Loading summary
Transcript27 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, AdTech God.
- [00:13]
B
Welcome to the AdTech God pod, where we speak to the CEOs of companies building the future of flying digital media. Yes, it's a tongue twister, but if any of you were at Possible recently, you would have heard these helicopter sounds flying overhead with giant digital billboards. You probably saw my ad on there where it says, your CAC is showing. Yes, it was absurd, but I got a couple pictures. So after that experience, I decided to have Simon Powell on the podcast. He is the CEO of Helid. He's an incredible person. We love working with him, and I just wanted to hear more about what he's building. So, Simon, thank you so much for joining me on the pod. Thank you.
- [00:53]
C
Absolute pleasure.
- [00:54]
B
So, Simon, let me tell you, as someone who's bought digital out of home, I bought billboards. I don't think I had more goosebumps than seeing that helicopter fly overhead and hearing it through the glass and going, holy crap, this thing was way bigger than I thought.
- [01:10]
C
We love to hear that. A lot of people have that same feeling. It's an emotional experience when you see something that breathtaking flying through the sky. And that's what we like to leverage for clients.
- [01:20]
B
I love it. And Simon, I want to dig into that too, in terms of, like, what your clients are seeing. I'll tell you my own experience because I experienced it. But first and foremost, who are you, Simon, what were you doing prior to this and what got you to starting this, this company?
- [01:35]
C
Good question. It's been quite the journey. So my background originally out of university, was in investment banking. I worked in London for many years and then back to Australia and then decided to look at like a, I guess, a shift. I had a lot of friends working in marketing, advertising, doing very interesting things, always having a lot of fun. And I've always loved aviation, so I've always loved helicopters. And I stepped out of investment banking and looked at how could we meld those two things together? And it really started out as helicopter banners. I guess that was the forefront of the business that I got involved with. You know, I guess a helicopter banner for your audience is, you know, you guys have traditional plane banners in the U.S. you've had them since, I think, the 50s and 60s. A helicopter banner is just a much larger version of that, you know, three, four to six times larger, 20,000 square feet. So it's just a higher impact medium. And then my business Partner and I got together and he came up with a concept to digitize that. You know, digitizing aerial advertising. You know, I guess it's been the holy grail because, like all out of home, a lot of it is going digital for obvious reasons. So our first iteration of that concept was we had a second helicopter, so two helicopters. We had a big flying helicopter banner, which obviously was the bread and butter of the business. And we used projectors and using infrared and what we called augmented projection, we could lock on to that banner and essentially create a flying cinema screen through the sky. We did some testing. It worked in testing. So it was an idea that we then pitched to Viacom, which was an exciting meeting in New York. We were asked how quickly could we fly over from Australia and meet the team in Viacom and showed them the concept. They absolutely loved it. Said, this is, you know, this is right in our wheelhouse to do, to do kind of firsts. And so we then looked at, okay, what was the right event for them to launch that at? And it was the MTV Video Music awards. So in 2016, it's going back 10 years now. We.
- [03:46]
B
Interesting.
- [03:47]
C
Yeah, we launched our first iteration of this down the Hudson River. We, you know, some incredible footage. We launched Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj as the hosts. So. So that really, I think, put us on the map in terms of aerial media in the US on the, on the back of that, we attracted the interest of Disney, Disney ad sales. And obviously they saw the innovation of what we'd created and we went into that and did a five year partnership with them, which was very exciting. We did all sorts. So, you know, we did multiple Super Bowls for the likes of Pepsi, where we were using our traditional helicopter banners, which was, you know, very impactful and, and went very well. We also did bespoke, bespoke activations. So stay for Star Trek. We flew a replica of the USS Discovery down the Hudson river under a Black Hawk, which was, which was incredible. We did. Yeah. We did an activation for George Clooney, for George Clooney's Catch 22. So we brought 22 original World War II fighter planes from all over the US and we flew them in, in formation, the number 22 over the Jones Beach Air Show. We wrapped an original B25 bomber and flew that through New York. What else have we done? We've done some phenomenal aerial media activations or stunts and we've also done similar things all around the world. It was a global opportunity and a global niche that we have kind of found ourselves in. And then we all, I guess, had Covid. So I guess it does factor in there because in Australia, we weren't allowed to leave the country. Some of us weren't allowed to leave our states. But thankfully our incredible tech team and my business partner, Ryan Osborne, they had time to develop so the next. Next iteration. So whereas what we were doing was kind of more experiential based. Every. Every job's an adventure. It wasn't the scalable product that, that we dreamed of. So when we went back to the drawing board and said, okay, what. What is the next iteration of digitizing aerial that can be flown day, night under one helicopter? You don't need to helicopters in close proximity. You know, it lent itself to moving from projection to led, you know, to make the screen as light as possible to carbon fiber. And. And we are where we are now with this incredible new technology led.
