Messages on the move

.

Register today for a FREEDigital Signage Handbook

Written as an attempt to remove some of the mystery and confusion that can exist around Digital Signage. ONELAN’s Digital Signage Handbook is an essential tool for anyone investing in Digital Signage.

www.onelan.com/handbook Tel: +44(0)1491 411 400

30 APRIL 2008DIGITAL SIGNAGE

AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT FROM MEDIAPLANET ABOUT DIGITAL SIGNAGE

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CONTENTS

Return on investment 4-5

Positioning6

The science behind digital signage 8-9

Versatility 10

DIGITAL SIGNAGEA TITLE FROM MEDIAPLANET

Project Manager: Aminoor ChoudhuryEditor: David Abbott Production Manager: Katherine WoodleyDesign: Sherine Barnes Prepress: Jez MacBeanPrint: News International

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DIGITAL SIGNAGE Introduction

do it full justice. It is really a new wayof communicating and people are be-ginning to get very excited about it asthey start to see the possibility of arevolutionary shift in the way wecommunicate.

DS is different: “It’s not television,”says independent marketing consult-ant for the digital out-of-home in-dustry, Damien Edmonds. “Consumerscan’t stop, they often cannot hear, soit’s just not the same as sitting downat home in front of the TV,” adds Ed-monds.

That presents a challenge as con-tent producers grapple with the de-mands of the advertising equivalentof the haiku. DS can use video as wellas static and moving graphics and an-imations. Many in the industry arguethat we are witnessing the emergenceof a more sophisticated form of ad-vertising, mixing information andcommercial communication and blur-ring traditional boundaries. And po-

tentially, DOOH offers the possibilityof a more experiential form of adver-tising which can extend brand reachin a powerful way.

In advertising the flexibility of thetechnology offers the opportunity torun more creative messages withgreater choice in how and when totarget messages to particular marketsegments. But at the same time, DS isnot just about advertising and it isalso being used for corporate com-munication in many different con-texts.

Digital signage is also being her-alded as an opportunity to moveaway from the rigidity associatedwith the age of the poster. The day ofcustomers paying for a static displaywhich is on show, night and day, seenand unseen, for a relatively long pe-riod of time, is dead. There is the en-ticing prospect of more time slots,greater revenues and a more sophisti-cated pricing structure.

The talk among advertisers these days is about a the battle for a new territorycalled "Mindspace". It turns out to be difficult to locate because it is inside yourhead and the fight is intensifying because it is becoming a hard place to reach.

The digital route tofilling the mindspace

Our media habits have changed. Weare less likely to read a newspaperand we watch less TV; and when wedo, we tend to skip over the adverts.So advertisers are getting jumpy andwant to find a way to get back to us.

Advertisers are starting to thinkthat the best way to do that, is tocatch us when we are out of thehome. Out of home (OOH) advertisingrepresents around 10 per cent of ad-vertising in the UK. One industry ex-pert estimates that the OOH marketwill be worth around £50m, or ten percent of the advertising market in2008. Digital out of home – DOOH –will account for about 5 per cent ofthat, but it is being seen as a sharewhich is only going to increase as ad-vertisers try to keep track of increas-ingly choosy and mobile consumers.

Digital signage itself just refers to adigital sign with text and still or mov-ing images. But that does not really

But that’s really more of a potentialat present, because change is difficultand there are plenty of pitfalls. We’relooking at an industry which is in its’infancy.

Arguably the early steps into DS afew years ago failed precisely becauseadvertisers did what people alwaysseem to do with a new medium; theyjust threw in their old content, likenewspapers in the early days of theinternet.

“It makes an impact if it’s donewell, but there are still a lot of caseswhere it isn’t being used well,” saysAjay Chowdhury, CEO of EnQii, aleading player in the out-of-homedigital media market.

But making sure DS is done well isnot so easy, and several industrycommentators point out that the in-dustry has it’s share of people whothought it was going to be an easyway to make a lot of money. Thereare new opportunities to reach outand create new markets and new con-sumers, but DS is not a magic bullet.

