KeyWest Digital Signage

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The latest figures from The Nielsen Company, the outfit that's best known for tracking TV watching and compiling viewership statistics known as ratings, reveal the number of dollars spent on advertising in the United States during the first nine months of 2009 declined 11.5 percent, a drop of $10.9 billion to $83.4 billion, compared to the same period the previous year.

To help put the decline in perspective, consider that this total exceeds by nearly $2 billion the approximate cost of a pair of Nimitz-class super aircraft carriers, like the USS Carl Vinson and the USS John C. Stennis. If the decline proves to have continued on pace in the fourth quarter, throw in another Nimitz-class carrier to visualize the annual decline for 2009. By the way, that's nearly a third of entire U.S. fleet of Nimitz-class carriers.

Hardest hit was the local Sunday supplement advertising category -down 48.3 percent compared to the first three quarters in 2008, Nielsen reported. But many other categories, including spot TV, local and national newspapers, network television, radio and local, national and B-2-B magazines, all suffered double digit declines in advertising spending.

Without question, the precipitous fall reflects the ongoing economic struggles in this country. Looking a little more carefully at the findings also reveals advertisers are reassessing where to spend their dollars. That's nowhere more apparent than in the continuing migration of advertisers away from print. According to Nielsen senior VP for new business development Terrie Brennan, local newspapers saw 12,000 fewer advertisers in their pages last year, while nine of 10 top cable TV categories saw increased ad spending.

Why would so many fewer advertisers spend their precious ad budgets in newspapers, while other advertisers embrace cable TV? One important reason is declining newspaper circulation. In October 2009, The New York Times online reported U.S. newspaper circulation fell 10 percent since the end of 2008. People reading fewer print newspapers turn to new media like the Internet and other traditional sources, such as cable TV.

The uptick in cable advertising also likely can be traced to the ability of cable channels to serve special interests, i.e. cooking, home improvement, movies, news, weather, etc., as well as that of cable operators to allow advertisers to target specific geographic areas of the cable service area.

Beyond these specifics, there's a more basic reason: tough economic circumstances focus the mind, sharpen thinking and force reassessment of spending. It appears from the numbers, that reassessing media selections comes down in favor of the popularity of video in a form that can be targeted to reach desired consumers.

This sort of reasoning is easily transferable to digital signage. It too makes use of all the appealing elements of television. It too can be used to target specific, desirable demographics. But unlike cable TV, digital signage also offers the added benefit of reaching shoppers at the point of purchase -or more accurately at the point where a buying decision is being made. Advertisers forced by the recession to sharpen their thinking and reassess media choices should keep in mind that more than 70 percent of consumer buying decisions are made at retail, according to the Point of Purchase Advertising Institute.

Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Given today's economic climate, advertisers can no longer afford to make tried-and-true media choices. Declining budgets are forcing them to reassess their options in a bid to remain as effective as they have been in the past with fewer dollars to spend. Mindlessly remaking old media decisions would be insane, and ignoring how digital signage can help achieve desired goals would be downright crazy.

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Have you ever wondered why pickup trucks and beer commercials don't appear during TV cartoon programming? How about why there aren't hemorrhoid and antacid commercials during TV sports presentations, or toy and sugar-coated cereal ads during the evening news?

The answer is simple. Different types of TV shows attract different audiences. Cartoon viewers are likely to be interested in the coolest new toy and tastiest new breakfast cereal. Heavily male sports audiences are prone to having an affinity for beer and pickups. And who could argue with the notion that viewers of the evening news aren't perfect candidates for hemorrhoid remedies and antacids given the general state of affairs?

All kidding aside, recognizing that different programs -generally run at different times of the day- attract different audiences is a foundational principle of how TV organizes itself and the way ad agencies identify groups of viewers who share a common interest and can be targeted with appropriate ads.

Many uses of digital signage, as well, benefit from a similar recognition that audiences change throughout the day. Thus, those with important communications to convey to a digital signage audience can select which specific messages to serve up at the most appropriate time of the day.

Often referred to as "dayparting," segregating messages based on the time of day offers digital signage marketers and advertisers a way to target changing audiences in a manner similar to how TV advertisers reach desired audiences based on a schedule that puts cartoons on Saturday morning, college football on Saturday afternoon and local and national news on every evening. Both acknowledge the fact that audience demographics change throughout the day. 

In digital signage, dayparting messages can be as simple as offering time-appropriate communications based on changing audience desires throughout the day, or it can be as complicated as identifying different demographic groups likely to see signs at different times of day and playing back messages targeted to those changing groups.

