Vertical Media Consulting Group, Inc. is the legal entity that serves as the umbrella for a number of services and websites run by digital signage veteran Dave Haynes. You may notice the domain is pressdooh.com, which was/is a brand I used to market my writing services. I’m slowing trying to focus things under the Vertical Media brand, so pulling back on using pressDOOH was a start.

Vertical Media incorporates those writing services I was doing under pressDOOH. It also rolls in Sixteen:Nine, which started as a simple blog but has evolved into a broader, more rounded trade publication. It also includes Meeting Room Signs, a directory service about guess what.

On a given day, I’ll probably be writing on my blog, editing guest contributions, ghosting posts for other blogs and corporate marketing sites, advising a client on marketing and message strategy, updating a listing on my meeting room signs directory, and preparing a presentation for a company or conference that wants to know about signage strategy or where the industry is heading.

Two days are rarely alike, which is awesome.

Clients come to me because they appreciate great writing, fast turnarounds and the comfort that they’ve put the work in the hands of a pro, who actually knows their business. I’ve been writing on and off for almost four decades (yikes!) and I have been active in the digital signage sector for 20 years. I don’t just write about the business – I’ve run huge networks and started companies in this business.

I get asked, a lot, to write for companies because I don’t do things the same way as mainstream public relations and marketing communications firms. I try to tell stories, and totally avoid the buzzwords and empty, self-congratulatory passages that still infest many or most news releases I see.

I am based near Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the Canadian east coast. If you have no idea where that is, think across the water from coastal Maine. I work out of my world headquarters – a spare room in my house, which is not at all far out of the city but backs directly on 20,000 of protected wilderness. Yet I have fiber to the curb!

I had a separate partnership with digital signage creative god Pat Hellberg, called The Preset Group. Pat’s in Portland, Oregon. We wound that down at the end of 2016, as Pat wandered off to drink great wine. Lucky guy. So Preset is no more.