One thing is for more certain; digi-tal signage is going to transform thewhole experience of consuming, sell-ing and communicating.

New Arsenal signing is a winner

Arsenal Football Club provides agood example of how digital sig-nage can be used to generate valuefor a business. A network of 470plasma screens in the concoursesand hospitality areas at the Emi-rates Stadium keeps fans informedand entertained on match days.Promotional and branding mes-sages are delivered through thenetwork and extend the time fansspend in the stadium, all making fora much enhanced experience.Angus Kinnear, head of marketingpoints out that the LED perimeterboards are also a valuable and flex-ible branding medium, deliveringmessages that can be changedweek by week or during a match.“Our research indicates that theyare at least four times as effectiveas traditional static boards,” saidKinnear.

� Arsenal Football Club

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The great outdoors DIGITAL SIGNAGE

The industry rightly senses that itsability to develop the market will de-pend to a not inconsiderable extenton being able to clearly demonstratethe effectiveness of the new medium.

Bob Clarke, CEO of Any Other Busi-ness Ltd, doesn’t shy away from anyof these issues and he makes no bonesabout the fact that investing in digitalsignage is a big investment. There isthe potential to gain big rewards fromDS but, he says, “It’s not a coincidencethat only retailers prepared and able tomake mistakes have embraced owner-ship of digital signage.” Ideally saysClarke, those getting involved need tohave the luxury of being able to affordto make mistakes. For those who cando that, who are really the pioneers ofa new medium, the rewards will come.But they will have to be prepared tocount some of the return in terms of

Digital out of home advertising (DOOH) may bethe glossy and uber-hyped flavour of the month,but how do you know that it is doing what it issupposed to be doing and giving a decent returnon investment? That is a question which hard-headed business owners are not slow to ask, and itis also a question with which the DOOH industryis becoming increasingly preoccupied.

brand values and customer engage-ment, not just in advertising revenues.

That’s a tall order perhaps, butClarke thinks that those companies

who aren’t able to think of digital sig-

nage in these terms are going to bestruggling to see a return. For ‘followme’ businesses, the high street brands,it may be that the best way to go for-ward is to defray risk by being aggre-gated into someone else’s network.

Others in the industry take a morecautiously optimistic view. Nick Mot-tershead finance director of Match DayMedia, points out that it’s the lack ofan agreed yardstick which has con-strained the growth in this DOOH mar-ket and argues that the industry has toact collectively if it is to move forward.

There’s been no transparency thusfar in the industry says Mottersheadand that’s why Match Day Media’shave said that they intend to, er, ‘getnaked’.

Mottershead says that means digital

signage providers have to be able todemonstrate that consumers arewatching signage and that it is havingan effect. Match Day Media have beenworking in consultation with HelenHarrison and RSMB and have now gotsome strong statistical data. The mostrecent research for Match Day Mediashows unprompted recall rates of up to42 per cent and prompted recall ratesof between 66 and 82 per cent. Thatconfirms research from other sourcesshowing that digital signage does pro-duce a higher recall rate than tradi-tional mediums, but there is still someway to go.

EnQii’s Ajay Chowdhury agrees thatDOOH has unique problems in terms ofmeasurement. Whilst it’s not difficultto criticise the validity and signifi-

cance of RSMB ratings for the televi-sion audience, Chowdhury points outthat at least they provide an agreedstarting point for analysis. In theDOOH market in contrast, there is nosuch agreed standard. Of course, theusual market research measures ofdwell time and footfall can be takenand applied, as well as qualitativeanalysis from focus groups, surveyingor interviewing. They can give someindication of how effective this formof advertising is, but that still leaves alot of uncertainty and room for debateabout exactly how to quantify thevalue of DOOH advertising. Putting avalue to the product is therefore an in-herently tricky task bound to provokeargument. But it is not for the want oftrying; as Chowdhury points out, sev-

But can youmeasure it?

“Digitalsignage produces

unpromptedrecall rates of 42

per cent - afigure ahead ofother media.”