Consider a digital sign in a hotel lobby. In this example, the same group -specifically hotel guests- are likely to view the sign at different times throughout the day. Smart marketers would use this to their advantage by targeting their digital signage messages to the changing interests of the guest at different times of day. Thus, from 5 a.m. till 11 a.m. the message might promote the hotel's coffee shop as well the availability of tickets from the concierge desk to local tourist attractions. From 11 a.m. till 3 p.m., it could promote lunch specials, and transition to messages about fine dining on premise for dinner in the late afternoon and early evening. Finally, the sign could promote the lounge and entertainment from 7 p.m. till midnight.

Compare that type of dayparting to one based on different demographic groups visiting a mall throughout the day. Early in the morning before the retail shops open, a mall restaurant uses the facility's digital signage network to promote an early bird breakfast to health-conscious mall walkers out to get their mileage in. Later in the morning when moms with young children dominate the mall traffic, messaging on the same signs transitions to promote a visit from a state agency charged with early childhood health screening. As the day progresses towards the end of the school day, the digital signage messages focus on a skateboard clinic being put on outside the mall's sporting goods store and a special makeup clinic being held outside a department store. During the late afternoon and early evening when those who have been at work all day begin arriving at the mall, messaging transitions to promote free cholesterol and blood pressure screening outside a mall pharmacy and a job fair in the central part of the facility.

While different in how they go about it, both examples lay out effective use of dayparting digital signage messages to meet the changing needs of audiences throughout the day. Unlike other alternatives, digital signage possesses an inherent ability to respond to changing audience demographics and maximize the effectiveness of communications. That's just another reason digital signage is gaining popularity for a variety of communications applications.

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David Little is a charter member of the Digital Signage Association with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. For many more helpful digital signage tips, examples and solutions, keep in touch with Keywest Technology: Digital Signage Blog - LinkedIN - Twitter - Newsletter

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Normal.dotm 0 0 1 532 2981 Keywest Technology 53 26 3726 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} Digital signs offer the dual advantages of keeping messages fresh and making them visually appealing thanks to their dynamic nature.

"Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great."

That paragraph gets an "A" for consistency, but an "F" when it comes to building reader interest and holding reader attention. You don't need a Ph.D. in English or communications to understand why. It's repetitive, dull and boring.

How about the signs hanging in your establishment? Week after week, month after month, customers and prospects see the same printed message on those signs. Do you see the similarity between the opening paragraph of this column and those signs?

Sure, your customers and prospects might have read those printed signs the first -and even the second- time they walked into your establishment. But what about now? Have they given them a second glance for months?

The tendency to not want to change printed signs is understandable. Printing is expense, both in terms of money and time. Think about the process for a moment. You or someone in your organization must conceive the message, create the design, assemble the pieces and -depending upon the complexity of the project and the quality desired- hand off the project to a printer, who puts it in his queue of jobs, or drive to a quick-print service and wait for the job to be completed.

Once printed and displayed, the new sign has a brief life as a fresh communications tool. Soon, it's been seen by customers and prospects numerous times and it fades into the background somewhere between the pictures on the wall and the paint. At that point, the cycle begins again.

Contrast the effort, time and expense of creating static printed signs with the dynamic, easily changed messaging that's possible with digital signage. Scrolling text, animated clips, motion graphics, video and sound are all effective components on a well integrated digital signage message. Each is easily added. Doing so is made even easier by digital signage templates that are about as difficult to use as a Microsoft PowerPoint template.

Many digital signage users report being able to playback their initial messaging within a few hours of loading digital signage software and templates onto their computers. Updating those messages also is simple, requiring as little as a few minutes to a couple of hours per week, depending on how extensive that messaging maintenance is.

The dynamic messaging offered by digital signs also exploits the human response to motion. A printed sign is static; it does not move, nor does it change. Digital signs offer dynamic communications. Text can scroll across the bottom of the screen. Weather graphics can be automatically modified in response to changing conditions. Animated logos and graphics can fly through view, and video obviously is filled with motion.

Incorporating some or all of these elements into a digital sign message adds movement. That taps into the natural human tendency to direct one's eyes and attention to something in motion, which is a tremendous advantage for anyone with a message to convey.

Thus, leveraging the power of digital signage versus using static print delivers two important advantages: the flexibility to change messaging quickly and easily and the ability to attract the attention and interest of patrons. With benefits like that, it's easy to see why I say digital signage is great.

