What’s to come in 2014

January 17, 2014 by

Companies are now targeting customers more effectively, as demonstrated by the Mini DOOH campaign

Companies are now targeting customers more effectively, as demonstrated by the Mini DOOH campaign

Digital out-of-home continued to grow in 2013 – and it doesn’t look like slowing down in 2014. With lower prices and greater ease of use, the market is expanding into areas that perhaps wouldn’t have considered digital signage as an option before.

Compared with traditional advertising mediums, such as TV, radio or the internet, DOOH has been able to offer brands more control over their content and a better idea of the exposure they have. The interactive capacity of DOOH, as well as its ability to gather information through facial recognition and mobile technologies, puts it firmly on media planners’ maps. Talon’s chief executive Eric Newham calls it ‘face time’, in that it allows advertisers to choose who they talk to directly.

Richard Blackburn, commercial director at MediaCo, agrees with this suggestion: “The hottest trends in digital signage are currently facial detection and touch. Facial detection is not, in itself, changing the role of digital signage, but it does add another dimension for advertisers seeking to better understand how people react to creative engagement. This ensures that brand content not only evolves over the duration of the campaign, but also delivers relevant content to people.

“By combining touch capacity with this, we can deliver activation as well as branding,” he adds. “It is a potent mix.”

Liam Boyle, managing director of Monster Media, believes that this development shows the potency of DOOH: “I’m enjoying the continued use of data and analytics that help to prove the effectiveness of the medium. Measureable results support creative and demonstrate the power of integrated and interactive campaigns.”

The digitisation of OOH cannot be stopped and management tools for this fast and flexible medium are essential. Mike Dillon, director of Key Systems, opines: “Having seen the growth of digital assets amongst our traditional OOH clients, we know that the industry needs flexible and robust asset management tools.

“Our digital director is helping media owners and agencies to put the right content onto the right screens at the right time. It also provides proof of posting, which can be accessed through any Windows-enabled mobile device. Big data means big business for DOOH, but you need software that can process the whole life cycle of the campaign.”

Tim Harvey, director of digital strategy at JCDecaux, adds: “Facilitating the buying process by removing layers of administration and complexity between the brand and media owner is key. We need to prove the ROI of the medium through display metrics, through hardware and software performance, mixed in with audience data from EPOS and mobile search channels.”

When it comes to screens and players, simple is best. Companies that have put their bets on easy, transparent and straightforward operations are reaping the benefits. Signagelive is a good example of this, having seen a 40 percent growth in the past twelve months. Jason Cremins, Signagelive’s chief executive, comments: “The biggest trend has been the shift from exclusively AV-Systems Integrators installing digital signage networks to a mix of both AV and IT-Enterprise resellers that are now moving into the sector.”

Cremins attributes this trend to the simplification of end-user devices deployed for digital signage purposes, including Samsung Smart Signage and Android devices. Installation and maintenance of these digital display systems are so easy that AV resellers might need to rethink their strategies.

“We’ve seen a major retailer purchase its Samsung Signagelive Smart Signage displays from a major IT reseller, and then decide to install and maintain its digital signage by itself,” continues Cremins. “Previously, this type of deal would have been sold and installed by a specialist AV reseller.”

In terms of content, the move to HTML5 for media playback has encouraged other sectors, such as web designers, to create dynamic passive and interactive content and applications for digital signage, while the uptake of Android has helped hasten the spread of DOOH.

Content also poses a challenge in ultra HD, or 4K. The industry seems positive about its emergence but, due to the lack of components, content and the current cost, we will wait a while before we see it fully implemented across the DOOH spectrum.

For Matrox’s sales account manager Rob Moodey, though, the unmentioned barrier is actually in bringing the content to the screen. “The normal DOOH distribution architecture uses cat5 extenders, while ultra HD requires fibre optics, such as Avio’s KVM extender,” he explains. “For DOOH, more than just 4K, I foresee up-scaled, dynamic, full-HD content.”

For 2014, we can expect to see more fully integrated digital signage, in terms of hardware and software. Incorporating NFC, touch-less interactions and brand message personalisation will be a must. DOOH will also cease to be a separate category for advertisers, as it begins to lead the way on media planning.

First published 17 January 2014 – Output

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Hyper definition: 4K screens in DOOH

December 2, 2013 by

Display products such as PsCo’s hyperwall have put digital signage companies at the fore of 4K development

4K is undoubtedly expanding. Video production houses welcome the format and, even if they often have to use down-converters from 4K to HD, the image quality is still better than what can be captured via HD. Most video camera manufacturers have already launched 4K cameras and creative advertising agencies are adopting it in an attempt to future-proof their work.

Sony’s latest professional monitors, the PVM-A250, 25″ (60cm) and PVM-A170, 17″ (43cm), have been designed to be 4K ready. Using organic LED (OLED), these lightweight, slim screens have high colour accuracy, contrast and picture quality.

