Pat Hellberg: Where’s this thing going?

It was pure coincidence.  The young man who came up and shook my hand after my DSE panel discussion two days earlier wound up in the same row for the flight home from Las Vegas.

The panel discussion, entitled “Do it right the first time:  the politics and pitfalls of digital signage deployment and how to avoid them” was well attended.  The room was jammed with prospective or current network operators.  They all seemed to be  long on entrepreneurial spirit but short on experience.

The young man’s situation was typical.  He has started a doctor’s office network that currently has just two locations.  His questions for me (and the focus of his two-day fact finding mission at DSE):  “Should I get serious and expand?” and  “Where is digital signage/digital out-of-home going?”

It’s a fascinating question for the entire industry:  where is this thing going?

DSE veterans (some of us have been around since DSE’s predecessor, the Digital Retailing Expo, barely filled a small hall in San Francisco in 2004)  have never seen as much activity nor felt as much energy as we just experienced in Las Vegas.  Exhibitors entered DSE 2010 anticipating the norm:  that they would spend the majority of their time educating the “tire kickers”.  But instead, we heard that buyers were qualified/legitimate and conversations were pointed/positive.  Some vendors were even writing business on the trade show floor.

So the future is bright, right?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

Certainly the  short-term view is encouraging.  Digital signage/digital out-of-home finally seems to be approaching a heightened level of maturity.  After dipping their toes in the water in past years, two mega-players, Intel and Cisco, reportedly are diving into the deep end.  And established entities, LG, Sony, NEC and others, are expanding their traditional/conventional DS/DOOH offerings.  All of this suggests money is about to pour into the space which, logically, means the good times are about to roll.

Good times, with a caveat.

Geri Wolff works for Exponation, the company that produces DSE.  Geri busts her ass, compiling  the collective wisdom of DSE’s advisory board and passing that wisdom along to the DS community at large.    At the DSE Advisory board meeting in Vegas the night before the show opened,  Geri polled the board for advice.  She asked us, what are we (DSE & the digital signage industry) missing?

Patrick Moorhead, VP at Chicago-based agency Draftfcb, did not hesitate.  Patrick said, flat out, there simply are not enough ad agency types in attendance.  None of us disagreed.  We acknowledged that currently, there’s no reason for agency folks to care, let alone attend.

Ironically, this comes at a time when agencies are slowly warming up to the idea of sharing the wealth and spreading the buy.  The TV audience is shrinking.  That can’t be disputed.  But those TV dollars won’t automatically default to DS/DOOH unless the agencies see it as a media buy that makes sense.  Right now, they generally don’t.  And that can’t be disputed either.

Thus, unless the focus of DSE and the industry overall shifts more toward the audience and less toward bright, shiny tech, the agencies will continue to stay away in droves.

And that’s when this industry’s good times could slow to a  crawl.

Let’s return to the flight home from Las Vegas.  My new friend said that by walking the trade show floor, he felt he received an adequate overview regarding digital signage hardware, software, etc.  But he had a nagging question.  “I need help creating content that will look different from all of the other content,  content that makes sense for my doctor client and his patients.   Why isn’t there more help at the show regarding custom content solutions?”

My knee-jerk answer: “Because it is extremely difficult to make a living creating custom content solutions as custom content is not valued in the digital signage industry.”

Oh, there was plenty of content literally jumping off the digital displays on the trade show floor.  From an aesthetic standpoint, some of the content was truly spectacular.  (The Christie Microtiles were amazing.  Christie could have simply tapped into  a live feed from a convenience store security camera and still would have been stopping attendees in their tracks.)

But from an editorial standpoint, the content playing on the show floor was, at best, generic. Mind-numbingly generic.  No-one-pays–attention generic.  As my Preset partner Paul Flanigan tweeted from Vegas, “I know the weather in every city in the world by walking the show floor.  Does everybody do weather?”

Unfortunately, it does seem that everybody does do weather and/or stock tickers and/or news.  They combine to form an easy default.  But weather/stocks/news are not the answer

Back to the board meeting and another question from Geri Wolff.  “Where should DSE/this industry be in 5 years?”

I don’t have  a crystal ball but I do have a feeling in my gut. So I spoke up.  “Unless this show and this industry changes its focus from being transaction-based, unless it shifts its focus away from hardware and software and starts focusing on the audience, the person on the other side of the screen, and focuses on the messages we are sending to that audience…unless that happens,  in five years, digital signage will still be a bunch of technology folks talking to each other.”

And the digital signage show, as Patrick Moorhead observed, will be nothing more than vendors “selling picks and shovels”.

Shifting the priority, from an emphasis on prettier pixels to an emphasis on compelling consumer communication, will not be easy for this industry.  It will be like changing the course of the battleship.

But the opportunity has never been more, well, more opportune.  Digital signage/digital out-of-home has momentum and momentum attracts resources and buys time.

Time to provide an offering that compels the agencies to recognize digital out-of-home as a viable alternative.

Time to pay more attention to what plays on the screen and a little less attention to the screen itself.

If that shift in emphasis comes to pass, every DS operation will benefit:    the mammoth enterprise projects,  the two-office network operated by new friend, and all networks in between.

Can’t wait to see where we’re at in five years.