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Choosing the right tech for digital displays

A number of expert panel discussions were conducted at the second annual Digital Retailing Expo, held May 18-19 at Chicago's Navy Pier Exhibition Center. Among them was a chat on "Choosing the Right Technology for Effective Deployment," a big-picture overview of making smart hardware and software choices for new digital signage applications.

June 1, 2005 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance

Market Forward's Manolo Almagro moderated the discussion, which featured GV Iyer, a consultant with Bank of America who worked on the bank's massive digital signage initiative; Jeff Porter, executive vice president of Scala Broadcast Multimedia; and Brad Gleeson, president and chief operating officer of Activelight Inc.

Iyer, whose recent work with Bank of America involved large-scale planning of the most delicate sort, emphasized the need for smart operational thinking; it is too easy to get caught up in the excitement of such a project, he said, and overlook the logistical needs that a successful deployment will require.

"Especially when you're rolling out to tens or hundreds of locations, you don't want to turn this into a `let's try this' situation," he said.

Iyer added that it is also too easy to get bogged down with hardware and software questions, overlooking bigger needs. "What gets neglected most often is the operational aspect," he said. "It is very important that it be planned properly, and that the support structure is in place."

Gleeson spent some time discussing new technologies on the horizon, but also emphasized the changing nature of consumer advertising, and the implications those changes have for in-store and POS ads.

"The mass media advertising model is dead," Gleeson said, reading from the top of a presentation slide. "Well, OK, maybe that's overstating it a bit," he added with a laugh, "but the television advertising market is undergoing changes that will render traditional television advertising redundant.

"Marketers need new ways to reach customers - the old ways aren't working anymore," Gleeson went on, noting the major damage TiVo, which allows customers to program their own viewing schedules and completely remove commercials, has done to traditional advertising.

Porter's speech was loaded with real-world examples, including an overview of signage designs attempted by Burger King. He said the initial idea was to replace all in-store menu boards with digital signage - an expensive proposition. "You've got to flip a lot of burgers to pay for those screens," he said with a laugh.

Marketers need new ways to reach customers - the old ways aren't working anymore.

-- Brad Gleeson, president and COO, ActiveLight

Instead, Porter said BK replaced just one menu board per store with a dynamic display - requiring only one 42-inch monitor, one PC, a high-speed connection and the necessary software - and uses it for upsell. In the example given, customers are urged to add bacon to a sandwich, or increase the size of a drink or fries.

"To someone like Burger King, that's an amazing impact on their bottom line," he said. "If it's about $5,000 per store for a 10 percent lift in sales, that's a pretty good ROI."

Not only does the screen pay for itself, but it serves as an in-store communication network for employee-facing needs - 15 minutes before the store opens, Porter said, the screens can be used network-wide for training, brand reinforcement, orientation and motivation. "Fifteen minutes later, it goes back to the chili cheese nuggets," he added.

Another example Porter offered was Best Buy, which uses its in-store digital signage network to push date-specific products and sales. New DVDs are typically released on Tuesday, so the in-store promotions start on Saturday or Sunday, switching over to a "come back tomorrow" message on Monday. Not only would such dynamic timing of promotions be cost-prohibitive with conventional signage, it likely wouldn't happen in the first place because of the amount of time and planning required.

Specifics?

One recurring theme throughout the talk reared its head again during the Q&A: put simply, there is no one right way to do things.

For instance, the panel was asked which hardware and software platforms are generally considered the best for digital display applications.

"There is no one best solution," Gleeson responded without hesitation. "There are situations where customers want to author their own content within the system. There are situations where there is legacy equipment to be dealt with."

That said, all of the panelists are fans of standard hardware components.

"I'm bullish on industry-standard hardware platforms," Porter said. "It's amazing what a $500 computer can do. Don't fight the 10,000 Chinese guys who are trying to sell you something on the cheap on the hardware side."

Delivering content to the network of displays also proves problematic when it comes to hard and fast answers. When weighing DSL versus satellite, the panel came up with pros and cons for both solutions.

Porter gave the example of a large media file that has to be downloaded to multiple branches for in-store onscreen display. If there are only a few branches, DSL works fine; but if the business in question has hundreds or thousands of branches, he pointed out that such a distribution would "practically be a denial-of-service attack," given the fact that all of those downloads would come from a single server (or cluster of servers) within a relatively short period of time.

But satellite has its downfalls, too. "Just when you've decided you're going to go satellite, you run into a situation where you're in downtown Boston and the roof rights are prohibitive," Gleeson added. "So you have to be flexible."