“Higher resolution content creation – 4K and beyond – requires monitors with larger screen sizes for accurate colour evaluation on site,” says Daniel Dubreuil, senior product marketing manager for professional monitors at Sony Europe. “Yet bigger monitors are harder to carry and take up more space. These new models have the screen size needed for critical evaluation, with a thinner and lighter design that’s perfect for live broadcast and outdoor shooting. They even have a handle for easy carrying.”

Danish broadcast production start-up Nimb TV has recently unveiled Denmark’s smallest Ultra HD Outside Broadcast van. The unit is built around a number of Blackmagic Design’s raft of Ultra HD products, which includes the ATEM Production Studio 4K and Blackmagic Audio Monitor. Housed in a three-wheeler moped van, it can be positioned at the heart of any live production, not simply feature films. But it is not necessarily the broadcast market that is paving the way forward in 4K.

“The AV and digital signage markets are leading on Ultra HD, 4K adoption,” believes Patrick Hussey, senior communications manager for EMEA at Blackmagic. “Meanwhile, the broadcast industry is, for once, playing catch up.”

Stuart Holmes, chief executive at AV distributor PsCo, corroborates this: “In the professional AV world, 4K or Ultra HD is nothing new; it made huge waves at CES and is now one of the latest buzzwords in the consumer market. Consumer expectations of image quality are through the roof as they compare the fine detail they get on their tablets, smartphones and home TV sets to displays they come across daily in the out-of-home world.

“As experts in videowalls, targeting vertical markets such as broadcast, public sector, retail, rental and corporate, we understand 4K and, from a multi-display angle, we have been delivering videowalls with higher than 4K resolutions for a long time. Our focus has always been more on delivering according to the required display size, shape and pixel by pixel performance required for a specific environment.”

In the AV manufacturing sector, the projector industry leads the way on 4K, particularly for 3D applications. Some manufacturers are already claiming they use 8K, although most of the time that means two 4K projectors, which gives better definition, but not at 8K standard. 

In the residential market there are 55″ (140cm) 4K screens available for under £4,000, but in the professional market this quality of screen is not so widespread. Many LED manufacturers say that their HD screens are 4K ready, they just need the content to match. That said, there are plenty of HD DOOH screens already on the streets and, if the image is already fit for purpose, then why change them?

French creative company MovingDesign, which designed the amazing 4Temps mall in Paris, says that its clients are not worried about definition as long as it looks good, while Monster Media has made similar noises concerning 4K. However, BrightSign’s XD line software and firmware upgrade to support and upscale into 4K would indicate that the format is coming to DOOH. The company’s BrightAuthor 3.7 software and its companion 4.7 firmware XD can upscale 1080p video content to 4K and offers enhanced IP streaming and some very useful HTML5 support features. 4K-display manufacturer Seiki Digital recently demonstrated the impact of BrightSign’s XD video engine, paired with the new software features, at the IFA trade show in Berlin.

4K is a technology that is relevant to large videowall displays, rather than close-up screens. For screens that are used for interaction or large displays, such as roadside billboards, 4K is irrelevant. In cases where flat-panel displays are used to create large videowalls, the better the definition, the more eye-catching and effective the signage will be, so expect to see more 4K making its way into the DOOH market.

First published 2 December 2013 – Output

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Out-of-home: the new mass media?

October 11, 2013 by

This year's edition of Outdoor Works was hosted at the British Museum in London

This year’s edition of Outdoor Works was hosted at the British Museum in London

“We are here to give you confidence that outdoor works as a medium,” Mike Baker, Outdoor Media Centre’s chief executive officer, announces at the start of the Outdoor Works conference. Gathering media owners, agencies and end clients together, the event attracted a full house of almost 300 participants to analyse trends and opportunities within out-of-home.

With a focus on five key benefits that out-of-home brings to the table for brands – connection, influence, activation, amplification and inspiration – the speakers demonstrated how and why outdoor media provides a unique opportunity to communicate with audiences and how emerging technology is making OOH sleeker, more targeted and accountable, and bringing brands closer to the client.

“The planning of outdoor thus far has been like picking our noses with rubber gloves,” argues Justin Gibbons, creative director at Arena Media, in his talk. He believes that the current market approach to outdoor advertising can be greatly improved upon by using tools such as NFC, geo-location, crowd evaluation and audience measurement. “Today, information can be granular. Using research bodies such as Route, agencies can have detailed audience information to create more effective campaigns. Dayparting finally means something.”

Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks, shared the story as to how his business grew from a humble market store run by three friends into a successful enterprise that ended up being bought by Coca-Cola. Outdoor advertising played a part in its growth and – in their case – location was particularly crucial to the promotion of their brand.

“When we just started with Innocent, we were desperate to get into supermarkets,” Reed confesses. “We were a bit cheeky and sent out a press release announcing that we were doing a national poster campaign. The reality was that we had a five-billboard campaign. The advertisements were located just outside the head offices of the main supermarkets. After that, we had our first order from Waitrose.

