Callao City Lights: a profitable DooH example at the BIT Broadcast 2014 workshops

With a pragmatic and realistic title: “I already have a DooH screen, and now what do I do”, the workshop of the company Espectáculos Callao, which has developed the interactive project Callao City Lights, has made it clear that a well-planned business and exploitation model of digital media based on providing value for customers is profitable.

The general director of Callao City Lights, Gerardo Baranowski, explained in the workshop given in BIT Broadcast 2014 How to undertake an interactive digital communication project in a central public street in Madrid, through adequate planning of needs, development model and exploitation of the screen system, can be a profitable business.

The path to achieve this has not been easy, since it has taken "more than ten years and three government terms to explain our project and obtain the license," explains Baranowski. "In that time we have also traveled a lot to learn about ideas, ask questions and copy the good projects that were carried out in other countries."

In this sense, Callao City Lights is based on the New York model, although at a lower level in terms of deployment of visual supports: a square in the center of the city, with intense human traffic, where multiple activities occur that are shown on screens and capture the attention of people, who participate through social networks and devices, creating a very positive experience.

With this concept, in 2003 the first sketch of Callao City Lights began to be realized, as well as its business approach, “in terms of what experience we wanted to show to people, what value we could offer to advertisers and how to feed back the systems and interactivity with a business model that was profitable,” says this manager.

Kilometer 0 of culture

The coordinates for its launch were clear, since they started from a central square in the center of Madrid of more than 3,000 square meters, on the road with the greatest influx of tourists and citizens, with a wide cultural offer and shows.

"We began to work on the 'Km. 0 of Culture' concept, since although we are a cinema, in this area many things happen daily and there is a wide range of shows - he points out -. Our challenge was to offer quality content, generate value for the advertiser with a greater commercial impact, since our limitation is precisely that we cover only one square, not a global network of screens, so we cannot compete in quantity and coverage of media, but in quality."

The result of this approach is that clients adapt their content to the capacity of the screens and activities in the Callao City Lights area, "and that is precisely what gives it value - says Baranowski -. In addition, we continually carry out special actions, such as premieres and visits from international film and entertainment stars; we develop and participate in the activities that take place in the square, such as broadcasting of musical events on our screens, summer cinema in HD quality, video games..., all of this so that people have a good time and interact on the networks viewing themselves on the screens, where we offer geolocation systems, QR codes, etc. that advertisers provide for real-time promotions.” This entire process is supported by an organization, made up of fifteen people, that follows a structure model similar to that of a television, since Callao City Lights carries out broadcasting, continuity, content, commercial activity...

Versatile technology and CMS

En este sentido, Daniel González, director de cuentas TV&Media de Ericsson, the company in charge of implementing these systems, explained to professionals that "this entire business model is based on versatile technology. Success in DooH is having an adequate information point, with a well-defined screen size design, a large viewing angle and a luminosity in which light changes and the incidence of the sun are minimized as much as possible; as well as valuable content."

This interactive and commercial support offered by Callao City Lights, based on five large LED and Full HD screens from the North American manufacturer Daktronics on the facades of the historic cinemas and on the marquees of the Press Palace, it is based on a powerful digital content management system (CMS), which “allows the transfer of all this content, around thirty different contents daily on each of the screens, with efficient workflows, cataloguing, security and legal copy, etc. based on metadata”, González specifies.

For both directors, the Callao City Lights project is a success and has become a benchmark for outdoor digital advertising, offering users and advertisers interactive capabilities, augmented reality and the emission of 3D images to connect with the more than 113 million people who pass through this pedestrian plaza each year.

The Daktronics DVX LED screens, measuring 101 m2 and measuring 10 pixels (1,009,800 pixels); another of 130 m2 of pixel 10 (1,396,000 pixels), both with the capacity to broadcast 3D images; Together with the marquees located in the Press Palace, with 36m2 of pixel 10 (356,400 pixels) on the front, and two sides of 8.80 m2, with views of Gran Vía, they offer a total of more than 10,900,000 daily impacts.

Access to the BIT BROADCAST 2014 Special