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 100 561 Keywest Technology 10 5 701 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false About the author: David Little is a charter member of the Digital Signage Association with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. For many more helpful digital signage tips, examples and solutions, keep in touch with Keywest Technology: Digital Signage Blog - LinkedIN - Twitter - Newsletter

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The government's latest unemployment number of 10.2 percent acknowledges the human toll the nation's economic contraction is having on people and brings into sharp focus why anxiety among workers is running high.

Without minimizing the "green shoots" economic commentators detected earlier in the year and the third quarter's tick into positive territory for gross domestic product, it's safe to say that apprehension among workers and employers alike continues to grow as each new day seems to bring announcements of shutdowns, layoffs, bank failures and a so-called "jobless recovery."

Consider these findings from a Rutgers University survey released in April when the nation's unemployment rate was reported to be 8.9 percent. The university's Heldrich Center for Workforce Development found in its most recent "Work Trends" study that:

* 67 percent of workers said they were very concerned with the unemployment rate, compared to 46 percent one year prior

* 49 percent said they were concerned with job security for those currently working, compared to 32 percent in spring 2008

* 68 percent said they were very concerned about the job market for those who are looking for work, compared to 48 percent the year before.

Into this environment of worker apprehension and doubt, businesses must maintain productivity -even with fewer employees- and carry on operations with an eye towards future revenue growth and a return to normal. While some managers may see this worker fear as a chance to raise expectations in the hopes of boosting productivity -i.e. more stick and less carrot, many will tread carefully recognizing the potential for prolonged job anxiety to chip away at the mental health of their employees.

While I am certainly no psychologist or psychiatrist, it seems pretty apparent that constant apprehension about job loss coupled with the reality of meeting one's financial obligations is a recipe for depression. A depressed workforce is likely to be less productive and lose focus --potentially exposing themselves to more injuries, fewer sales closes and more missed opportunities, depending on the type of business involved. Further, once the economy rebounds and job growth resumes, some of these overwrought workers will look for the first chance to flee the pressure cooker, taking with them the job experience and performance that made them valuable to the enterprise to begin with.

While it's probably impossible to eliminate these apprehensions, mitigating and managing the fear can be done through effective communications. Certainly, many of these fears grow out of seeing friends and family dismissed from employment, but what makes them worse is the not knowing -not knowing how the company is doing, how they are performing and what, if anything, can be done to make a difference.

Outside of one-on-one conversations, digital signage may be the most effective communications medium employers can use to boost flagging morale and keep workers motivated and focused. Why? First, it's public by its very nature. This makes it effective in acknowledging individuals and groups of workers for superior performance. Second, it's easy to update with relevant, current information workers may need to be more productive. Third, digital signage can help to strengthen esprit de corps by promoting and acknowledging the efforts of workers when they are off the clock, such as walk-a-thons to raise funds for charity and involvement in youth programs.

In today's economic climate, when companies need to ensure their workers are as efficient as possible, digital signage should be a key component of any corporate communications effort. Those managers looking to maintain productivity, build morale and contribute to their workers' safety and peace of mind would do well to consider how digital signage can help them attain those goals.

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About the author:
David Little is a charter member of the Digital Signage Association with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. For many more helpful digital signage tips, examples and solutions, keep in touch with Keywest Technology: Digital Signage Blog - LinkedIN - Twitter - Newsletter

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Normal.dotm 0 0 1 550 2915 Keywest Technology 60 10 3850 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} One of the fundamental strengths of digital signage is its ability to leverage all of the communications and persuasion strengths of broadcast TV on a highly targeted and affordable basis.

Digital signage offers those with something to say a way to convey their messages in a targeted, effective manner that cuts through the noise of distraction and focuses the attention of a sought-after audience on a specific action, concept or mood.

Over the next few columns, I will explore this concept by laying out the advantages digital signage offers marketers, advertisers, corporations, educational institutions or anyone else with a critical message.

The fundamental advantage of digital signage is its ability to target a desired audience with a specific message via a medium that leverages all of the things that have made TV the reigning champion of modern communications. In other words, digital signage is the ideal medium to narrowcast a specific message to a target audience -thereby sidestepping the expense of paying for a mass audience when only a small percentage of that audience is of any interest to the communicator.

Consider buying commercial time on a local television station. TV delivers the well-proven persuasiveness of video as a medium, but it also carries with it a rate structure based on the size of the market and the number of people who tune in. Cable TV and IPTV refine this equation a bit, since both can offer geographically targeted ad buys within the market they serve. But even that alternative delivers tens of thousands of viewers who never have had, nor ever will have, any interest in the communicator's message.

