As outdoor market shifts, Slevin regroups
Published:Friday | January 7, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Howard Campbell, Business Writer
The almost illegible jottings on the whiteboard in the boardroom of National Outdoor Advertising's (NOA) Kingston offices suggest a robust committee meeting took place hours earlier.
A twisted tie suggests chairman Vincent Slevin was a leading player in the Monday morning jousting.
It has been two years since the Dublin-born Slevin purchased NOA and City Graphics, two of Jamaica's leading outdoor advertising agencies.
It announced the veteran ad executive's entry in the competitive local market which he and his partners hoped to expand to the Caribbean.
Slevin, a silver-haired 70 year-old, told the Financial Gleaner that the NOA has been holding its own in Jamaica, fighting with longtime rivals Signtex and Caledonia for the lion's share of a sector that represents 10 per cent of Jamaica's J$5 billion-a-year advertising market.
However, things have not worked out with their plans for Caribbean expansion.
"To be honest, we haven't achieved that, since we moved in here the market has changed," Slevin explained.
"Within months of our acquisition the financial world went into meltdown and we retreated."
With their sojourn into the Eastern Caribbean on hold, Slevin said his company''s focus has shifted to improving the standards of Jamaican outdoor advertising, and wresting the initiative from their biggest challengers.
According to Slevin's data, NOA accounted for 24 per cent of outdoor advertising at the time of acquisition. He reckons that has gone over 30 per cent, a significant move he believes for a new company with a different approach.
"What we're doing is expanding the outdoor advertising medium in terms of its quality and the quality we offer to advertisers," said Slevin. "I think we've achieved that."
To reinforce his point, Slevin points to NOA's securing of two key contracts. One for terminal displays at the Norman Manley International Airport, and the other with the Jamaica Urban Transit Company where clients get to show their products on government buses.
In addition, the company has contracts with Digicel, LIME and Claro, three major mobile phone companies operating in Jamaica.
And, he has began a new pitch to businesses in seminar-like gatherings on how to 'message' for maximum effect.
The son of an Irish diplomat, Slevin moved with his family to England at age 12. He entered the outdoor advertising sector in 1982 after years of working in the airline and liquor industries as a marketing executive.
That experience served him well when he started The Moore Group, which was responsible for the major display ads at England's largest airports, Heathrow and Gatwick.
This helped position Slevin's company as one of the leading agencies of its kind in Britain during the 1980s and 1990s.
After selling The Moore Group to American interests in the late 1990s, Slevin and his Venezuelan wife retired to Isla Margarita, Venezuela, an island situated in the Caribbean Sea.
It took a revolutionary move by an Irish cellular phone company to push him back into the boardroom.
"I looked at Digicel's entry into Jamaica and the Caribbean and thought, 'If there was going to be a battle for market share it was going to be between mobile phone companies'," he recalled.
A bitter fight between the established Cable and Wireless (now LIME) and Digicel did materialise. Both companies spent millions of dollars on outdoor advertising to push their products, reminding Slevin of a time when manufacturers of another commodity used a similar medium to get their message across.
"Tobacco companies were big into outdoor advertising and it worked for them, but we all know what's happened with that industry," he said.
"It's the turn of mobile phone companies."
Slevin and his partners, who include current NOA chief executive officer Ronan McGrane, got into the Caribbean advertising scene with the purchase of NOA and City Graphics.
The former was previously owned by brothers Eddie and Wayne Chai, while Deborah Lanigan, Mark Ho-Tai and Jeremy McConnell were the original owners of City Graphics.
Today, the companies have a combined workforce of 65 which includes printers, a graphics team and sales department. They were looking to make other acquisitions in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados when the international financial crisis set in.
"The way to expand in our business is to make acquisitions. It's critical to have local know-how, but that's going to be difficult until the market settles down," Slevin said.
Outdoor advertising emerged in the United States during the 1940s when highways were being built across the country.
The tobacco industry's Marlboro Man and Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken came to national attention through massive roadside billboards.
Despite the broad reach of the Internet and television, Vincent Slevin believes there is a place for outdoor advertising.
"It has its problems, but is the oldest form of advertising there is and, in many ways, the least expensive," he said. "It will never go away."