Magazine Article Featuring Carroll Media Services printed in Outdoor Advertising Magazine (May / June 2003) by Ellery C Berryhill
“We are fortunate that our clients are some of the most knowledgeable and experienced people in our industry.”
If you have been involved in the outdoor industry for one week or several decades, you have probably been on a “ride” to determine the quality of a specific location or program, either on the vendor or client side. Fortunately, for those representing the buyer’s end of the ride process, Carroll Media Services (CMS), Inc., provides this important outsourced function. For over 10 years, CMS has viewed an estimated 500,00 traditional and non-traditional OOH media locations for advertisers by using the Carroll Network of 75 field representatives in 41 US states and Canada.
Carroll Media Services is the creation of a long-time outdoor veteran, Glenn Carroll. With an outdoor advertising career of 26 years, Carroll started his career with the National Outdoor Advertising Bureau (NOAB), not long after graduating from the University of Georgia with an advertising degree. He then moved to Leo Burnett Advertising working in the outdoor department for over 15 years as Senior Field Representative/ media buyer prior to starting CMS.
With the CMS headquarters located in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Georgia, we caught up with Glenn to discuss the details of his business and how this unique service has impacted the OOH media industry.
OAM: What made you start a “ride” services business?
Carroll: I spent many years in the car looking at advertiser’s outdoor programs before starting CMS, and it was evident that nothing can replace a person in the field making buying
decisions or monitoring the post-buy process – especially with local knowledge of the market. Many advertisers/OOH media buyers with limited travel budgets or the labor resources to get in the car and view their programs are missing the mark, in my opinion. liven with all the marketing tools provided by the vendors today, to make a buy or attempt to audit the service aspects of a program without getting in the car is not insuring the best results for the advertiser. I feel outdoor needs to be evaluated and monitored the old fashioned way, and fortunately our clients feel the same way.
OAM: What are some samples of why an agency with a travel budget would still use your services? Wouldn’t it be better for them to send their own people to report to their client?
Carroll: Of course it is better to have your own media buyers do the ride if possible. I am a big proponent of this procedure if time, budgets, and resources are plentiful. Too many times these luxuries are not in place; however, as many outdoor programs are reserved at the last minute and specific buying decisions must be made. Most of the OOH media buyers I know barely have time to return their calls and attend their meeting schedules. When they go on a market ride for a few days they are incredibly behind when they get back to the office. I could give you dozens of examples of how we have saved the day for our clients with last-minute requests, or conducted pre-rides or audits that were required that would have taken the media buyers weeks to do. In Los Angeles alone, we have 6 field reps that can ride a #100 showing in a weekend (at night). It would take one buyer over 2 weeks to do this without an illumination check. One recent sample of our work comes to mind regarding saving time and money. A client of ours had to evaluate the entire permanent inventory of a new client, along with proposed upgrades in 157 markets nationwide. Time was of the essence, and the total number of units was approximately 1,000 displays that needed to be rated, evaluated, photographed, and a written dialogue on each. Many of these markets were off the beaten path and we had to drive and fly thousands of miles just to get to many of them. We completed the project in 48 days and the client was able to make upgrades/buys from our recommendations in time for 2003. We used over 50 of our field reps to do this project, which would have taken most OOH media departments the better part of a year to complete this detailed task.
OAM: How have you found 75 field reps to represent you and your clients, and what are their qualifications to make pre-ride decisions and submit valid audit reports?
Carroll: It has been a 10-year effort to secure the incredible group of professionals we have under contract that make up our network. Through all my travels working with outdoor vendors over the years and being associated with other outdoor buyers, I made a lot of friends and developed many valuable relationships. We have never advertised for field reps, and it’s all been done through networking and relationships in the industry. Our qualifications come from the fact that a majority of our reps have solid OOH media experience either from the vendor or buying side, and all have local knowledge of their markets. Also, we have a training program that prepares each field rep for the various types of services we provide.
OAM: How is a pre-ride/audit ordered from your clients and must their agencies or buying services have a long-term agreement to work with you?
Carroll: We are fortunate that our clients are some of the most knowledgeable and experienced people in our industry. On the same level that they approach their media planning and execution for their clients, we receive detailed ride requests in advance, followed by the necessary materials for us to do our work. We are just another step in their overall management approach for their clients.
Many of our clients have a 12-month retainer agreement with us, but we also have project-based clients we work for who not have the volume annually to commit to a retainer.
OAM: Are most of your pre-rides and audits concentrated on standardized outdoor, or do you mix it up with alternative OOH media vehicles as well?
Carroll: Our clients have us check a variety of outdoor vehicles, and with the proliferation of alternative OOH media and promotional items, we are viewing almost everything out there today. We have checked everything from popcorn bag advertising, promotional food items on airline meals, all forms of instore and placed-based media and promotions, aerial advertising, sidewalk displays, and too many things to list in this interview.
OAM: Many of our readers are outdoor vendors that I assume work very hard to minimize the number of problems CMS reports to their clients. Does it concern you that your business model so to speak depends on finding problems in the industry?
Carroll: When I started the business 10 years ago, our business model did focus primarily on the audit process and reporting service-related problems like illumination, flagging, and other notable issues our clients wanted to know about. While we still provide this important function, we are conducting a tremendous amount of pre-rides/program recommendations today for our clients.
What the outdoor vendors may not realize is that during the pre-rides we are actually helping them sell their inventory with our detailed evaluations and recommendations. We have a rating system for all traditional programs, and in a competitive situation, a vendor with the best program is usually selected based on our field reps’ rating and comments. I know that we have been very instrumental in influencing our clients’ decisions with the large vendors as well as many independents that the buyers were not even aware of. With our local knowledge of the inventory and various OOH media options to consider, many of our clients depend on our rating systems and input to assist in the buys. I have actually had clients state that they would not consider OOH media if we were not there to do the pre/rides or audits for them.
It should be noted that we have been hired on occasion by OOH media vendors to do internal audits of their inventory to provide added value to their clients or to simply maintain quality control. We may be more of a friend of the OOH vendors than some would give us credit.
OAM: What do you see in the future for CMS, and with this large network, will you be offering other services?
Carroll: I see us continuing to do more pre-rides and program recommendations, as travel budgets and labor resources have been reduced by our clients. Expanding our data-base ratings of 30-sheets and bulletins in the larger markets is a priority, and more internal OOH vendor audits are probable as added value to entice media buyers in competitive situations.
We also are looking at new services for our network along the lines of promotional compliance, marketing research, and surveys. We have the ability to turn information around from 41 states /provinces within a very short period of time from professional and dependable individuals. I know there are many services we have not thought of yet that will become up line extensions of our current business model in the years to come.