AN ADVERTISING INSERT BY MEDIAPLANET 5

The great outdoors DIGITAL SIGNAGE

eral companies, including Arbitron,TruMedia and Quividi, have devisedeye recognition technology which canbe built into screens and provide hardquantitative evidence of how manyglances screens attract.

But it’s still early days for this sort oftechnology. While Nick Mottershead ofMatch Day Media says that his com-pany is about to starttesting with eyerecognition technol-ogy, Bill Gerba, CEOof Florida basedWireSpring, says thathe feels none of thegaze tracking systemsare very good. In hisopinion they are notquite productionready and he doesnot feel that any bigsuccess stories haveyet emerged to con-vince him otherwise.And poke a bit fur-ther and the suppos-edly hard measures from gazetechnology get a bit softer. As Gerbaasks, the measure begs questions ofhow long counts as a gaze, andwhether the viewers have to stop, andso on.

But all this uncertainty doesn’t haveto be an insurmountable obstacle toprogress says Gerba. He thinks thatsearching for some sort of universalmeasurement is a bit of a red herring;different measures will be appropriatefor different contexts and differentneeds and indeed, it may not be worththe effort, of measuring some things.

Although Gerba doesn’t explicitlysay so, you can’t help thinking that

gaze recognition may be what he hasin mind. But this isn’t to say thatGerba is advocating a casual approachto assessing the costs and benefits ofdigital signage. Far from it; he is wellaware that the costs of installing a bigDS system can be huge. However, hedoes suggest that in some contexts, forexample retail, the usual methods of

market research canstill be perfectly ad-equate. Simple splittests can tell youwhat happens whenone outlet has digi-tal signage and an-other doesn’t.

And it’s certainlytrue that workingout the costs andreturn on invest-ment is not equallycomplex in allcases; it depends onthe business modelin question.

Tariq Ahmad,CEO of Oggul, argues that if you aretalking about a retailer who is usingDS purely for sales communications toa large branch network, the savings ondesigning, printing and distributingsales literature can be huge. Ahmadpoints out that there are a lot of factorsto think about and weigh up beforeconcluding any cost benefit analysis,but potentially he says, the savings canbe very considerable indeed.

For those using DS with more com-plex business models though, theproblems in quantifying return of in-vestment remain a point on uncer-tainty. It’s just possible though thatthe doubters will be persuaded by

James Davies, board director ofPosterscope.

Davies is not afraid to simplify andengage with potential clients in adown to earth - but still highly profes-sional - manner. He says that broadlyspeaking, advertising has alwaysworked on one of two levels; the intel-lectual or the emotional. Of those two,by far the more successful is the emo-tional level. In the new DOOH market,it’s the emotional level that is particu-larly interesting and fruitful, partly be-cause the ‘infotainment’ element of thenew medium allows for more opportu-nity to foster engagement with con-sumers, or as Davies refreshingly callsthem, ‘people’.

Davies says that Posterscope’s re-search shows that people like digitalsignage and feel that brands advertisedon it are more high-tech and advancedthan other brands. Posterscope alsofound that DS attracted up to doublethe trust of traditional mediums. More-over says Davies, DS has what he calls‘talkability’; simply put, it gets peopletalking, attracting 44 per cent morediscussion than other mediums. Daviescites the examples of Posterscope’s in-novative work for Yell, Adobe and Dis-ney, where highly interactive digitalsignage in bus shelters and shop win-dows has captivated the attention ofthe public in an entertaining andmemorable way.

As Davies points out, the sort ofpositive experience provided by theseexamples really engages with peopleand captures their attention. That heargues, is something which in a mediasaturated environment is extremelyvaluable. Just how valuable is a mootpoint. And in traditional business

terms, of course, the value of an ex-perience is something very hard todistil into the sort of quantitativemeasure so beloved by accountants.

But just because a thing is hard tomeasure, it does not follow that it doesnot exist. In an uncertain business en-vironment, that is useful reminder that

advertising, like business itself, is asmuch an art as a science. Businesseswill of course continue, very wisely, towant to quantify the returns and costsof DS. But the difficulties in doing thatshould not blind them to the very realopportunities in an exciting, and ofcourse, risky, new market.

