Digital Signage and Brand-building article

Lyle Bunn of BTV+ fame brings us yet another whitepaper that attempts to illustrate the strong ties between digital signage and traditional merchandising and advertising techniques. Here's a brief clip:

Digital signage focuses on revenue acceleration in the retail environment using digital technology. So the management of organizations who make their money from consumer spending such as retailers, brand managers, ad agencies, marketing service providers, franchise and chain store operators, must look carefully at the competitive impact of digital signage. It will work for them or against them – it is not neutral.

The great rewards are realized when all disciplines gather around the opportunity together – including brands, creative, display owners, location providers, research, ad sales and technology providers. Because digital signage does something new, that is delivering dynamic images to the at-shopping experience, traditional approaches to creative, display, measurement and pricing are not adequate.

The communications areas of marketing display, staff training and business collaboration have generally developed independent of each other (from both organizational and objective standpoints). But the common characteristics of these business communications applications are that:

• Content originates from a single location.
• This content is delivered to many (all) locations.
• The minimizing of cost related to the downlink is very important in containing on- going operating cost.
• The communication is primarily display based, and can include an instructor or a spokesperson, as well as visuals such as video, static or animated graphics.
• The content should compel a behavior. Whether training, education or merchandising, the intention is to motivate a behavior in the interest of the organization.

Of course that list holds true for any kind of merchandising technique, but given the enormous amount of content that a digital signage system can require to stay "fresh" for a number of years, it's of critical importance that vendors and media suppliers understand these key items before attempting to add content to the system.