Provision tests holographic displays with McDonalds

I don't know if watching a hovering Coke can shoot out of the box-like chest of a creepy plastic Ronald McDonald statue is going to compel me to order a different soft drink at the counter, but Provision and McDonald's apparently think that it just might. According to this writeup in MediaSoon, Provision, "has recently done a deal with Creditz, a digital in store loyalty currency system. Creditz are given for loyalty and as incentives, and merchants can earn incremental revenue. The Creditz holograms will feature at store entrances and in the aisles to point to where the promotions are happening."

Holographic displays have been out for a while now, and while they certainly make for an impressive demo at trade shows, I'm still of the opinion that they're too expensive and don't provide enough real value to be justifiable yet. Images can be hard to see if you're not in the right spot or under the proper lighting conditions, and content has to be specially produced in order to be viewable from all angles.

Still, like I said, they are certainly eye-catching when they do work, and I could certainly envision a scenario where some McDonald's franchise owner allowed Provision and/or Creditz to install some systems on their own dime to see if there was any appreciable benefit (all speculation on my part, mind you).

Tags: Holographic display, in-store media, Provision

Jeep buys advertising time on FYE's digital signage network

You'd never see a press release that read "Jeep airs television commercial on NBC," or even, "Jeep buys Google AdWords for key terms." Why, then, was there a press release floating about nearly a quarter after Jeep's foray into digital in-store advertising with FYE? Well, it's because this isn't PR from Jeep, it's from FYE themselves. And it's not really about Jeep's marketing savvy or innovation, it's an ad for FYE's in-store media network. Let's look at some of the details first:

The core of the promotion involved a contest with f.y.e. customers given a chance to scan the barcode on an entry to win a new Jeep Wrangler. It was a fully integrated promotion which included in-store signage, Jeep ads on f.y.e. in-store TV, store associates in Jeep tee shirts, Wrangler presence on the f.y.e. web site, Jeep integration with the retailer's e-marketing communications, a jeep integrated into the fuse TV show, "Amplified Guide to the Holidays", a Jeep Wrangler tag on f.y.e.'s national radio spots, and a special "scan to win" booklet with a Wrangler ad distributed in the stores. It was an exciting non-traditional way for Jeep to reach its' potential customers but, by far, the most exciting and unique portion of the promotion were the custom ads delivered at f.y.e.'s listening and viewing stations (LVS).

During the promotion, the LVS systems displayed nearly 18 million Jeep ads, and recorded that over 70,000 of the promotional booklets were scanned. FYE is quite proud of this, noting that their first significant use of the system to sell outside advertisements was a resounding success, and will surely pave the way for more projects with outside and non-core brands.

I can't recall the last time I saw a specialty retailer sell a digital media network like this, though there are certainly numerous examples of such venues doing so with more traditional forms of advertisement. Walk into a Starbucks, for example, and you'll see numerous little fliers and displays for credit cards, music, and all sorts of other non-core and external brand merchandise.

I'm definitely eager to see if more retailers decide to follow FYE's example.

Tags: FYE, digital signage, in-store media

When does TV become digital signage?

On Friday, Advertising Age ran an article about the Taxi Entertainment Network, the latest new-media experiment from Clear Channel Outdoor. This network debuts in New York City under the name NY10, and will appear on screens inside more than 5,000 taxi cabs. NY10 will feature local and international news, weather, sports and entertainment content from WNBC, NBC News and NBC Entertainment, and has a projected reach of over 14,000,000 consumers a year. With all of this network-supplied content comes advertisements, which can be day-parted and geographically targeted. While Clear Channel is billing the NY10 as a new advertising medium (and selling the spots accordingly), the content will be decidedly more TV-like than what you'd typically see in an out-of-home advertising project. This raises an interesting question: at what point does a content network really become an advertising (or digital signage) network?

To be fair, that's something of a loaded question, since television has been a commercial affair for quite some time. While early attempts to use broadcast technology for educational purposes largely failed, commercially-sponsored news and entertainment was quick to become TV's killer app. So in some ways, TV has been both content network and advertising network since the very beginning. For out-of-home advertising networks like digital signage systems in retail chains, the primary intent has typically been more obvious: advertise products sold in the store. But even in the digital signage world, networks use different types of content and different ratios of ads to news and entertainment depending on the environment and the target audience.

Read the rest of the article at: When does TV become digital signage?

Tags: digital signage, out-of-home advertising, retail media, in-store media, advertising, retail marketing

Making an emotional appeal with in-store media

Note: I've cross-posted this to the In-Store and Retail Media News blog, since the subscriberships seem to be somewhat different (and unrelated).

Institutions spend too much time focusing on the science of shopping, rather than the art of shopping. So says The Integer Group's Meg Kinney in her article "The Art of Shopping," featured in the November/December issue of HUB Magazine. While that sentence might not appear to make a lot of sense on the surface (since when is shopping an art or a science, anyhow?), Kinney looks at the growing number of retailers who are focusing on ways to enhance the in-store experience, and comes to some interesting conclusions about what needs to be done to bring in-store media up to snuff in today's experiential retail environment.... Read the full article: Making an emotional appeal with in-store media

Tags: in-store media, at-retail media, digital signage, out-of-home advertising,

Impart Media Group Releases Web Portal Content

This is kind of interesting, depending on how they actually expect to sell it:

Impart(TM) Media Group, Inc. announced today the formal release of Impart IQ Streams(TM), an easy-to-use, web portal media source and library of premiere infotainment content for digital signage and interactive kiosks networks or applications. As of the launch today, Impart IQ Streams(TM) delivers sports, news, finance, entertainment, music, and weather in motion video, still graphic, flash animation, text, or IPTV formats to media players or to virtually any device via open standard, XML protocols.

Theoretically, that could mean that Impart would sell content to networks that they don't operate or manage, or that the content could appear on devices totally unlike the digital signage systems that are currently their focus. While there are relatively few good (and accessible) sources of content out there for syndication, I don't know if I'm totally comfortable with having a competitor sitting so close to my deals. On the other hand, we know that Impart has been looking for other business to bolster their financials, so it could be a legitimate attempt to enter another portion of the market in a non-competitive way.

Tags: Impart, digital signage, in-store media, at-retail media