- [06:29]
B
I. I mean, I can tell you and sometimes I talk to companies or people and the conversation is, you know, what are you doing in the space? Maybe I've used it, maybe I haven't. Sometimes I haven't used it. So, like to be able to say that I actually worked with you guys to, you know, do the creative, to schedule the timing and then to like, witness it. So I don't usually see digital ads. Right. Like billboards. Sure. I've had to walk around New York City looking for that time slot that my ad was going to show. I saw it. By the time I got my camera out, I would have to wait for the next time it shows. But with, with yours, it was like very visible. Like, I gave you a time window that I wanted to fly over the event and it flew over the event. And we had camera crews ready and we snapped photos and I took photos with my phone. And so it was a, it was an interesting experience because in advertising we talk about sight, sound and motion, and I feel like I had that all. So it was like the helicopter sound. Then this giant billboard and helicopter just popped out of nowhere from behind a building. And I see this thing overhead, I'm like, holy crap, this thing's massive. And it was just, it was fun. But like, what are you experiencing? I guess from other people that have worked from you? Yes, and in movies and film. But even in just like standard media or ad tech, like, how could they utilize this to help get the word out of what they're doing?
- [07:53]
C
Really interesting points you make. And that's where we, you know, it's nearly aerial entertainment, the theater of it, of the Helicopter flying through the sky, the sound of. And then, you know, to, to see that digital content, crisp, you know, it's 6 mil pitch. So the resolution of the screen is, is phenomenal for what is flying through the sky. And again, as you said, people want to take photos and you know, immediately people are pulling out their phones, which I wouldn't say is, you know, necessarily true for traditional other out of home or digital out of home medias. It's all about for us, you know, leveraging owned media, you know, because it's, it's that investment of okay, here we are flying, but it's everyone engaging with it now to give further context to that leveling of engagement, one of the major activations we did back in Australia for, for proof of concept before we brought it to the US was we flew at our largest sporting event, so it's called the Melbourne cup and they have up to a hundred thousand people per day across four days. So it's a very, very large sporting event, you know, and put those numbers into context globally. A bit like the US Kentucky Derby. But that only happens my understanding is on one day. But we ran with a sports betting agency or company, increased odds on, on the favorites in, in the races and we had a massive QR code on it and you know, they were trying to drive engagement directly with the audience with increased odds and it was a phenomenal success. And it was that, that, you know, people pulling out their phone and being able to scan that QR code from distance because it actually works because the resolution's so strong. We had a seven minute window between when the horses were not on the track where we could fly and they had a particular risk threshold and amount. The first day we flew for seven minutes, the full seven minutes. The last day we flew for 90 seconds because everyone knew it was coming and there was just that unprecedented level of engagement that had never, never been achieved with aerial media before.
- [09:57]
B
And you touched up on something because I was actually going to bring that up, which is the earned media aspect of it. So usually the earned media I get from digital out of home is me snapping a photo and sharing it. I think what was interesting for me to see was the inbound text messages that we all received from people who had seen it. So people are like, did you really do this? And I said yes. They're like, this is pretty awesome. Like here. I got a. Yeah, yeah, I got a, I got a photo for my hotel. I think I got photos from a hotel window. I got photos people standing by the pool. I Received photos, obviously, that we took. And I just thought it was cool because normally people see it and they. They just don't care. They're like, oh, I saw your. Saw your ad in the Uber. I saw your ad on the billboard. For me, it was the fact that we were receiving inbound messages from people saying, you guys booked this? And we're like, yes, we did. Yeah, like, oh, that's pretty cool.
