The Digital Signage Playbook - Ebook Version

By Paul Flanigan

Digital Signage is everywhere you look. Every day new digital screens are being installed at locations in every industry. But the process of developing and deploying engaging digital signage is much more complex than simply hanging a screen and turning it on.

In this book, Paul Flanigan will guide you through the process of creating an effective digital signage strategy, from understanding the user and the environment to building your network and proper management. You'll have hundreds of questions to ask, case studies, and references that will give you the foundational knowledge to deploy a network that works.

Whether you're a Fortune 100 company or a family owned business on the corner, this book is a must for creating effective engagement through digital screens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329660106

Book preview

The Digital Signage Playbook - Ebook Version

The Digital Signage Playbook

The Complete Strategy to Go From Idea to Engagement

By Paul Flanigan

Copyright

Copyright © 2015 by Paul Flanigan

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

First Printing: 2015

ISBN <978-1-329-66010-6>

Acknowledgements

I have been writing this book for over 15 years. I just didn’t know it. My father-in-law said, If you write a page a day, you’ll have over 300 pages in a year. Well, this isn’t quite the tome, but I’m proud of it nonetheless.

In that time, I have read, written, compiled and edited more articles, white papers, and case studies than I can remember. I have made hundreds of presentations, run three networks, and I have been through the ups and downs of a continuously evolving industry.

I have been lucky to associate with some of the smartest people around, and they in turn were mentors and colleagues who helped me learn way more than I could ever explain: Will Amos, Jonna Birgans, Russ Browne, Virginia Cargill, Adrian Cotterill, Bill Gerba, Ken Goldberg, Dave Haynes, Pat Hellberg, Stu Jacob, Bill Lynch, Bryan Meszaros, Margot Myers, Steve Nesbit, Jennifer Nye, Jessica Seidlitz, Scott Silverstein, Janet Webster, and Ethan Winning. If you ever need help, these are the folks you contact.

Most of all, I want to thank the best partner one could ask for. Thank you, Amy, for putting up with the conference calls, travel, watching me endlessly rehearse presentations, and for being an analog voice of reason when I needed it.

Introduction: So You Want to Build a Network?

Screens! Everywhere!

Over the past several years, technology has completely changed the way we engage with other people. Whether you’re walking through Times Square or shopping at your local market, screens have become a desired method of communication. And it has opened the door to myriad opportunities to get closer to those who patronize your venue and your brand. Through technology like mobile devices, near-field communications, and interactive touch screens, the ability and value of delivering the right message to the right person at the right time has been compounded by the ability and value in gathering data and learning about the user. The outcome is more tailored, intimate, and exciting experiences. And this is not stopping.

Digital signage and interactive experiences is a unique industry, a bit of a hybrid between the AV industry and the IT industry. For a long time, insiders would scoff at the notion that we are entering the age of Minority Report. However, the commoditization and ubiquity of hardware and the amazing capabilities of software have pushed innovators to constantly come up with new ways to engage people. Minority Report is more of an example of how, not when.

If You Build It, They Will Come

When Mark Zuckerberg was developing Facebook, he knew he could create an online community that was better than previous attempts (think MySpace) and draw people together. He built it. They came.

If you build it and they don’t come, then you’re doing it wrong. The theory doesn’t work any other way. If they come, you will build it? Hardly. People don’t walk on to a car lot without any cars.

Marketing and advertising operate on the convention that if you build something, people will come to it. If you build a store, people will shop there, if you build an effective advertising campaign, people will notice and buy that product. So if you build a great digital media network, people will come and use it.

That’s the goal. Digital signage and dynamic media get people to engage with you, your brand, your products or your venue. No one installs a network because it’s pretty. Venues exchange the cost of paper signs with the cost of digital signs hoping engagement and awareness increases. If the strategy is sound, the outcome is successful.

If you build it, they will come.

The trouble is the strategy. Screens are installed with the thought that the physical feature alone will suffice in engaging eyeballs, the bright shiny object syndrome. Just putting something on the screen is better than any paper sign, right? Wrong. It is critical that you understand why and how networks have impact.

Audiences don’t gravitate toward screens. They gravitate toward compelling experiences. Screens are a medium. Content is an experience. If you have a sound strategy, and if you create compelling experiences that resonate with the audience, you will increase engagement with the objectives of your strategy.

If you build it, they will come.

Why Does Everyone Want To Do This?

Over the past 20 years, the emergence of digital media as a mechanism for audience engagement has exploded. At the same time it has been expected. There have been no real game changers in the rapid growth and evolution of screens popping up everywhere, including mobile devices. Instead, people expect that this is what should happen.

Through all of this, there remain a few constants about a digital media network from the eyes of network owners or operators, the people who want to put up screens and integrate with tablets and mobile.

They want to make money. Simple. The more advertising a company can get in front of an audience, the better the chance they’ll make money, whether it’s their own advertising or they have sold time on their network to a third party.

The other guy is doing it. The saying goes, Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It’s very true in competitive businesses, especially in an era where the consumer has almost complete control over the relationship and sales cycle with a retailer or venue. The need to capture the hearts, minds, and in many cases wallets of this audience, keeps pushing competition in marketing and communication.

They need a better way to communicate. This is usually the starting point for the first two reasons above. Better communication means more engaging communication. If you can find a way to capture those hearts and minds, you will build your brand. This means throwing old and stale methods to the curb and enlisting new methods. Look at the decline of advertisers using traditional printed materials, most notably newspapers, and the skyrocketing growth of online and mobile communication.

A common graphic describing communication with customers is the Customer Relationship Lifecycle. It’s used to lay out the linear process of getting a customer from awareness of a product through loyalty to the brand or venue.

Whether the patron buys something or touches a screen to learn more, the process shows the opportunity for the viewer and venue/brand to develop a deeper relationship through digital mechanisms that print signage cannot provide. Multi-channel and omni-channel strategies now include the use of several available options to forge and foster relationships with patrons.[1]

As the industry matures, so too does the need to understand synergy between the screen and the viewer. It is paramount that resources be applied to understanding this synergy, discovering the challenges, and exploiting the solutions. This continues to be the brass ring of out-of-home messaging.

­So Why Isn’t Everybody Doing This Already?

The current model of consumer engagement with digital media networks is often unable to live up to its potential for four reasons:

The content model of Digital Signage is the opposite of television. Advertising is the featured programming on almost every out-of-home screen with little to no emphasis on entertainment value. Because ads are everywhere, it’s easy to re-purpose them for the digital sign. No one, no one, ever watched a screen just to watch the ads. Television was designed to entertain, inform, and educate, not sell, pitch, or swindle. It’s no secret that advertising pays for the entertainment on TV, and that is becoming the rule for online as well. (Be honest, have you ever really sat through the entire 30-second ad before watching your favorite YouTube clip?) But the reason people turn on the TV is to be entertained. Digital signage often is the exact opposite. The majority of programming is advertising that people are trying to avoid anyway, and often there is little to no entertaining value to the content. Why would anyone bother to watch?

The reason this is important is that digital signage is television. Whether it’s in the home or in the store, humans have evolved over the last several decades to instinctively understand that a screen is a television, and therefore the content should be entertaining and relevant. Audiences are not entirely above watching advertising if there is an entertaining element