TV Everywhere Takes On New Meaning

We have gotten used to seeing TV screens just about everywhere - taxis, airplanes, airports, sides of buildings, stores, gas stations, elevators, etc. Seems the media industry has been on a tireless mission (“No Screen Left Behind?”) to place screens in so many places that we are never more than just a few feet away from our next video exposure.

Considering the amount of video we already view on our computers and phones, is it now possible, with an extraordinarily well crafted media plan, for an advertiser to reach someone every step of their way throughout the day? In essence, follow them?

Here is a list of places, in chronological order, where a video screen flashed an ad message at me during a 5-hour journey from my office in NYC to a hotel room in Detroit:

Office computer
Elevator
Taxi
Billboard on Long Island Expressway
LaGuardia Airport Gate
Plane
Detroit Airport Gate
Taxi
Hotel Lobby
Hotel Room
Computer

Certainly a big job to research, plan and buy all these media outlets, but not very difficult.

Coming home from my trip I arrived at LaGuardia and hopped in one of the few cabs in NYC without a video screen. I enjoyed a few video-free moments until I noticed something floating high above the nearby National Tennis Center where the US Open Tennis Championships were in full swing. Hanging from the side of the DIRECTV blimp and filling the night sky with TV programming and ad messages was the largest HD TV screen in the world.

An influential media executive once said that "the future belongs to those brands who are able to travel wherever the consumer is moving."