- [10:49]
C
We had that response from every other. Every other client that we flew and that we always flew. We always get that same response. The level of inbound engagement, it's unrivaled. And we had, you know, we flew. We launched VaynerX's new agency, Tamara Group.
- [11:06]
B
I saw that.
- [11:07]
C
I saw that blown away with the amount of, you know, amount of, you know, inbound and engagement and whatnot. We flew for Russ Dagwell. You know, David Sable was like, this is incredible. So I think we, you know, possible putting it in front of such, you know, such a specific set of eyeballs of the industry and having it, you know, resonate and have people engage, you know, has really moved the needle for the. For the product and for the technology.
- [11:32]
B
I mean, do you provide any metrics in terms of venue, potential eyeballs, you know, time and error? At times it was served. Like, can you give me some insights on what type of metrics you would provide to an advertiser and what that looks like?
- [11:47]
C
Great question. So what was interesting with Possible is we partnered with Blue Byte and we did shadow fencing so that we could retarget everyone through mobile, which was a new partnership for us which performed very, very well in terms of different brands and what we've done to date in terms of what that level of success looks like. For the sports betting example at the Melbourne cup, it was how many people engaged with it, you know, and that was a incredible success. The launch partner that we had for the US last year, we launched Microsoft Xbox's new game Ninja Garden 4. So for that, they set us a, you know, it was very much a content piece and they wanted to get broad traction outside of just the traditional gaming, gaming group that they, you know, that kind of who usually engages with their launches. And so to do that, what we did is we turned heli d into a flying video game screen. And then we had the number one gamer and the rapper Sway Lee in a second helicopter live playing the game. And so what we had to solve there as well was like zero latency gameplay from one helicopter to the screen, which we achieved with some incredible technology. But I Guess the point there was then, you know, are they worried about people seeing it on the ground? No, it was a content piece and you know, the numbers they fed back to us was it outperformed across, it had a billion odd impressions across so many different verticals which they usually wouldn't get traction on. So for them it was a massive success in terms of moving forward. And you know, your traditional CPMs, we are working with several companies on how best to do that. You know, there is a lot of new, you know, I guess progress being made on how you can do it to mobile, you know, because there's you know, taxi, top TV and, and you know, screens that move around and we're just trying to work out the best methodology that would then relate to, to what we're doing.
- [13:50]
B
So general digital out of home question is what direction do you think it's all heading in when, when you have various medians types, right, like vehicle, rooftop in vehicle, standard digital out of home. Billboards, helicopters. You think we're going to start seeing flying drones flying these things? What do you think is next for I guess the evolution of flying digital media in general?
- [14:17]
C
Yes, we will see drones and we've done a lot of stuff in the drone space. We, you know, we flew helicopter banners under drones back in Australia. So we're, we're at the forefront of what's possible there. It comes down to power to weight lift ratio. So currently a helicopter is unrivaled in terms of how much it can lift and how far it can fly for or how long it can fly for. Drones do not match that currently. Will that technology keep innovating to a level where it does match a helicopter and it becomes a viable option? Absolutely. Will we be at the forefront of that? Absolutely. So, you know, coming back to the first part of your question, in terms of where do we see it all fitting with those other mediums, you know, I think it, it's best served packaged together. Obviously heli d is the premium wow factor in the sky, but packaged together with all those other digital out of home mediums that's going to give clients, you know, the best result to their campaign. So we don't see ourselves necessarily as a, as a soulless item. We see ourselves, you know, being integrated into that network but as certainly the high impact, you know, perfect for tent pole events, major events and those kinds of things. Brand launches.
- [15:31]
B
Amazing. Well, thank you again, Simon for joining on the pod and thanks for the great partnership possible. Are you guys going to be at can, are you guys doing anything there.
- [15:39]
C
I will be. I will be at can and our aim is to have Heli d flying there next year.
- [15:43]
B
Awesome. Thank you again for joining me on the Pod and looking forward to working with you again soon.
- [15:48]
C
Thank you. Absolute pleasure. Appreciate you having me on.
- [15:51]
B
Thank you.
- [15:53]
A
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for
- [15:57]
B
the people about the people.
- [15:59]
A
Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates, so follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.