“In morecomplex business

modelsquantifying the

return oninvestment

remains a pointof uncertainty”

AN ADVERTISING INSERT BY MEDIAPLANET6

PositioningDIGITAL SIGNAGE

Location, location, locationThere are those who would argue that the introduction of digital signage does not really raiseany new questions about location. But that is a moot point and on several different levels.

If a big part of the rationale of apply-ing digital signage in the first placehas been to hunt down the ever moreelusive consumer, it must at least begthe question; “Where the hell are theynow?” And questions about locationalso beg the question of level; are wejust talking about where digital sig-nage is best deployed within a buildingor a shopping centre or are we goingup a level? If so, that implies startingto think about the implications of net-works for digital signage.

These are difficult questions to an-swer. Looking at this from the per-spective of a retailer or serviceprovider who wants to use DS, GuyBucknall, MD of Gym Television Ltd,recalls how when he started out in thebusiness he thought back to his timeas an infantry officer and asked,‘Now, if someone was going to shootat me, where would the bullet comefrom’. That hasn’t changed much, and

Bucknall’s advice is to keep it simpleand just look for the white space.That sounds right, although it’s notsomething that seemed obvious toone major UK retailer, which man-aged to install screens so high thatthey were above consumers’ line ofsight, thereby consigning thousandsof pounds of advertising budget intothe waste bin.

But there is previous knowledgeand even a few principles to apply tolocating signage: it has got to beplaced where people can see it andthat means that the old marketingmeasures of footfall and dwell timeare as important as ever. Point ofsales positions are going to remainimportant, but what the new mediumwill mean is that there could be a pro-liferation of signage throughout retailspaces, with messages being highlyfocused and tailored to particularproducts and contexts.

So far, so good, but delve a bit furtherand the novelty of digital signage be-comes more apparent. If a retailerslaps up a digital sign - a computerscreen displayed portrait style - it re-ally is just a digital poster for the verygood reason that consumers will notwant to stand for a lengthy period oftime in a shopping mall watchingcontent, however interesting it is.Content and use are being changed bya new medium and vice versa; it’s atwo-way channel.

If you are stuck in a queue at an air-port or waiting for a burger at a pre-miership football match, a bit ofentertaining, informative and well se-lected content, interspersed with someadvertising of course, may well holdyour attention and compensate forhaving to queue. But that doesn’tmean advertisers can stop bothering tolook for those white spaces.

So how much have things changed?

Bob Clarke, CEO of content providerAny Other Business Ltd, is one indus-try professional who argues that theycould well be changing in a big way.Clarke makes the point that whilewe’ve had hundreds of years of expe-rience in architecture and professionalscan tell us how best to lay out living,office or retailing space, but digitalsignage really is different.

Clarke makes the point that DS is inthe very early stages of its develop-ment and it is not necessarily clearwhat works and what does not work;it really is a new medium. How longwill people stand and in which places,and what will engage their attention?In five years' time, suggests Clarke,we will know a lot more about theanswers to these questions, at the mo-ment the answers are by no meansclear. And even when people do findout answers to problems, in a new in-dustry, there tends to be a reluctanceto share knowledge.

That still leaves the broader issueabout location; finding the sites wherethose elusive consumers or informa-tion users can be located. There is anelement of continuity here; advertisers

will place screens, just as they did bill-boards, in the best locations availableto them.

But the real sense in which locationwill become vitally important, saysClarke, is in the development of whatwill be in effect a digital grid. Thoseowning networks in proximity to dig-ital cinema chains, digital billboardsand digital transport networks willfind themselves in very a powerfulposition. For retail chains, retailmalls, football clubs, health clubs,surgeries and owners of networks inthese locations, an investment in DSwill begin to make sense as theirvalue will be as much influenced byproximity to other networks as to theintrinsic value of their own commu-nities. The implication of this, saysClarke, is that decisions to trigger ex-pansion in the DOOH market willbegin to have a lot in common withthose driving commercial propertydevelopment.

