there's like, like you could be driving, like, it's not necessarily easy to know what's going on.

Who owns that billboard slot and who you would buy it from, right? Or like, or you would think like, I'm at the airport, right? I want to sponsor this turn style ad. Should I call the airport? Do I call the city? Do I, again, there's, it's one of those mediums where you're like, I wish I, I want to, I would love to advertise this.

I don't have any idea who I'm going to call though. Right. So having, having a network like, like yours at one screen is solid again, solid one space you go. Cool. I'd like to do this. What do you think? And then you get the recommendations again. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to look into it. It just seems fun.

I've always been fascinated by airport advertising only because I spend a lot of my time there and I always see it. You always see it. And I always, maybe it's just because I'm in marketing and I do that. And like, maybe the regular normal vacation folks don't see it. Right. But I always tend to catch it.

Jonah: Like, we're working with some clients who are preparing their conference and event strategies for the rest of this year, and most of them are in San Francisco. And you'll have big conferences like Dreamforce, which I think is in September. And the number 1 question that I believe our planning team gets from them is, I want to be in the airport or on that airplane.

That journey from the airport to downtown in the city or to the Embarcadero area, like, how am I part of that transit journey? Can I be in the airport? Can I be a massive billboard that's on the side of the interstate? Like, how can I be a part of that? Because it's too expensive to advertise inside Dreamforce because it's a separate thing.

How do I still be present somewhere that I might be priced out of?

pharosIQ: outside of the standing outside handing out until they beat you send their security afterwards to just why not so you're a midwest guy yes you noticed and unfortunately a cubs fan

Jonah: where

pharosIQ: did the roots of that come from how did you choose cubs versus socks you know how does that work

Jonah: so when i say i'm at midwestern i'm from indiana i'm specifically from southern indiana so that is a hotbed for st louis cardinals fans The natural rival to Chicago Cubs.

My father is originally from San Francisco, grew up as a Giants fan. Big Willie Mays guy, went to Candlestick Park as a kid, has a Willie Mays home run ball. Amazing, wonderful. And then when he was a kid, he moved, his family moved to Illinois, like central Illinois. And that was the heyday where WGN television network starting to broadcast Chicago Cubs games nationwide, which was one of the first.

sports teams to have their games broadcast at that level. And he just fell in love with Chicago Cubs. And then I just followed suit when they had my brother and I, and I just fell in love with the Chicago Cubs and being a fan and live in Los Angeles. And so the Dodgers are legend here. But I only go to Dodger Stadium when the Cubs come to town to play them because those games are enjoyable for me.

pharosIQ: It is a labor of love. I'm impartial. I'm one of the few Chicago people who, I don't have an allegiance, right? Outside of the Bears, I have no, no sports team allegiance to Chicago. If the Cubs are in the playoffs or doing well, I'll watch and cheer. If the White Sox are, I'm happy to. Blackhawks even, sure.

You know, like sometimes it's night. I mean, you know, you have to, when you're, you're my age, you have to go to kids events, things, and you have to talk to the other dad bros about something, right? So if you don't watch some sort of sport, then you're just staring at each other, talking about work. And no one wants to do that

Jonah: and you and I could sit here for the next 10 minutes and talk about should the bears trade the number one pick and get some more things for Justin Fields or should they draft Caleb Williams and trade Justin Fields all that we could talk about that.

We could. Okay. But there's, that's not B2B.

pharosIQ: There's so much. And it would be probably, it would probably be boring for both. So we would, we would be violating the B2B boring. We would

Jonah: not boring for

pharosIQ: us, but boring for the listeners. And they talk and it's talked about, I mean, I said probably seven hours a day on the radio.

Jonah: I don't get paid to talk about it. Like they do.

pharosIQ: Sports radio is like my, like non thinking thing. Like I put it on where I'm just like, I don't want to think. And it's all right now. It's all that everything's so bad. That it's just what are we going to do with the one good thing that happens, which is the number one pick.

So, so speaking of unboring campaigns that you've run over your career, right? We it's a requirement to join the podcast, right? We're here to be inspired as a collective group. So with that, I will open the door to you. Tell us about one of your most unboring campaigns. Why was it unboring and all the details?