“OOH is the only medium that allows any organisation to address the whole nation at once. TV is no longer the mass medium as it’s too fragmented. Posters are like the fridge door of the nation.”

Verica Djurdjevic, a strategic media planner and managing director of PHD Media, talked about the power and influence of context in out-of-home: “By understanding environmental and location contexts and aligning message, moment and mind-set, the power and influence of OOH campaigns can clearly be demonstrated.”

She suggests that more should be demanded from media and OOH agencies: “Any format has a context. Make sure context is taken into account. OOH needs to embrace audience and contextual diversity. Set the right KPIs from the start in order to measure success – and don’t be afraid of the production implications. The world of digital makes it easier.”

Focusing on direct interaction with customers, David Rowan, editor of Wired UK, walked us through well-known mobile phone capacities such as NFC, QR codes and instant internet connection. He also mentioned the lesser-known Apple technology iBeacon, which takes advantage of the very low-power, low-data rate spec that is part of Bluetooth v4: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). It works in a similar manner to NFC but is based on Apple’s iOS 7. Tesco is one of the first companies currently trialling the technology.

“The debate on privacy is hot at the moment, though there is a huge business opportunity to advertisers who understand the value of predictive analytics, behavioural tracking, emotional response measurement and the frictionless path to direct payment via mobile devices,” he asserts.

The refrain that the consumer process should be ‘frictionless’ was one that was often repeated throughout the Outdoor Works conference, the thinking behind this being that there should exist a seamless customer cycle of ‘like, want and purchase’.

Tim Spence, senior partner at Truth Consulting, believes that out-of-home works in the context of an evolving cultural landscape: “OOH isn’t just static and peripheral. It guides us in layers. It is mobile and multi-faceted, providing us with dynamic visual stimulation from which we can cherry pick that which moves us and appeals to our senses.”

Creative agencies and advertisers need to start thinking of out-of-home as an ever-present, blank canvas that can host effective, dynamic messages. Measurement technology is there so that advertisers can maximise the effectiveness of campaigns. The focus now surely has to be on maximising contextual creativity and ensuring frictionless transactions for the customer.

First published 11 October 2013 – Output

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More interactive, more pertinent: Monster Media’s recipe for success

September 4, 2013 by

Monster Media has a track record of delivering interactive projects, including for the Heathrow Express

Monster Media has a track record of delivering interactive projects, including for the Heathrow Express

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) today demands fast, dynamic, up-to-the-minute content. With customers able to check anything online at any time through their mobile devices, nothing less than the latest is expected in DOOH. Still images and looping content are definitely dying in the advertising mainstream.

Correspondingly, hardware manufacturers are increasingly including dynamic options to their devices, as evidenced by the rise in HTML5-based players. This stems from the demands of advertisers and agencies, whose initiatives include more user-generated content and live interaction. There is no looking back: dynamic content is here to stay.

A company that knows this very well is Monster Media. Through enticing, original content, Monster Media has created award-winning campaigns that create for brands both customer dialogue and excellent exposure. Its recent acquisition of US company LocaModa gives the interactive DOOH technology specialist the ideal springboard to integrate more sophisticated social and mobile creative in its projects. 

The LocaModa platform enables brands and networks to leverage social media appropriately across their web, mobile or DOOH campaigns. It filters social sources, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, embedding content into multi-channel campaigns to create engaging and – importantly – measurable interactions between brands, venues and audiences. The technology has been used extensively to display selected tweets and photos against branded content on sites from Times Square to concerts, bars to airports and all around the retail sphere.

“Having LocaModa as part of Monster Media means that media owners will now be able to add social media to all existing networks, platforms or content management systems,” explains Liam Boyle, managing director of Monster Media. “It’s completely agnostic. The platform can be used on a campaign-by-campaign basis – it can essentially be turned on with the flick of a switch.

“Media agencies working with us will be able to take advantage of the strength of social amplification by adding this service to new campaigns to encourage more consumer participation. The network operators will take the first step and agencies will be able to exploit the benefits for their clients. Finally, from the clients’ side, they will be able to greatly expand their campaigns reach and scale and still experience the same accurate measurement and reporting data they get from taking advantage of interactive advertising. This adds another layer of social metrics depending on what’s being moderated, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others.”

With all that said, Monster Media is no novice when it comes to dynamic advertising. Together with Gyro, the company developed a campaign to promote the Heathrow Express rail service between central London and the city’s largest airport. Its centerpiece was an interactive, three-by-three wide-format LCD videowall with interactive touch at one of the transport hub’s busy corridors. Once activated through touch, users were given the opportunity to explore the service’s new carriages with a controllable 360-degree camera.

To reward their participation, travellers left the display with a promotional code offering a free upgrade to business first class. It appeared to work: more than 117,000 direct consumer interactions took place on the LCD wall, resulting in over 14,000 ticket giveaways. In total, 733,946 opportunities to see were provided over the duration of the campaign.