That will mean that the greatest op-portunities will be found in new devel-opments where developers can startwith a clean sheet. That means signagecan be built into the fabric of brand anda particular location, becoming an ex-periential asset. In these situations, thecreative and the commercial potential ofdigital signage are maximised; and atthe moment, one of the places wherethat is most likely to happen is, unsur-prisingly, in the growing consumereconomies of the Far East.

“Those fumingin a slow-movingqueue could be

grateful for a littleentertainment andit could even makeup for having toqueue in the first

place”

PricewaterhouseCoopers, see com-munication as an important tool inadding value to their business. Ap-proximately 2000 staff are employedin the Dublin Headquarters andusing the traditional methods ofcommunication was costly andtime-consuming. The easiest, cheap-est and greenest way to communi-cate to their staff was to installONELAN Digital Signage. To reachthe 2000 staff, the location of thescreens was important, the key vi-sual areas decided upon were theReception, lift lobby areas, Hospital-ity Suite, Training Centre and Gym.

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TranslationsDIGITAL SIGNAGE

Fortunately there are those in the in-dustry who are able and prepared totreat ingénues with patience, slowdown their speech to a speed morenormally used for pets and small chil-dren, and revert to ordinary languagein order to be understood. In theevent that you don’t meet one ofthese sensible people, you will needforce them to clarify, explain and tojustify their every utterance. But tosave yourself at least some of thetrouble, just keep reading.

Bill Gerba, CEO of WireSpring, isone of those intelligent people whoare fluent in two languages: Englishand Techie Speak. He explains that adigital signage system really is prettysimple, involving only three mainparts; a screen, a media player, and amanagement platform or a way ofcontrolling the screens and what isbeing displayed on them. In terms of screens, the most com-monly used format according toGerba is the LCD as the costs have

come down a lot, they avoid the burnin problems of plasma screens, andthey can generally be made to runmore brightly, which is obviouslyvital if signage is to stand out in al-ready brightly lit indoor environ-ments.

The media player puts the content

on to the screen and here there aretwo main approaches says Gerba.Some companies will use a regular PCand put some custom made softwareon it and simply use that in order toget content on to the digital screen.On the other hand there are thosewho prefer to build their own embed-ded systems. Wirespring for examplefalls into the first category and useHewlett Packard PCs with their owncustomised software. This gives theadvantage of cost saving and flexibil-ity. Companies like Cisco and Sonyproduce their own embedded systemsand Gerba’s take is that they wouldclaim the advantages of size andpower utilisation; they are usuallysmall and use less power than a reg-ular PC.

As for the management platformmore or less everyone is going to anInternet based model, says Gerba, andthat is becoming the de facto industry

standard but people are using variousmethods to get their content onto thenet. Server software can either bepurchased outright, where a companywill purchase servers and softwareand you maintain and run it them-selves. But there is an increasing ten-dency to adopt an alternative model,‘software as a service’ whereby acompany rents the server infrastruc-ture to a DS user. At the moment,says Gerba, the market is prettyevenly divided between these twomodels.

Tariq Ahmad, CEO of Oggul, a fastgrowing London based companywhich specialises in multi-screen so-lutions, confirms this broad picture.Without wanting to over-simplify,Ahmad points out that some DS sys-tems can be in effect just a scaled upversion of a PC; it’s really just the ITbasics of input, processing, and out-put. But as Ahmad explains, the

beauty of such IT systems is that theycan make it so much easier for retailchains to send communicationsquickly and cheaply.

Ahmad gives an example of a re-tailer with say, 500 branches over theUK. A firm like Oggul can supply asystem into every branch, yet thetechnology means that the whole net-work can be controlled from just onecontent management centre. That ismeans if the retailer wants to changethe prices advertised on in-store sig-nage or send vital customer commu-nications, they can do it very quicklyand up-date in real time, secure in theknowledge that their message will beinstantly received in every branch.That is an impressive application oftechnology and in business terms, itis certainly what you’d call compli-ance! Some years ago there was talk of thepaperless office, but more recently

The appliance of scienceSomewhere in the digital signage industry,indeed in new media in general, there is plentyof scope for someone to make a very successfulniche business acting as a translator to thosefrom non-techie sectors, explaining what thetechno-speak actually means.

