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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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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JCDecaux shares findings on airport media

March 12, 2012 by

 

The study found that British airports and their passengers are more accustomed and receptive to digital media propositions

The study found that British airports and their passengers are more accustomed and receptive to digital media propositions

JCDecaux is one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies. It dominates key OOH advertising areas such as railway stations and shopping centres and it has a very strong hold on airports, with 184 sites in 18 countries. This represents 30 percent of the world-wide total and reaches more than 1.5bn passengers annually. Taking advantage of this, the company commissioned an in-depth study on six key airports, and has published its findings in a new report called ‘Airport Stories’.

‘Airport Stories’ focuses on six major airport hubs: Hong Kong, Singapore’s Changi, Heathrow, Frankfurt, Dubai and New York. It had 1,600 respondents and combined quantitative and qualitative analysis, including vox pops, focus groups and online surveys. The research looked into digital signage, experiential advertising (including interactivity) and sponsored services, such as ‘power poles’ to recharge devices, or WiFi services.

Steve Cox, marketing director for JCDecaux Airport UK, opened his presentation on ‘Airport Stories’ by saying: “We are a global player, but with great power comes great responsibility. This research was design to provide a deeper understanding of international airport advertising. We want to explore the connected dynamics of people, brands, displays and airports, and test the concept of the universal brand experience. Through this knowledge our aim is to deliver tangible benefits to advertisers.”

Adding to this, Julie France, JCDecaux’s UK managing director points out: “The good news is that airport advertising is set to grow, with more terminals and more travellers. Airport traffic is predicted to double in the next two decades, growing 4.8 percent year-on-year. In 2012 this will be particularly important in the UK because of the Olympics, with 80 percent of the people attending flying in.”

So, do travellers act differently depending on where they are? The answer is no. However, the study found that travellers have two main states of mind at the airport. Before security control they are alert and efficient, sometimes anxious but mainly focused with the task at hand. Once they have passed security, they are relaxed and excited. The airport is their oyster and they are ready to be entertained, amused and persuaded to buy.

Of the studied airports, a large proportion of the travellers are frequent business flyers. Of these 32 percent are women and 68 percent are men, and are between 25 and 65 years old. They are affluent and influential people; they also tend to be early technology adopters, and 40 percent of them travel more than nine times a year. The vast majority spend at least two hours at the airport, which provides a great opportunity for OOH advertisers.

One of the areas respondents were very keen on seeing more of at airports was digital interactivity. “Airports are ideal for the ‘touch dialogue’,” says Cox. “People said they would like to see more interactivity and opportunities to download to their mobiles. This is a great chance to establish a dialogue with the screen and generate ‘talk media’, for example: word-of-mouth recommendations.”

Cox compared the results of the global survey with those in the UK. The UK is very advanced in the application of digital screens at airports, with the results showing that this crowd is more receptive to the digital proposition. “UK respondents are 45 percent more likely than the average traveller to believe that digital screens help a brand stand out from its competitors,” remarks Cox.

Video advertising and the changes on the screen capture people’s attention. “Knowing this,” he continues, “it’s disappointing to see how many advertisers still run static images on digital screens.”

The research showed that advertising at airports works and travellers welcome it. Most respondents agreed that other media, such as TV and radio, would be better with fewer adverts. However, when it comes to airports, advertising forms part of the beauty of the space. “Although airports have a specific function, which needs to be efficient, they would be very dull if they were deprived of the colour and dynamism of advertising,” Cox concludes. “People see adverts as part of the airport experience. A key part of flying is the exposure to new cultures and new experiences. Airports are the gateways to this, and provide a perfect opportunity to communicate with this receptive audience.”

‘Airport Stories’ shows that airports provide an ideal platform to deliver a message using the latest creative technology to a dynamic and receptive audience: 91 percent of respondents believed that brands benefit from advertising at airports.

First published 12 March 2012 – Output

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