By Kerry Yoakum, Vice President of Government Affairs, OAAA
OAAA regularly conducts Thought Leadership Q&As on interesting industry topics. Today, I would like to spotlight one of OAAA newest members, Symterra, who can help with an age-old industry problem, birds roosting on your billboards. I posed the following five questions to Mike Bernal, Symterra’s Chief Sales Officer.
Tell us about the Symterra Technology and how it works.
The Symterra System uses newly discovered science to affect the bird’s physiology, stopping the bird from being able to judge distance and speed while within range of the system. Very simply, when birds encounter Symterra, their natural GPS is disrupted, and they CANNOT “see” where to land or how fast they are going. It creates what we described as “BirdiGo” or humans call vertigo, wherever it is installed.
While it is more effective than ANYTHING ever used to combat nuisance birds, Symterra is harmless to them, safe for humans, soundless, odorless, nearly invisible and will NOT affect other electronic equipment. It protects asset longevity, increases worker safety, stops upset customers, and reduces cost and risk across the board. Check out the videos on our YouTube page, website, or follow us on LinkedIn.
How has your experience been in the OOH community?
The OOH community has been great. We have established working relationships with the Big 3 Billboard Companies and multiple IBO’s in a short period of time. We are very excited to have partnered with Media Resources Inc. on distribution in the USA as well as Canada and we have integrated the technology with Smart Link. We have been extremely happy with how well the product has been received.
Why is Symterra different than what is currently out there?
We are a proprietary technology that was created by scientist and engineers, off of new Scientific discoveries on how the bird travels; we are temporarily disrupting the bird’s ability to navigate. It took the birds thousands of years to evolve that ability; they will never get use to our technology. Other solutions work temporarily and minimize the problem temporarily, but eventually the bird gets accustomed to it. That is not possible with Symterra and that feedback has been confirmed by an efficacy study done by the University of Arizona, one of the top Entomology Programs in the world. It works immediately and we can prove it!
What types of birds have you had success with?
Symterra has been effective on ALL birds thus far. Since they all utilize the same anatomy to get from place to place, they all are affected similarly when encountering the system. OUTFRONT afforded us a great opportunity to install our system by installing Symterra on multiple boards, in varied climate environments, to deal with a multitude of different species. Symterra has successfully repelled the pigeon, the seagull, the hawk, the osprey, the starling, the dove, the woodpecker and the turkey vulture to name a few. We’re confidently about to install across multiple structures in Australia against the cockatoo. We haven’t met a bird we can’t convince to relocate!
Where are you currently installed and how do people learn more about this?
We are all over the world. Over the last 3 months we have installed Symterra on multiple structures in Las Vegas, NV, Phoenix, AZ, Tucson, AZ, Albuquerque, NM, El Paso, TX, Baltimore, MD, Atlantic City, NJ, Times Square, NY, Minneapolis, MN, St. Louis, MO, Kansas City, MO, and Fargo, ND, with upcoming installations in UT, CO, IN and OH as well! We also have Symterra installations in Canada.
You can learn more by clicking here, emailing Symterra at [email protected], or calling them at 855-845-9473.