Airports and interactivity have proved a successful combination for another Monster Media campaign, O2 Roaming, on which it collaborated with media owner Eye, ZenithOptimedia and Meridian. The eight-week, pan-regional and cross-media project was fully mobile-enabled and signified the first time that Eye ran interactive content simultaneously across its media estate at Gatwick and Manchester air termini.

Two interactive media walls invited flyers to upload and edit holiday photos for real-time viewing via Instagram and Twitter, using the hashtag #O2Travel. Boyle explains: “The display shows a hashtag and a Instagram photo within a Polaroid-style frame. Users will be directed by branded instructions to take a photo with Instagram, and use the hashtag shown to see their photo on the wall.”

Both projects demonstrate the full capability of what’s possible today in out-of-home media. It’s pretty obvious that we will soon see an increase in dynamic syndicated content; this type of solution delivers the most relevant content to the DOOH viewer. With the increasing popularity of demographic data delivery, incorporating gender and facial recognition, companies like Monster Media are soon to make interactive out-of-home even more powerful.

First published 4 September 2013



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East London, technology and creativity house share

June 13, 2013 by

Digital Shoreditch aims to bring together the start-ups from the East London 'Tech City' enclave to inspire collaboration

Digital Shoreditch aims to bring together the start-ups from the East London ‘Tech City’ enclave to inspire collaboration

The Digital Shoreditch festival gathered all the young – and not so young – movers, shakers and wannabes of the creative technology community. The week-long event at Shoreditch Town Hall boasted four conference rooms and a technology and art exhibition in the basement of the building. A parade of interesting and energetic presenters discussed the burning issues, such as the future of brands, behavioural design and what tomorrow’s world might be like, exploring mobile platforms, second-screen experiences and the disruptive technologies dominating our daily interactions.

Now in its third year, the festival is a showcase for Britain’s leading-edge technology business sector – which happens to be located in and around Shoreditch, an area that has come to be known as ‘Tech City’.

“The idea is to bring these clusters of creative and innovative companies and individuals together, so that they can network and find what collaboration opportunities there are,” explains Kam Star, chief executive of PlayGen, a serious games and simulations development studio and one of the main drivers of Digital Shoreditch. “The presentations and workshops should spark innovative ways to create new ways to develop and deliver products and services.”

For the festival, IC tomorrow, a Technology Strategy Board programme for innovation and economic growth in the digital sector, organised the ‘Digital Innovation Contest 2013’. Run in partnership with HarperCollins, Constable and Robinson, MediaCom, Ogilvy Labs, JCDecaux, FremantleMedia UK, Samsung and YouTube, the competition was launched to encourage emerging opportunities in publishing, advertising and TV.

Ogilvy Labs and JCDecaux sponsored the ‘Innovation in DOOH advertising for brands and advertisers’ challenge and the prize went to Nexus Interactive Arts. Nexus’s project presented an outdoor interaction using projection mapping, mobile and movement. MediaCom’s ‘Next generation location specific advertising’ challenge saw TorqBak’s Twitter Marketing Platform taking the crown. This is a real-time, intent-based tool designed for social engagement with brands. The winners in each of the seven categories will be awarded up to £25,000 in funding to develop their prototype solution and run a trial with the relevant contest partner.

Part of the technology exhibition, ‘Screens in the Wild’ is a research project that studies what impact do digital screens have in an urban environment. Ava Fatah gen Schieck, the project’s principal investigator, showed visitors the project’s touchscreen photo booth, interactive game and screens that display tweets and other information. The initiative is a collaboration between researchers from the Space Group at University College London and the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham. It investigates how media screens located in urban space can be designed to benefit public life, rather than merely transmit commercial content.

Fatah gen Schieck, an architect and lecturer, explained that in a city public spaces and public life play a unique role in the formation of social life and networks. “Screens in the Wild is looking at how we engage with information, with each other and with screens in the hybrid cities we live in today. We need to understand the new behaviours that are emerging in these spaces which we could say are layered: you have the real, physical space and the virtual, digital space.”

Portuguese Alfonso Santos, founder of Tuizzi, a company that offers cloud-based OOH asset management, wants to democratise out-of-home publicity and allow smaller companies to advertise on the big billboards. “We offer a cloud service for advertisers, media owners and media agencies. We are just a year old but we have 90 percent of the Portuguese market,” he says. Santos claims his company is the only one offering this kind of service; I suggested he should check out Vukunet, Key Systems and Ayuda before claiming uniqueness.

Peter Clothier, sales director of Finnish start-up Kiosked, presented an interesting concept that can truly changed the way people shop and brands advertise. Kiosked allows advertisers to link their products to relevant images and multimedia within online content so that consumers can buy those items direct. Any Kiosked-enabled image will show details of the product and where it is stocked nearby, and brands can also reward customers using social media to share its products with their friends by giving them points and other perks.