“Serversoftware can

either be boughtoutright or

rented from acompany

responsible formaintenance”

AN ADVERTISING INSERT BY MEDIAPLANET 9

Translations DIGITAL SIGNAGE

some have revisited the concept topour bucket loads of cold water overthe notion and ask how we could allhave been so naïve. However, Ahmadargues that DS systems are going tobe a great boon for retailers and offerthe opportunity to dramatically cutdown on printing costs. Ahmadpoints out that a busy UK high streetretailer can be designing, printing anddistributing posters and publicity ma-terial twice weekly. He thinks it is notunreasonable to estimate a cost ofsomething like £4m per year for an800 branch business; all moneywhich can be saved by installing agood quality DS system.

With savings like that available, itwould be surprising if there is not atthe very least some reduction in thepaperwork cluttering up many busi-

ness environments. Ahmad cites es-tate agents and travel agents as ex-amples of sectors where thetraditional shop-window filled withpaper signs may rapidly become athing of the past and something to tellyour grandchildren about whenyou’re asked to talk about the ‘oldendays’.

Of course, this is not to say that thetechnology is without hiccups; anyonewho has tried to download programmesknows that computers are not immuneto Murphy’s Law. In DS some commonareas of concern have emerged. One ofthese is over the quality of the screens.In work or retail environments, screensare being used for excessively long pe-riods of time, far longer than would bethe case in a domestic setting. Ofcourse, one obvious defence is for buy-ers to make sure they are getting a goodafter sales service, but you do need totry to get to grips with some technicaldetail.

Stew Mercer, chief technical officer atOggul, says it is important to make surethat whatever you buy, you make en-sure that the screen has a life of morethan 30,000 hours and is capable ofwithstanding high temperatures. Whenit comes to multi-screens, Oggul’s spe-ciality of course, Mercer points out thatit is necessary to look at the hardwarein the computer which runs the screensand also ensure that you are getting theright software to run the applications.

In terms of hardware, Mercer ad-vises that PCs are generally very reli-able as long as they are not tamperedwith – so take that as a warningagainst any over-enthusiastic self-ap-pointed office techies who say thatthey have ‘done this at home’. PC-based systems, as the example above

indicates, can also be centrally con-trolled as long as they are connectedto some sort of network, either bybroadband or leased circuits.

How much capability a business willneed from hardware will depend onhow sophisticated they want their DSsystem to be and how much processingwork they will require it to do. StewMercer points out that you could makedo with a very simple screen with just amemory card, but to really exploit thepossibilities of DS you are probablygoing to be best served by a connectedcomputer using multi-functioning ap-plications.

That will cost more of course, but itwill also enable you to do things likeup-date in real time, link to webpages, control displays by remotecontrol, or even as fancy things like‘point to multi-point’, where one webpage can be used to up-date displaysat an unlimited number of stores. It

all depends on what you want.So what does the future hold in storefor DS technology?, but many in theindustry would argue that these areeasily over-exaggerated and solvable.For Stew Mercer, the bigger picture isthe possibility of a transformation inthe way we buy and sell. An elimina-tion of paper displays and greater useof interactivity both seem highlylikely. “In the future, don’t be sur-prised if you walk past an estate agent

and receive a Bluetooth message onyour mobile, telling you about a greatproperty being displayed in a windownearby,” says Mercer.

If you work in advertising, retailingor commerce, that probably soundslike heaven. Others may find it a turn-off. But don’t worry; as one inde-pendent consultant said to me theother day, ‘If you’re over twenty five,you probably can’t figure out how toturn on Bluetooth anyway.’

Gym Screen Media reported that sales results for their Digital Signageadvertising offering in the health and fitness industry in Q1 2008 were at arecord high despite the expected seasonal down swing. The majority of thegrowth was driven by a marked increase in their B2B sales to SMEs.