Contrast that shotgun method with the rifle-like precision of communicating via digital signage. Digital signs aren't positioned willy-nilly. They hang in specific locations for an obvious reason: they are in close proximity to areas that attract people. For instance, a grocery store's produce stand attracts shoppers interested in fruits and vegetables; a factory lunch room draws hungry company workers; the entry way of a university science building attracts science majors. The examples go on and on.

Couple this geo-relevancy with a digital sign's ability to play back video, graphics, text, animation and audio in a fashion that -if done properly- is indistinguishable from the quality of high definition television programming, and this fundamental reason why digital signage is so powerful becomes crystal clear. No other video-based medium offers the impact of TV to such a highly qualified audience for so little investment.

If the use of digital signage is commercial, so much the better. What other video-based medium gives marketers the opportunity to influence, cajole and direct shoppers so close to the point of purchase? Literally, a well received digital signage message could mean the difference between a sale and no sale, selling one brand or another, or selling complementary items -think "Would you like fries with that burger?" - or a single piece of merchandise.

To wrap up, the fundamental strength of digital signage is its ability to leverage a powerful, familiar form of communications to deliver persuasive or informative messaging to a select group of people who by their very proximity to the sign are likely to have an interest in the message being communicated.

In future columns, I will address the other reasons, such as relationship building, dynamic messaging and dayparting, that make digital signage one of the most important communications media to have emerged over the past several years.

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If you aren't obsessed with communications, marketing and technology like I am, you may not be aware that media consumption patterns among the public are experiencing a dramatic change.

Case in point is the book publishing industry. Consider this from a May 29 article by Motoko Rich of The New York Times: (book) "...publishers have continued to report double-digit sales declines." The same article quoted Borders Group reporting that in the first quarter of the year sales fell 12 percent.

Another glaring example is the newspaper industry. U.S. newspaper circulation declines have accelerated since fall 2008. A story from Tim Arango in The New York Times the industry experienced an average fall off of 7 percent from the same period the previous year.

While it appears interest in reading newspapers and books is declining, watching television is more popular than ever. Findings from a Nielsen report released in February reveal average Americans spent a record 151 hours of time watching television per month. That's up six hours from the same period the year before. A CNN story about the findings also found America's love affair with pre-recorded entertainment, and more specifically the DVR, helped to push time spent viewing even higher.

Marketers, corporate communicators, advertising agencies and anyone else with a message to communicate would do well remembering that while people still read, video -whether it's on a TV, a Web site, a mobile phone, a portable DVD player or some other device is today the undisputed champion of media.

Those same folks who are weighing the potential use of digital signage to communicate with the public should give serious consideration to the fact that we as Americans are immersed in video. Why fight the current? Go with the flow and capitalize on the power of video to attract attention, build interest, captivate, persuade and communicate.

On its face, digital signage offers a means for nearly any size of enterprise to tap into this lock that video has on most Americans and begin communicating with people in a medium they find appealing and comfortable. Without question, there are numerous reasons professional communicators should select digital signage as the medium to use, but none is stronger than this simple fact: People in the United States don't simply love TV; they can't get enough of it. Best of all, digital signage taps into this love affair without the expense and headaches of actually delivering "real" television. 

However, just because it isn't "real" TV in the sense that digital signage generally isn't dependent on transmission of a radio frequency signal to deliver content, doesn't mean that it can present content - i.e. graphics, animation, text and video-  that's anything less in quality than what people expect to see on their home TVs. Otherwise, the digital signage effort will squander the opportunity to piggyback on the people's preference for television.

In the next few columns, I will detail the reasons why digital signage is the right medium for many of today's common communications tasks. But before I jump headlong into that topic, I thought it best to state the most fundamental reason up front: digital signage draws on the credibility of TV with the public and leverages its similarity to television to instantly establish a comfortable rapport with its viewers.

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A new buzzword is making its rounds in professional media circles these days that's pertinent to successful digital signage. That word, "hyperlocal," at first glance seems a little strange, but when you consider what it's driving at it should make all the sense in the world to marketers who concentrate their efforts on digital signage.

The prefix "hyper," in this instance meaning extremely, is added to the familiar concept of local to draw the distinction between something that's in your city vs. something that's in your neighborhood or something that's in your vicinity vs. something in close proximity.

Squeezed by new competition from non-traditional media, such as blogs, Web sites and even mobile phones and PDAs, the pillars of local media, including newspapers and TV stations, have begun dabbling in hyperlocal news coverage on their Web sites to win back audience and remain competitive.