Digital Shoreditch was an interesting event, worth visiting to find people with a ‘can do’ attitude and the knowledge and expertise to make it happen. The full festival pass cost £778, and it must have been worth it: the event was sold out.

First published 13 June 2013 – Output

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‘A daily wonder experience’: Trinity Leeds

June 3, 2013 by
Trinity Leeds represents the latest in a growing number of digital malls, offering new opportunities to advertisers

Trinity Leeds represents the latest in a growing number of digital malls, offering new opportunities to advertisers

When a shopping centre opens, in general it doesn’t go unnoticed. Trinity Leeds surpassed expectations when it launched this March welcoming 132,000 people. The shopping mall, said to be the size of 13 football pitches, is the largest project of its type in Western Europe boosting 120 shops, 12 restaurants, bars and cafes and the largest Everyman cinema in Britain.

At The Screen’s most recent Breakfast Briefing, Sean Curtis, head of marketing at LandSecurities, the company that owns the £378million shopping centre, Neil Morris from Grand Visual and JCDecaux’s Mark Bucknell got together to share their knowledge and experience of the new digital mall. Trinity Leeds features gigantic interactive videowalls, Google product search, LED advertising screens, its own mobile app, which can be tailored by the user, and totally free wifi through out.

“We own many big shopping centres in the UK, but with Trinity Leeds we pay special attention on following a customer led strategy,” explains Curtis. “Things have changed in the world of retail and we also need to change to attract and retain the public.”

Making the site a digital destination in its own right was one of the key objectives; the other was to give customers and retailers the best communication platform they could wish for. The ubiquitous use of wifi allows people to search compare and buy online, even if they are in the shopping mall.

“Nine out of ten purchases are done online today and a big proportion of the searches and buys are done on mobile devices,” notes Curtis. “When we were planning this project we asked ourselves, should we dance with the internet devil in a shopping mall environment? The answer was yes, definitely.”

Using Google’s product search paired with GPS capacities means that people can search online but it will only show retailers within Trinity Leeds. Customers’ preferences are logged in LandSecurities’s new CRM system, allowing it to offer a segmented and personalised service. “A multichannel customer is worth more than a single customer,” Curtis remarks.

The ease of use and customer-centric approach is also reflected in the £1million screen network investment. The screens, located in key areas across the mall, have information about events, special offers, news, the cinema, city guides and the centre itself. But most importantly for retailers, 70 percent of the air time on these beautiful digital canvases is dedicated to local stores’ advertising and promotions.

Morris described this project as unique for Grand Visual. The company’s day-to-day job is to deliver outstanding campaigns, but in a limited timeframe. In the case of Trinity, it had to consider how to orchestrate digital content across the mall all day, every day, for a whole year.

“It’s like running a channel,” says Morris. “Our brief was to deliver an immersive ‘daily wonder’ experience using Trinity’s screen state. To create these special moments for visitors, we designed a series of interactive content applications. It’s more like an art installation than anything else, but so far it’s been very successful in engaging visitors and providing a surprise factor.”

Using Panasonic D-Imager, a sleek camera-sensor located above the videowalls that collects spatial information about its environment, passers-by can interact with the screen without having to touch it.

“Nobody has done multiple-[dimension] image processing before now,” says Morris. Grand Visual worked with Fraps for the real-time video capture; this is a work in progress, with new interactive games and other experiential projects in the pipeline.

The digital experience at Trinity Leeds also includes a network of JCDecaux’s newly-launched M-Vision digital six-sheets. “The screens give Trinity Leeds and its retailers tactical opportunities,” explains Bucknell. “The advertising in it is location-specific and brands have the power to update their advertising or copy with relevant opportunities and promotions.”

According to Bucknell, malls are retail’s fastest growing environment. The average time people spend in them has risen to 178 minutes, with a 161 average spend and a 12 percent over-spend. “Digital just enhances the customers experience and gives retailers to tools to reach their audience with the right message at the right time,” he adds.

Since opening, Trinity Leeds has welcomed half a million people per week. Its modern look and feel, as well as its practical functionality using wifi, mobile and digital signage, gives Leeds citizens a sense of pride and creates a new destination for the city’s visitors.


First published 3 June 2013 – Output

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Watching and waiting: European Sign Expo

April 25, 2013 by

European Sign Expo will co-locate with FESPA 2013 at London's Excel – but who is actually exhibiting?

European Sign Expo will co-locate with FESPA 2013 at London’s Excel – but who is actually exhibiting?

European Sign Expo will co-locate with FESPA 2013 at London’s Excel – but who is actually exhibiting?

European Sign Expo (ESE), organised by FESPA and the European Sign Federation (ESF), will open its doors in two months. But who will be on the show floor?

