With an Internet-ready device in our reach at all times, are we ever really captive? Think about the last time you stood in what seemed to be an endless line (for me it was standing in the line to see Avatar…). How many people around you were using their phones? Were the majority of folks talking on their phones, or were they engaged in any number of non-voice based activities: texting, playing games, surfing the mobile web, writing a business email, etc.? Did you see anyone pull an e-reader from his or her bag?

What were you doing while you were in line? Did you seek sanctuary in technology to stave off the boredom of staring at your watch?

My reason for asking these questions is to get you to think about how common it is for people (of all ages) to pull out a phone, laptop, netbook, e-reader, or iPod when they’re forced to wait for something. Such evidence supports my hypothesis that the truly captive audience is disappearing.

Just because people are in a lobby, elevator, amusement park line, or waiting room for seconds, minutes, or hours, that doesn’t mean that they are captive. Thanks to the evolution of technology, while seemingly “captive,” these individuals could be performing any number of digital tasks that occupy their attention.

So tell me…

How Captive is Your Audience?

I think I have a starting point, but want to frame it with first understanding some of the factors.

Five years ago, you could put an ad on the big four networks, have your footprint and hit most of your target demographic simply because you were on at the right time. Psychographic targeting has completely changed the landscape of advertising. It’s no longer about what, when and where, it’s now about who, why, and how.

Today, we have multi-channel campaigns, sometimes several channels within a single retail environment. For example, if I have three separate channels in my store (home theater program, computer screens, and a checkout program), I need a variation on a single spot that is bi-lingual, appropriate for the channel, and geographically segmented to each of the top 10 DMAs in the United States due to regional promotion. That’s 60 versions of a spot.

Ugh. No one has time to do that.

Many end-users (venues, network owners and operators) are not broadcast professionals or creative types. They are corporate marketers that view digital signage as a brand engagement point that will excite the customers and generate revenue. If you ask them how long it takes to make a 30-second commercial, some will answer, “30 seconds.”

Because of the agency’s historic position in the creative management of brand and product campaigns, much of the industry assumes the agency is the master of the domain: full knowledge of psychographics, content creation designed for individual targeting, media planning and channel deployment logistics, and metric measurement analysis. And there tends to be an implied assumption that all this is on the agency’s dime.

The reality is that the agency doesn’t know any more about your customer than the man or woman who walks past your storefront on the other side of the street. And none of them have the time or the budget to go and learn everything about your customer.

But you do.

Here’s Where We Start

The end user must own the testing and measurement of the audience. The responsibility of developing a concrete metric on the network’s value to the environment should reside with the end user who made the decision to install the network. The network should be part of the marketing plan.

You need the right content to develop measurement. Where do you get that? You don’t get it from any external agency; you get it from within your own four walls.

You should produce your own content because you know how to impact your audience better than anyone. Historically, I, not any agency, have produced the advertising with the greatest impact on my audience.

The cost to produce content and measure your audience will be lower because you can engage other departments and to spread the costs. For example, if you know your private label that wants to advertise, introduce them to the idea of producing multiple versions of a spot for testing purposes. It costs much less to version creative in production than go back and re-edit mastered content. If you’re large enough, engage your marketing research department to build a test and measurement study to collect sales data on the products or services promoted in the advertising and understand where the greatest impact occurred.

If you are a small venue, think about contracting a third party to do this. If you’re really small, Apple’s iMovie HD works just as well as Avid or Final Cut Pro. (I have personally created my own content with Final Cut Pro.) A $5 gift certificate to answer a couple intercept questions goes a long way for loyalty. You know that customer will come back to spend the five bucks and probably a few dollars more.

And use OVAB’s metric measurement guidelines to build your case.

Then share that information. Most agencies and other end users don’t care to know quantity sold or the cost; they want to know if your content had impact, that your content drove sales. With multiple versions of the same spot, you can help me understand the impact. As Nikki Baird put it, “…the why behind the buy.”

Some companies are already trying this. What I find interesting is these efforts are coming from brands, not agencies. I have worked with brands to create content for specific channels with successful results. I have educated them on why they need to change it for our environment and I have showed them how to do it. The result is stronger consumer engagement, and better sales.

The challenge is to stop one-off efforts and start integrating this process into long-term marketing initiatives.

Agencies do get it, and they do care. What they need is open-source collaboration with retailers and brands to build the expertise to develop multi-channel content so that end users can get back to engaging the customer and making money.

So there’s a starting point. On your marks…

The renowned philosopher Nietzsche might have been mindful of that very struggle when he wrote:

“What one should learn from artists: how to make things beautiful, attractive and desirable for us, when in themselves, they never are.”

By the way, this is the same Nietzsche who coined the phrase that many of us in the digital signage industry lean on in times of great despair:

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

Now I’m no Nietzsche. And I’m certainly no scientist. Bill Gerba is a scientist. In a good way. Bill’s recent science-based series on making great digital signage content took one view. But there’s another.

So to Bill’s point, let me offer a counterpoint.

Let me first say I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the power of chunking and coding, the promotion of sans serif as the optimal attention-grabbing font and the dissection of human reactions to color. Who knew that blue reduces the feeling of claustrophobia?

With no bona fide textbooks to guide us through the do’s and don’ts of digital signage content creation, we should be beyond grateful that someone with Bill’s experience and expertise pulled this together. We need all the help we can get in prompting our customers/shoppers to check out what we’re putting on the screens.

But that’s not the end of the transaction. Once they’ve checked it out, that’s when we have to hook ‘em.

And that’s when science needs to hand the baton to art.

For the past l9 years, I’ve been in the front row, watching some of the smartest kids on the block create one of the strongest brands on the planet, Nike. In the formative days of Nike, research and metrics were never as important as instinct and passion. Science? Oh, it has always lived in Nike product. But in the consumer communications tug-of-war, aspiration has consistently crushed science. Did you ever buy a pair of Air Jordans because of the air or because you could lace up the same shoes as the greatest player of all time?

I have to say that during our years of creating content for the Nike Retail Network, I can’t recall a single discussion about fonts, color or contrast. I worked with brilliant graphic and motion designers whose instincts led them to the appealing and to the attractive. That’s what artists do. They create content that they know, in their gut, makes things “beautiful, attractive and desirable.”

Now I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: I’m not oblivious to the realities of our business. Digital signage networks demand large quantities of content. And artists don’t work cheap. Big need and big costs. That’s an expensive, impractical combination.

However, the potential aesthetic appeal of digital content should not be ignored. Think of your favorite broadcast commercials. You love them, and more importantly, you remember them, because they are funny (creative writing is a vastly underrated form of art), cool, visually/aurally interesting or otherwise experiential. In other words, they appeal to your senses. For those keeping score, that makes it art 1, science nothing.

I just left Nike to go out on my own as a consultant in the digital signage industry, concentrating on content strategy. I hope to help network operators produce long-term, sustainable content plans that don’t break the bank. If they need help producing the content, I’ll help with that too. I’ll probably steal some of Bill’s material. It wouldn’t be the first time. And I’ll combine it with my knowledge of branding, marketing and romancing the product. I won’t demand that every 15 second digital signage video look like a work of art. But neither will it resemble a laboratory experiment. It’s all in the mix. Art vs. science doesn’t have to be a struggle. Given the right proportions of both, the end result can be a proper compromise which can both attract and engage the customer. And that would be beautiful indeed.