MD, Guy Bucknall said ‘These numbers are a direct result of the plan puttogether and executed by our head of Local Sales, Sean Casey, after hisappointment last September. He and his team have yet to miss a target and Idon’t expect them to in the foreseeable future’.

NEW IN BRIEF

Consumonics looks like a winnerwith its oggul range of multiplescreen displays. The combinationof best-of-breed functionality andlow price has resellers scramblingto sign up.

Stephen Haxby, Consumonics head ofmarketing, commented "Our resellersmarket a leading product withoutmaking any capital investment. Theymake the sales and we assemble, in-stall, train and maintain.”

Consumonics predicts strong marketgrowth, based on its comprehensiveoffering, which extends to contentprovisioning, and its technologylead, based on protected IPR.

Promotional feature

Promotional feature

NEW IN BRIEF

AN ADVERTISING INSERT BY MEDIAPLANET10

VersatilityDIGITAL SIGNAGE

To be charitable though, such irra-tional behaviour is not entirelysurprising in a fast expanding fieldwhere customers may be unawareof what exactly the new mediumcan do.

But as everyone in the industrywill tell you, DS is not television andit is a whole lot more versatile andflexible than the dull, static word‘signage’ implies. If you want to getthe best out of this new medium, notonly do you have to do your re-search, you also need to make sureyou start off with a system which willkeep options open, not close themdown. “You had better make surethat you have the ability to dynami-cally change content independentlyat every location. If your underlyingsoftware platform can’t handle that,you’d better chose another platform,”says Gerard Bucas, CEO of Scala, oneof the major software providers to theindustry.

It’s easy to appreciate the usefulcommand and control aspects ofcomputer technology, but as Bucaspoints out, many people ignore thevarious ways in which DS allowsusers to deploy communications ina much more imaginative and cre-ative way.

Bucas makes this point with someuseful examples from retailing. A re-tailer with 1000 branches will not al-ways want to sell any given item forthe same price across all locations, sopricing and other advertising contenthas to be tailored to local require-ments. A DS system which is dy-namic will allow for this, enablingup-dating instantaneously in realtime and overlaying with customisedcommunication content at everypoint of playback.

Jeff Porter, executive VP at Scalapoints out that this sort of versatil-ity needs to be combined as part ofwhat you might call a joined-upmarketing strategy. In other words,clever use of DS can enable a re-tailer to promote ice scrapers in coldweather and umbrellas when it’sraining, matching signage to localcircumstances.

By providing what can end upbeing a huge range of special com-munications – just think howquickly it multiplies up with 1000outlets, 10 departments and specialoffers every month – this makes itessential to have a really versatilesystem platform to ensure that cus-tomising content is easy and cheapto do. It’s also important to thinkbeforehand about how all this datawill be transmitted if you want toavoid a potential IT disaster or theinability to fully utilise your DS net-work. Video and other graphic con-tent requires big bandwidth and insome cases says Gerard Bucas, it’seven worth considering transmit-ting data by a satellite system.

But as Bucas points out, here too,a forward thinking outlook is re-quired. Even if a business purchasinga DS network doesn’t want interac-tive functionality immediately, it maywell pay to get a platform which in-cludes it so it can be switched on eas-ily later.

In a complex environment wherethe need to pitch messages to differ-ent groups of people at the same timecan change rapidly and with littlewarning, the versatility of DS reallydoes offer us the potential for greaterchoice. Hopefully we won’t be as ir-rational in our choices as Andy, butit’ll be nice to be able to join him insaying, “I want that one”.

I want that oneProviders of digital signage solutions couldbe forgiven for occasionally feeling that theircustomers can regress into the sort ofbehaviour associated with Little Britain’sAndy Pipkin; stubbornly insisting that theywant ‘this one’ and then rejecting it foranother, apparently arbitrary choice.

“A retailer willnot always wantto sell an itemfor the same

price across all oftheir locations sopricing has to betailored to localrequirements ”

.

Scala UKTel: 020 7043 5908info@scala.nlUnited States The Netherlands UK Norway France China Japan

www.scala.com

Over 70,000 licenses globally and

a network of software engineers

and technology partners providing

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