For those outside the print market, FESPA is a global federation of wide-format print associations with events running world-wide. In November last year it teamed up with ESF to launch ESE. FESPA acquired Screenmedia Expo (SME) at the end of January, adding digital signage to its new mixture of print and signage systems. Resultantly, it will now form part of the main FESPA/ESE colocation at Excel on June 25th to 27th, expecting to welcome 23,000 visitors; the majority will be print-related but 28 percent of those pre-registered have expressed interest in the new zone.

Neil Felton, managing director of exhibitions and events at FESPA, says the show will demonstrate the full spectrum of print and non-print display technologies, giving exhibitors the chance to reach a new key audience not addressed by other events. He also emphasises FESPA’s role as a not-for-profit and, therefore, an educational entity. This sounds like a promising proposition – so what support has there been from the digital signage side?

BroadSign has been confirmed as platinum sponsor for the event, and Felton says more than 20 digital signage companies have already signed up, with some 15 more in the pipeline. However, this is not yet apparent when looking at the floor plan: only BrightSign and Barco add to the list of heavyweights. A further dozen offers everything from embedded computers to digital scoreboards – products which may appeal at the lower end, but none is a major name.

For Brant Eckett, director of marketing EMEA at Christie, there is one concern that overrides all others. “In these cost-sensitive times, tradeshows need to deliver not only brand promotion and opportunities to educate the market – they need to deliver new business,” he emphasises.

Steve Robinson, product manager for Onelan, notes that the digital signage market is changing rapidly. “Once the hardware and services are fully commoditised, I strongly feel that digital signage will simply become part of the wider digital marketing landscape,” he warns. “If the ESE and FESPA can fulfil their goal of bringing ‘marketers, advertisers, brand owners, buyers and specifiers of advertising’ together, then this will be great for Onelan and the industry as a whole.”

Denys Lavigne of Arsenal Media is also cautious, but for a different reason. Arsenal Media was an exhibitor at SME but works broadly across the visual communications spectrum, and is a company indicative of the target audience FESPA and ESE both would like to attract. “I haven’t seen any event where print and digital have truly been successful together as an integrated solution context,” he says. “I think it hurts the digital side to be too closely associated with print because of the culture shock and different market interests.”

For two years in a row DOOH taxi-top creator Eyetease exhibited at SME, but its chief executive, Richard Corbett, doesn’t believe that a marriage with print is the way forward. “DOOH is a powerful medium and holds a key position in the consumer’s daily journey,” he states. “We should encourage the association of DOOH exhibitions with online and mobile – rather than with print.”

Jason Cremins, chief executive of signagelive, was one vendor ‘disappointed’ with last year’s SME; he says his company will wait to see how the new show performs. Others, however, are more positive about the combination – including NEC’s Northern Europe vice-president Simon Jackson, despite his company not intending to be present. “The purchase of SME makes some sense for FESPA, as the print world is rapidly being absorbed by digital media,” he says. “It will be interesting to see how many of the brands on board [with SME] migrate to the FESPA show.”

These observations from key stakeholders are ones that FESPA may very well answer. However, it has two other challenges. The NEC Showcase, now in its fifth year, lists 44 sector-relevant ‘solutions partners’ as exhibitors. Marketing Week Live, which runs at the same time as ESE, has added a new out-of-home section and appears to be more in keeping with the type of interplay the digital signage sector is looking for.

Digital signage vendors are looking for a real business proposition, and ESE must meet this in order to succeed. So far, the event hasn’t projected a clear enough profile or thorough understanding of the market to convince the major
screen, media player and software manufacturers onto the show floor.

First published 25 April 2013 – Output

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A lesson from the agencies: creating successful DOOH content

March 22, 2013 by

Kinetic used Olympics-related creative at key high-traffic locations, such as airports, last year to promote Visa during the Games

Kinetic used Olympics-related creative at key high-traffic locations, such as airports, last year to promote Visa during the Games

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) offers innovative ways in which a brand can engage with customers. But this engagement has to be increasingly clever and provide added value for people to stop, interact and recall the campaign. What do agencies have to bear in mind to make successful content for this medium?

“To create awe-inspiring campaigns, agencies need a brilliant idea, to find the right location for the ad to reach the target audience, and use the technology available for best results,” comments Nick Mawditt, global director of insight and marketing at Kinetic. “Our studies show that companies that embrace new technology for their advertising get a more favourable perception amongst the audience. DOOH messages are increasingly event-led; this could be a celebration, such as Easter, or current news.”

Will Awdry, creative partner at Ogilvy, recalls the success of the agency’s Olympics 2012 campaign for BP featuring Jessica Ennis. “We ran pre-emptive DOOH messages (‘Go Jess Go’) the night before her big event, which then became a congratulatory piece when she secured the heptathlon gold medal. This was carried out pretty much in real time with London Underground signage. Off the back of it, Twitter and other social media sites were on fire and the conversation was live.”

Liam Boyle, managing director of Monster Media, considers: “The role of technology is to aid the brand in communicating its core objectives relating to its platform and positioning in unison with its planning schedule across the full marketing mix. There are a variety of tools that can now be accessed to further drive above-the-line campaigns all the way through the line.

