Peter Irwin is a dead-ringer for actor William Hurt. But it's not movie screens that interest the president, CEO and co-founder of Toronto's Outdoor Broadcast Network (OBN).

It's humongous, interactive video screens. In Irwin's view, they are both the logical evolution of cave drawings and a communications medium that's uniquely suited to serve the citizens of the 21st century - for both commercial and humanitarian purposes.

Put another way, Irwin has seen the future and he believes a good chunk of it will play out as ephemeral mini-movies in which ordinary and extraordinary people - not to mention myriad products and even community events and causes - will have starring roles on giant screens.

His contention seems plausible once you've seen what's flashing across the staggeringly huge cluster of screens OBN erected atop Toronto's Eaton Centre shopping mall a year ago, and heard about the innovations it has ushered in.

Brennan O'Connor, Business Edge
Peter Irwin of Outdoor Broadcast Network says the media tower at Toronto's Eaton Centre can be co-ordinated with events as they are actually happening.

The high-resolution video "media tower," as Irwin calls it, measures 7,200 sq. ft. overall. It includes two 60x40-foot screens, two 40x30-foot screens, 40 scrolling panels measuring four four feet by seven feet, a real-time news ticker that is 40 feet wide and eight feet tall, and eight programmable lighting columns.

The whole shebang rises 18 storeys above the main mall entrance and its messages are viewed by an estimated 700,000 people per week.

Irwin says the tower's advanced technology makes it the first synchronized multimedia venue in the world - meaning that onscreen content can be co-ordinated with actual events as they happen.

Examples of this capability so far have included an award-winning ad campaign for Toronto radio station Q107, during which all of OBN's video billboards referenced whichever song was being played on the radio at any given moment. Similarly, whenever the temperature hit -5°C last winter, an image of a simmering bowl of Campbell's soup appeared on screen.

Irwin says there have been many other striking demonstrations of the capabilities of OBN's video billboards over the past year on behalf of such major marketers as L'Oreal, Bell Canada and Sony. A particularly memorable ad campaign for Tim Hortons rotated messages according to the time of day they appeared - with images depicting fare appropriate for breakfast, lunch and mid-afternoon coffee breaks, respectively.

What excites advertising professionals about the capabilities of video billboards, says Brooke Melanson, media supervisor in Cossette Communications' Toronto office, is their ability to engage audiences more effectively than traditional ads that merely try to attract attention with static, unilateral messages.

Sparking interactivity with consumers is both the holy grail and the hot button in the marketing industry these days, she says. "People are so bombarded with visual cues that you really need to do something different to draw them into your brand and get them excited about interacting with it in tangible and emotional ways."

An ideal example of accomplishing this feat, says Irwin, occurred last fall when Nokia asked OBN to help launch a new camera cellphone using the media tower.

Describing how Nokia's team nabbed passersby and filmed them - with the images instantly appearing high above their heads - he says: "Talk about engagement. Plus it really animated the campaign slogan, which was: 'Picture yourself here.'"

But advertising is not the only sector that's interested in leveraging the power of video billboards. So are civic authorities, says Jaye Robinson, director of special events for the City of Toronto.

She has used OBN's media tower several times to date during such events as concerts by Shania Twain and Great Big Sea because it overlooks Dundas Square (as does a nearby video billboard tower operated by Clear Channel Communications.)

This is the downtown Yonge Street locale that Toronto city officials - and many corporations - are trying to position as the Times Square of the north. Their reasoning is that developing Dundas Square into the kind of dynamic venue that attracts hordes of tourists and residents to New York City will have significant social and financial benefits.

Robinson agrees with that logic and believes that looming video billboards have a lot to do with "animating what happens in the square. They give whatever event you're holding a cosmopolitan, sophisticated flavour. And it really helps create a sense of community when you can look up and see people dancing a jig or linking arms and laughing or kissing. It's actually quite moving."

That sort of statement, along with kudos from commercial advertisers, is music to Irwin's ears. He says such approval has already propelled OBN's gross revenue "well into seven figures" and also corroborates the correctness of the course he and his partners agreed to pursue when they formed OBN in late 2002.

"Our vision was to secure enough video board locations, and make them state of the art, so we could offer greater opportunities and capabilities to advertisers of all kinds. Then eventually we'd be able to form a Canadawide network that will make it even better and easier for advertisers to buy into."

Not coincidentally, each of OBN's four partners (one of whom later dropped out) had built prior careers that ideally prepared them to develop what is now the largest chain of video billboards in Canada.

Irwin's resume includes marketing stints at Mattel, where he was instrumental in launching Nintendo. Later he was vice-president of marketing at Rogers Cable Systems and responsible for launching the TV Guide Channel plus pay-per-view. Then it was on to Southam Inc. where, as president of the new media division, he was in charge of creating the comprehensive Canada.com website which was later bought by Hollinger International..

Deciding in 1997 that "it was time to try a business of my own," Irwin says he "met up with a bunch of young guys who turned a concept on a laptop" into the Elevator News Network, which now is called Captivate and owned by Gannett, whose newspaper stable includes USA Today.

"After we built that across Canada, we took it into the United States, raised over $60 million, and in 2001, I oversaw a merger with an American competitor," he says It was after a year of staying on at ENN "to oversee some of the transitional elements and provide some strategic input into development in the U.S.” that Irwin "got excited" about the potential of video billboards and went on to launch OBN.

He says the partners soon spotted a potential edge that was largely being overlooked elsewhere. "Even in Times Square, where there's something like 18 fantastic boards, they're almost all proprietary. In other words, the Coke board advertises only Coke and the ABC board streams in only its own programs.

"What we saw was that providing non-proprietary venues to multiple advertisers was the way to go," and that's the strategy OBN has pursued ever since. In addition to expanding its Toronto chain of video boards - which Irwin says are now being seen by 2.7 million people per week - the company is set to add video billboards in Vancouver and Calgary by next spring, with Montreal locations not far behind.

Irwin says the toughest challenges in his business are finding appropriate, high-traffic locations for video billboards and then coping with civic approval processes that sometimes drag on for more than a year.

Skepticism among major advertisers can also be "a bit of an obstacle," he adds "because a lot of the large companies are sitting back to see how smaller companies like ours cope with a business that is very capital-intensive and (therefore) very risky."

Summing up the potential of his stock in trade, Irwin recalls that "a sage once said great advertising is about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. If there's any medium that can really deliver on that premise, it's video boards like ours."

(Terry Poulton can be reached at poulton@businessedge.ca)