Ian Osborne's SCREENS.tv Digital Signage Blog

Signage for Small Businesses? (2 comments)

Technology is spreading. Over the last decade, scores of once-niche hi-tech gadgets and peripherals have become commonplace. Mobile phones are no longer the preserve of Filofax-wielding yuppies, games aren’t geeky any more, almost everyone has a home computer with internet access and multifunction printers have brought photocopying facilities into the home. Maybe digital signage could be the next niche technology to spread…

There’s more to captive-audience advertising than 42” plasma screens and professionally-produced presentations. You don’t need acres of wall space for a stupidly-expensive monitor, and nor do you need Steven Spielberg to carry your message. If you’ve a business where the public is allowed onto your premises, you can maintain a perfectly practical signage display with nothing more expensive than a digital photo frame.

Although designed for use in the home, displaying an ever-changing series of pictures taken on your digital camera, digital photo frames make an ideal low-budget signage solution. These days you can get a decent-quality unit, which can handle sound and short movie clips as well as jpegs, for around £50-£100. With a little work on your PC, you can then create high-quality advertising for your business, save it to the required memory source (usually an SD card) and loop it on your digital photo frame – much more practical than, say, playing a PowerPoint presentation directly off a computer.

Digital photo frames are useful for businesses of any size, even your local newsagents; it’s a great way to tell your customers Kit-Kats are two pence cheaper or you offer free delivery on newspapers and magazines. Much more exciting than day-glo paper and a marker pen.

Don’t overdo it, though. Shouting your message over migraine-inducing flashes of colour irritates your customers and drives your staff to distraction. Mostly-silent presentations, with the odd sound effect to herald particularly-important screens, work much better. You can start by looping a few jpeg graphics created in your picture editor of choice, and as you grow in competence and ambition, add some short movie stings or product demos. It’s fun!

It’s been said that Web 2.0 has empowered the ordinary man in the street to become their own publisher or documentary maker, with online blogs and YouTube videos reaching a potential audience of billions. With the same tools, you could create digital presentations previously only available to the biggest of businesses. Signage 2.0 begins here, folks…

Interactivity - the Packaging Needn't Overshadow the Message... (0 comments)

Well, well, well - would you Adam and Eve it (guvnor)? Do you remember those adverts from a few years back, where a couple of fast-driving cockneys who looked just like Regan and Carter from Seventies cop show The Sweeney took to the road? Of course you do. Remember how they raced around every corner with tyres screaming in protest? Of course you do. Do you remember what it was they were actually advertising? erm...

Research has shown that while adverts were getting cleverer and more eye-catching, their intended mission statement got lost somewhere along the way. Surveys suggested few who saw the Sweeney-inspired car advert (for the Nissan Almera, as it happens) could name the vehicle that was being advertised, and a significant portion of viewers didn't even realise they were advertising a bloody car. The packaging had overshadowed the message, and while entertaining in its own right, it had totally failed to do its job.

Fast forward to this year, when another hugely entertaining car advert was trialed in London's Cineworld theatres. Here, cinema-goers got to 'drive' a Volvo XC70 by waving their hands over their heads, swinging right and left to steer the car using motion-sensor technology. The campaign, labeled 'Human Joysticks', was hugely ambitious - and it worked! Apres-movie surveys showed 'a remarkable 71% of moviegoers recalled that the virtual car they'd driven was a Volvo', and they even enjoyed the movie more than audiences who weren't shown the advert beforehand.

It just goes to show clever, original advertising needn't overshadow the product that's being advertised, and that interactivity facilitated by the application of new technology offers potentially huge rewards for early adopters.

Have the Loonies taken over the asylum? (0 comments)

Is this the future of digital signage? According to 2000AD’s Judge Dredd storyline, at the dawn of the 22^nd Century, adverts will be beamed onto the surface of the moon, creating the world’s largest billboard. Actually, scratch that. You can hardly call it ‘the world’s largest’ when it isn’t even on the planet... Naturally, not everyone is impressed. After all, how can you gaze at the light of the moon and tell your partner you love her when our silvery satellite is emblazoned with an advert for breakfast cereal? In Dredd’s world advertising on the moon is limited to six hours a week for this very reason, but that’s not enough for a sinister cult called The Loonies, who claim their god has been defiled and take violent direct action against the proprietors of Moonray Tower.

Far-fetched? Perhaps, but bear this in mind. The Dredd story in question (Loonies’ Moon from 2000AD Prog 192, fact fans) was published in 1980. Almost two decades later, in 1999, a 60ft high nude Gail Porter was beamed onto the Palace of Westminster in an advert for lads' mag FHM, to much protest from our own cult of loonies, The Daily Mail. Maybe beaming advertising onto the moon isn’t such a daft idea after all. I bet Bill’s already bought a prime slot to plug Windows 2100…

Crashing Windows: a signage of the times? (0 comments)

The rapid take-up of digital display solutions is bringing with it a far less welcome phenomenon. Crashing operating systems are the bane of every computerised signage operator’s life.

Crashed displays pop up everywhere. UK computer magazine Micro Mart even runs a regular column in which readers send in photos of them. High-tech railway-station displays offer a ‘Restart Windows’ button instead of train times, the cash machine at your local bank shows ‘Fatal Error’ instead of giving you cash (sounds like my credit-card bill) and a shopping centre’s interactive map urges you to restart your machine. Trouble is, the end user has no way of restarting it – that’s the operator’s job, and if he’s got any sense, he’d better do it quickly.

You see, digital signage offers all sorts of advantages over more traditional mediums, but only if it works. A malfunctioning display not only fails to do its intended job, but also reflects badly on your company or client. Instead of carrying your message to the masses, it makes you look tatty and unprofessional.

It can’t be stressed enough. Before installing a digital display in a public area, test it thoroughly under all conditions in which it’s expected to function. Give it a kick before someone else does. Get someone to play hard with it, doing their best to make it crash, then take the necessary measures should it do so. And when it’s up and running, make sure you monitor it regularly, especially when new.