“Immersion is the future and the now,” Boyle continues. “Creating brand experiences through DOOH leverages the convergence of the experiential and advertising models. These are powerful channels on their own, but even more potent when mixed together. Technology is the binding agent that allows brands to converse directly with their desired demographic and facilitate a more valued, quantifiable and quantitative, connection.”

All the agency representatives interviewed agreed that campaigns can undergo meticulous planning but they also need to be able to grow organically. Sophie Burke is head of marketing at Zoom Media, which claims to be the UK’s largest digital media network in health clubs. She adds: “The media planning cycle is generally quite lengthy and requires a great deal of thinking ahead. However, the majority of truly successful and innovative media campaigns involve an element of spontaneity – whether it’s copy which can be adapted dynamically based on real-time data, or an interactive component which allows the consumer to get involved.”

But not any old interaction will cut it. Mawditt says that, in Kinetic’s experience, direct touch rather than gesture-controlled interaction makes the engagement and recall more powerful. “If you touch a screen, you are engaging in a more personal and private level, even if it’s in a public space. With gesture, the engagement is brief and people can feel self-conscious.”

Campaign content needs to be timely but also allow for user-generated content; it is in this area where social media comes into play and facilitates the call to action. Real-time campaign metrics need to be aligned to marry the technological capability of the screen with other live information, such as online engagement, as demonstrated with Posterscope’s campaigns that use Liveposter, a dynamic content scheduling and distribution product.

Posterscope’s Adam Cherry talks about the McDonalds London 2012 Olympics photo exchange exercise, which gave the brand a 73 percent positive perception boost. The campaign consisted of a real-time creative exercise: photographs submitted via Facebook were matched with custom straplines and delivered to hundreds of screens nation-wide. This was then fed back into the protagonists’ Facebook timelines to be shared with friends, prompting them to join in and create a snowball effect amongst fans.

“Social is a very powerful tool,” says Boyle. “We’re big believers in the potential to integrate and give brands the opportunity to converse directly with their audience after the initial point of engagement. Giving consumers the chance to engage through interactive digital and brands’ CRMs, and data as a result, will be a benefit to both in the long run.”

Posterscope’s Cherry forecasts: “The future will see DOOH scheduled and traded in new ways, focusing much more on the impressions delivered rather than number of screens bought.”

Where DOOH is concerned, advertising content is increasingly featuring social media to drive customer engagement and provide valuable data back to brands. But, in order to make those objectives successful, it’s time for the creatives to get creative.

First published 22 March 2013 – Output

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In the near future: the rise of NFC

January 24, 2013 by

 

 

Is near field communication heading in the right direction, or is it in danger of falling by the wayside? (© Fotolia / Ben Chams)

Is near field communication heading in the right direction, or is it in danger of falling by the wayside? (© Fotolia / Ben Chams)

Near field communication (NFC) and QR code capabilities provide the opportunity for advertisers and consumers to interact with brands on the go using just their smartphones. However, the market has not yet decided what is the best way to provide potential customers with the ultimate consumer experience. So what do industry experts think is needed for these technologies to realise their potential?

The leading media owners have already shown their interest and support for NFC, with Clear Channel launching 10,000 NFC and QR code-enabled Adshel panels and digital roadside panels across the UK this year.

In 2012 JCDecaux and Kinetic ran their ‘Test the Near Future Project’ – the largest trial of NFC-enabled poster sites in the UK. The four-week trial was held in the affluent commuter town of Reading and drove a high number of interactions on advertising from top brands including Unilever, H&M, Morrisons and EA Games. The content on offer included movie downloads, previews of TV shows and games, a chance to win a driving experience, supermarket vouchers and links to the brands’ social media channels. The results of the trial showed that 3,000 people in Reading scanned the poster sites, the equivalent of a million people nationwide. There were over 6,000 interactions across the four weeks and NFC take-up grew by 15 percent over the four weeks as people grew used to the idea of interacting.

“The study found that the brands that elicited the most positive interactions did so through a combination of relevance, dynamic content and a strong call-to-action,” notes David McEvoy, marketing director at JCDecaux.

Nick Mawditt, Kinetic’s global director of marketing and insight, says that there are no real barriers to entry for media owners. “Clear Channel and JCDecaux have both launched the capability for NFC interaction via their national networks of six-sheets, and other media owners including Primesight and Admedia have NFC capability in their panels. Any barrier currently is in consumer awareness and adoption.”

Mike Baker from the Outdoor Media Centre agrees: “The main barriers to date are poor sign-posting, poor site labelling, conflicting technology standards, consumer unfamiliarity and the lack of pre-loaded software on the devices.”

“QR codes are cheap to put in print media but poor at user exchange (UX),” warns Mark Selby, a mobile technology expert who is currently visiting professor at the University of Surrey, home of the new 5G Innovation Centre. “Some argue print is dying: I disagree. Consumers value a slick UX. If your media is low budget and UX is not important, go QR.”