For marketers relying on digital signage to advance their communications goals, hyperlocality is an important concept to grasp and leverage. Imagine you are given the responsibility for marketing at a retail store specializing in camping, fishing and hunting equipment. Some informal research showed 80 percent of customers fish, hunt and camp in the country. It also revealed 60 percent of those customers take a fishing, hunting or camping trip within five days of their visit to your store.

In this example, it's clear that the county where the store is located and adjacent county would be considered "hyperlocal," especially when compared to all of the destinations an outdoorsman could visit -everything from a hunting expedition in the wilds of Alaska to a rubber rafting trip on the Colorado River.

With those two critical pieces of information -where the customers go and when they go there- it would be relatively simple to build in "hyperlocal" outdoors information into the shop's digital signage playback to help build and hold the attention of patrons. For instance, state or county conservation department data might reveal lake levels, average water temperatures and other information for area lakes likely to be visited by fisherman shopping at the store. Similarly, weather information and forecasts are widely available that could used to help shoppers determine conditions before they head for the great outdoors.

The same concept could be applied to other retail businesses, schools, hotels and nearly any other digital signage application imaginable. For any given digital signage application there is likely to be some sort of available "hyperlocal" news, information or data that will give patrons an incentive to look at the digital sign and in so doing see the other marketing information that's also being presented.

This all boils down to building digital signage content that is relevant to the intended audience. A great place to start building relevancy is determining what's of interest to the people entering your establishment. In many cases, an element of what's interesting will be related to your "hyperlocal" locality. Use that to your advantage when developing digital signage messaging. Not only will you attract the attention of your intended audience, but you'll give them a reason to take a second or third look.

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Normal.dotm 0 0 1 561 3201 Keywest Technology 26 6 3931 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} How to attract more than a single glance at your digital signage content.

Like that sticky bakery tissue I wrote about in my last column, digital signage content is at its best when it's something with which people have a strong attachment.

In other words, effective digital signage content gives its intended audience a reason to take glance, and another and another. Digital signage pages built with stickiness in mind tap into a subconscious longing on the part of a viewer for something that's relevant, interesting and fresh.

The term "sticky" and the concept of "stickiness" as relates to content have come out of the realm of the Worldwide Web, but it's really nothing new. Media of all sorts have used content that's desirable to consumers as a means to build and retain an audience since shortly after Gutenberg began printing Bibles.

The fundamental step towards building stickiness into digital signage content is recognizing one simple fact: Most people in any given society share common interests in some very basic things. For instance, is it going to be hot or cold out today? Sunny or rainy?

Beyond these are topics like news, sports scores, stock market averages and traffic reports that many, but probably not as many as the previous example, find interesting and worthy of frequently checking.

Integrating these sorts of elements into a digital signage page can be powerful. Consider the findings of a recent survey from the National Center for Atmospheric Research of Americans about weather forecasts. Fully 90 percent of American adults said they obtain forecasts daily -many doing so more than three times per day. With that sort of natural stickiness, weather forecasts, conditions and warnings seem like a logical place to start for digital signage content designers looking to attract repeated attention from their audiences.

A weather element built into digital signage pages targeting the general public, such as grocery store shoppers, makes complete sense. But remember, there are other special-interest topics that have as much stickiness to viewers of niche signage. The trick is matching the content to the desired audience's interests to get them to take a second or third look. For example, quotes on soybeans, corn and other commodities wouldn't likely attract a second glance from the general public but would have a high degree of stickiness for farmers visiting a farm implement dealership. Ditto for visitors in the lobby of commodity exchanges.

Thus, the first step to adding stickiness to digital signage content -whether for the general public or a niche audience- is ensuring that it's relevant to those whom it's directed. The next is making sure the data upon which you‘re hoping to build stickiness is not static. Remember, creating stickiness taps into the desire of the audience to check back for something new and fresh. Don't waste your time in regards to building stickiness with data that doesn't change.

A third important ingredient to the stickiness recipe is making sure the content you hope your audience finds sticky is available or attainable. What good would it be to design mountaintop weather conditions into digital signage content for a ski shop at the base of the mountain, if it were impossible to set up and maintain the instruments necessary to collect and deliver that data?

Intentionally adding on-screen zones to digital signage content for sticky content that attracts viewers over and over again is a smart strategy. All that's required is making sure the content is relevant to the desired audience, changes often enough to tap into the desire to take another glance and can be obtained from a data provider, collection instrument, via the Web or from some other reliable source. With those pieces in place, building stickiness into digital signage content is doable and a worthwhile endeavor.

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