Jonah: Yeah. So I will talk. Briefly, and by briefly, I mean the next, however many minutes you let me talk about one screen. I started working with them on a nearly full time contract basis in August. So it's only been five or so months here. They had a V1 of a marketing team, maybe two years ago, and the product was different.

The offering was different. And so they brought myself on and a fractional CMO, and then a fractional content marketer as well. The three of us to kind of Restart things and start moving this in a positive direction for the product and everything to stuff it stuff. It changed. And so the 3 of us kind of came to in this in this past few for the thinking around a campaign to reintroduce out of home to an industry where out of home is.

Very traditionally thought of as you buy a billboard because it looks good and you don't really care what you get in return for it. And you can send a screenshot of it to your CEO and you can get the thumbs up and the cheers. And this looks, this looks great in a Slack channel, but ultimately it doesn't drive revenue.

We wanted to reintroduce out of home in a way that shows marketers that it is not just that it can be better. So we came to call it, we came to call it out of home 2. 0, which is really focusing on a couple of different tenants of out of home is number one. There has been historically and traditionally issues around measuring out of home, the perception that out of home is not measurable.

So we wanted to find ways to combat that perception. The perception that out of home is not targeted and cannot be targeted. And it's just a kind of throw it up wherever you You get the most foot traffic and then you're set. And then the third one is that the perception of out of home is solely just for upper funnel awareness and you should only just run it in big markets.

And that's the only place it's going to perform is if you run it in New York City at Times Square. The combating the perception of that. isn't the case. And so the first part about the measurement is what we talked about previously, is our technology enables us to set a view shed is, I think there's a trademark around that.

I don't know. There's might be a TM symbol there, a view shed around all of the units that we place for, for a specific customer, and then mapping that to their GA instance. And there's some other technical things that even I don't ask about it because it's. It's just a little bit like it's, it's heady for me, but it makes a lot of sense in the product that allows someone to actually measure the impact that a billboard or transit stop or some combination of assets has on things like increases in site lift if they do an AB test of specific landing pages, and then ultimately, if this affects inbound into their CRM.

So that's one component of it. We put out some content and some blog posts around it. And then the second one, which is probably that we were trying to work from bottom up of like measurement is the most tactical thing. Okay, well, if we solve the measurement, it's still targeting is still an issue. And then if we solve targeting, okay, but out of home is still only for awareness.

And so it's trying to work through those three areas. I guess you'd call 'em objections. Sure. And that second one was around targeting of out of home is traditionally not something that can be targeted. We as one screen have, I believe, the largest library of out-of-home placements among any provider. So we, this is not a, a product that somebody like myself or a, a client of ours could like log into a platform and just like poke around and whatnot.

Like we actually work with 'em to build strategic media plans. So it's not just someone can pick, I want this one and this one and this one. We give them recommendations around what is your ICP look like, and then doing an analysis with our data from an out of home standpoint of where they live, where they work, what their commute looks like, where they spend a lot of their time from a dwell standpoint, what those down to those zip codes, and then finding the most valuable inventory in those zip codes that align with the budget align with the creative expectations.

And that is how we're kind of thinking about targeting as opposed to, oh, well, you want to be in San Francisco. You got to be in the, I have this billboard and 1, and it's less about where it is. And it's about who it's for. It's like, well, your audience, you say you want to be in San Francisco, but it looks like the majority of people who come to your site that you have in your pipeline that you have is closed 1 or closed lost.

In your CRM actually live in East Bay. They're in Oakland. They're in San Mateo. They're not in Daly City. They're Mountain View. They're not in San Francisco as a catch all. And so being very specific about where that inventory is placed and where the audience is helps to get us closer to a more targeted out of home by and not a spray and pray pick a billboard and run with it.

And then that third part there is that perception of like out of home is only for awareness and those kind of two other components in mesh into that of, well, you can measure it and you can target it. So you can start to track things like revenue towards it. If you know that a certain component of your customer base is made up of CMOs or CROs or pick an industry, pick a job title, whatever that component is.