There is also the mobile device giant Apple refusing to include NFC in its latest devices. “I must say I was surprised that the iPhone 5 didn’t have NFC capabilities,” observes Ocean Outdoor marketing director Richard Malton. “I think once Apple is confident enough to include NFC in its own locked system then I wouldn’t bet against NFC taking off at a massive rate. Apple is too good at getting this type of thing correct.”

New campaigns are being launched to reap the benefits of NFC. In September, Nestlé ran the first nationwide NFC-enabled campaign on roadside sites where chocolate bars were fitted with GPS trackers, by which means the lucky winners were found and given a cash prize. Sony used shopping malls and roadside spaces last October to offer consumers the chance to download an exclusive music track by swiping their smartphone on the touch point at the advertising site.

“There are going to be different ways of offering consumers connectivity and purchase points,” says Tim Bleakley, Ocean Outdoor’s chief executive. “NFC is more suited to close proximity small-format outdoor than the large digital spectacular formats that we specialise in. I still wonder exactly what is the value of NFC in a world where consumers are becoming used to visual imagery and photography on the move as a way of life. This may, in the end, disable NFC – just my view. Also, the wide-spread connectivity options offered via WiFi might affect the need for NFC.”

Baker concludes: “Experts forecast 75 percent penetration of smartphones in the UK by the end of the year. My prediction is that there will be a tripling every year for five years on the number of campaigns and revenue involving NFC.”

First published 24 January 2013 – Output

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The Customer Journey

April 14, 2012 by

The Outdoor Media Centre (OMC), a trade and marketing body representing the interests of the Outdoor Advertising industry, has commissioned a study to find out what influences buyers and how does this influence work. ‘The Customer Journey’ research presents a new paradigm on the way we buy and shows that outdoor advertising has a strong influence on consumers.

‘The Customer Journey’

ICM Research and On Device Research (ODR) carried out research using a mixture of online and dynamic tools, including face-to-face and mobile phones.

Historically it was believed that the customers’ experience on their purchase process was like a funnel: they would start with a wide range of options, which then was narrowed down and resulted on the final buy. This is also known as the AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) model.

‘The Customer Journey’ found that this model no longer applies. The process is not lineal. The new path to purchase is convoluted with feedback loops. The decision to buy is influenced, changed expanded and narrowed, by diverse stimuli several times along the way. From online and word-of-mouth to social media, they all play a role. However advertising media was found to be a more effective stimulus to purchase, with a higher share of effective encounters than non-media.

Mike Baker, ceo of the Outdoor Media Centre comments, “It is very good to see that advertising works and represents the majority of the stimulus to purchase. Understanding the customer journey is key for those of us who work in advertising and media.”

The research defined four stages on the customer journey: absorbing information, i.e. passively receiving information but not actively looking; planning a purchase, i.e. actively planning to buy a product and building a shortlist; obtaining a product; and sharing information about it afterwards, i.e. social media.

Nine different product categories were examined to see the reaction they had in customers. The categories were: cars, fashion, travel, personal finance, telecoms, drinks, perfume, films and pay TV.

“Each category has a different buying cycle, which is closely linked to the frequency of the purchase and the value of the goods,” explains Baker and adds, “for instance, more people respond to fashion stimuli than they do to banking advertising. But then again, they represent very different needs.”

The study found that encounters with outdoor advertising led to a high degree of positive feelings, and also actions. The research confirmed that outdoors’s key audiences are young, affluent, urban, connected and mobile. These are the groups who are both most heavily exposed to outdoor ads and most likely to respond to them.

Results also showed that outdoor-exposed audiences are strongly correlated with social media use, and are more active than the population at on social media at every stage of their journey. A higher level of outdoor ad exposure led to a higher propensity to search online and buy products as a direct result of outdoor advertising. Outdoor is also the medium most highly associated with mobile internet search.

Of all the encounters logged at the diary stage, TV and Outdoor advertisements were by far the most numerous within media, while word of mouth and hands on use of the product were most numerous in the non-media encounters.

Each medium showed a stronger share of voice at one or other phase of the customer journey: TV at the absorbing phase, online at the planning phase, radio and newspapers at the obtaining stage, and social media at the sharing stage. Outdoor is the strongest of all media at the obtaining stage and the second strongest at all the other three phases. This demonstrates a key role for outdoor at every stage of the customer journey.

The static stage of the research was commissioned from ICM and involved an online sample of 1,537 nationally representative GB adults to provide insight into how people see themselves at different stages of the customer journey, and what information sources they use. The dynamic stage was handled by OnDevice Research, with 2,141 participants recording their brand and advertising interactions over a two-week period. Respondents noted encounters that they felt were relevant with one of nine different product categories by using a mobile-based diary to record their reactions and behaviours in the context of advertising and non-advertising encounters. More than 13,000 such encounters were recorded.

First published 13 April 2012 – Output

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