You can run some tests around, let's do some out of home in this area where we see a high concentration of people who match our ICP and see if this impacts. Inbound into our pipeline, and even from a revenue standpoint, after the sales cycle might have closed versus we ran something similar the previous quarter without an out of home on top of it.

And it didn't perform as well out of home is not a, you have to pick digital or out of home or direct mail out of home is additive to those other channels and should not be thought of measured or targeted like a siloed thing. That's handled by a different team with different goals and expectations. It should be integrated into the rest of your channels and your campaigns because it is measurable.

It is targetable. And it's not just for pretty graphics on large billboards.

pharosIQ: Yeah, it's and I think the unboring part of it is something is changing perceptions of of a tactic, right? And it's almost like taking something not digital and making it digital, right? And, you know, you with with technology, and you'd be able to connecting those phone imprints with users.

With job titles with email addresses with location base. I mean, it's fascinating. Really. I mean, like, it truly is fascinating that I think we're reaching to the point eventually and it's probably not tomorrow, but I would think that in the next couple of years that 1 of us will be walking down the street and a billboard will say, hey, pharosIQ, I know you're.

You're looking for this almost like Facebook or Tik Tok does, which is creepy, right? Like, I mean, I think both of them are just creepy algorithmically. And I think, I think even out of home could get to that level as well, too. Once it identifies that magic device that you have in your pocket that everybody has in their pocket, being able to say, Hey, go to this restaurant because you have 2.

37 kids and kids love this restaurant. And that's just really all it's, it's fascinating stuff. It's really, really cool. I'm intrigued. I'll probably ask for a demo just to get to your point. I have a couple of events that I'm investing in this year that I'd love to. I've always been like, man, I wish I was the guy who sponsored the airport or the Uber or the stuff on the way.

So awesome with that Jonah. Thank you so much.

Jonah: I hate to jump in here, but that everything we just talked about doesn't even include. Digital out of home, digital billboards, digital trucks and signage and things. And that's a whole other, like, we can, we do that as well, but that's completely more tactical.

And it's a different, it's a different type of inventory there.

pharosIQ: Got it. I was assuming all of the out of home that you were tracking, because it's trackable with digital, but you're actually looking at like non digital that also has the same, which is again, another layer of un, very cool and very unboring, right?

That, uh, an actual print ad on a bus. Can now drive tracking and actual results based inventory. So that'd be awesome. So with that, I mean, I'm pumped. I'm probably, again, I'm probably going to schedule a demo for those there. Jonah, how can they reach you or on one screen?

Jonah: Yeah, so I would be remiss as a marketer not to say you could just go to our website and click book a demo so we can attribute it to something.

But yeah, the best way for someone to get in touch with us is to go to onescreen. ai and click book a demo and give us some information and we will reach out to them or they can schedule a demo with us through that. I think I actually had one the other day. Where if they, if they're a brand or advertiser and they want to work with us, they can immediately book some time with Greg Wise, who is our co founder, uh, former HubSpot.

He is the out of home guru for us and knows anything and everything about measurement and targeting and out of home. So this is his bread and butter. And then if things look good at, after talking with Greg, then we, we pass everybody over to our planning team, which we'll put together a strategic plan and then you're off and running.

pharosIQ: Onescreen. ai slash Jonah. Right. I

Jonah: wish. Maybe I'll make a landing page today for myself. Direct, direct attribution.

pharosIQ: Direct Jonah attribution. Right.

Jonah: Why not? That's an easy report for me to build in HubSpot.

pharosIQ: Just a list. Jonah. Perfect. You're taking it up. Your boss is like, well, so what's our best source? Me.

It's actually me. Actually me. Awesome. Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us again. Those of you listening. Thanks for joining again this week. Feel free to. Go and like us and give us a thumbs up on whatever platform you're listening on, whether it be Spotify, Apple, all of the above.

Tell your friends, share us on LinkedIn and socials. We appreciate you. Um, you can reach mrpfd. com. We're also available socially on Tik TOK and Instagram. As well, where we're putting out some interestingly funny things these days.

So thanks to you, everybody for joining, uh, Joan, again, I appreciate you taking the time out to join us as well. I learned a ton. It was great chatting and go Cubs. All right.

Jonah: Thank you, pharosIQ. Go Cubs. Take care.