There is really only one goal for digital signage: enabling initiative, getting the customer doing something with what he or she has just seen. Regardless of the engagement, a positive outcome is the only desired effect.

Here are three very general areas where digital signage can play a positive role in a customer’s experience within an environment, and the potential pitfall each encounters with poor planning and execution.

Environmental Navigation

Navigation is usually the first impression a customer gets of a store. “Where can I find…?” Good navigation will make the shopper’s experience positive and can reduce time and stress. Digital signage can play a key role in making sure that two goals are met: Showing the customer exactly where to go and showing the easiest way to get there. But you don’t get a second chance at a first impression. Poor navigation techniques, or making the customer work too hard to locate the destination, will disengage a customer before he is even at the destination.

Do we now need GPS in a store?

Education

Learning about a product or service through digital interactivity allows the customer to learn at her pace, not the pace of the employee or the store. The ability for digital engagement (most likely in a kiosk) to be flexible for the customer’s depth of knowledge and desire for education will generate interest, respect and loyalty from the customer.

In contrast, poor education or programming that makes too many assumptions about the customer’s knowledge and has ignored important messaging will sour the experience.

Perception of Time

The ability to cut down on a customer’s perception of time is taken very seriously by environments where waiting (hospitals) or poor attitudes (returning an item that gave you a bad experience) are part of the customer’s experience in the space. Engaging content can change behavior and ultimately reduce a customer’s perception of time.

However, poor execution on basic guidelines, such as the running time on a looping program being shorter than the average time a customer waits, can be a big disappointment. Customers don’t want to see the same thing twice. In addition, creating programming that does not effectively draw attention away from the customer’s purpose in the environment can backfire by making the customer even more aware of the time.

The detail that goes into each category is dependent upon the venue’s strategy with digital signage. Great care should be taken each time. Poor execution with one screen can wreck a customer’s experience in the entire environment. A bad digital signage experience can drive customers away just as fast as bad customer service.

To avoid that end, constant research and understanding will keep your digital experiences fresh and appealing for the customer and the venue.

The thing that I enjoy most about shows like DSE is connecting with industry contemporaries and those who I have established connections with via online communication platforms. Having the opportunity to meet face-to-face with industry friends I have made through this blog, Twitter, Linkedin, and other social media channels is something that I cherish. At DSE, it’s the people you meet and the conversations that you have which make the event unforgettable. I always welcome the opportunity to meet new folks and share interesting conversations with people who exude passion for digital signage, retail customer experience, emerging communication platforms, etc.

I shared conversations with a wealth of uber-smart individuals on topics such as location-based mobile services, real-time news, the future of digital out-of-home media, social media pollination across the enterprise, using digital technologies to enhance internal communications, digital signage as a brand/customer experience gateway, emerging mobile platforms, etc. It’s in these conversations that industry participants and I waxed analytical on digital signage’s role in our communications ecosystem and the technology’s advertising future. To those who I shared conversations with, thank you. To those who I didn’t get a chance to connect with, please feel free to reach out if you would like to talk (best way to reach me is via email: david.weinfeld@presetgroup.com). I am always happy to talk and help out in any way that I can.

Thoughts from the Show Floor

I don’t think that a single person who attended the show would argue that the technology on the event floor wasn’t impressive. As you entered the expo hall floor, it was like a treat for your eyes. Digital signs stretched as far as the eye could see. From thin screens to video walls and outdoor displays, the technical side of the industry was more than well represented. If you love digital signage (I assume that you have at least a passing interest in the technology if you’re reading this blog), your feelings about the environment would run parallel to my own.

The technology that powers the digital signage and digital out-of-home media industries was front and center on the show floor. While screens, media players, and interactive elements stretched across every square foot of the Las Vegas Convention Center, such a setup ran counter to the goal of educating newcomers and longtime attendees about digital signage and future industry developments. For anyone that was new to the digital signage industry, they likely left the show floor with more questions than answers.

An enormous focus was placed on digital signage technology at the detriment of featuring solutions that solve real business problems. The show floor lacked balance between the hardware/software side of the industry and the experiences that the technology powers. Too much emphasis was placed on the physical boundaries of the technology. Many missed the chance to feature digital signage as a gateway to expansive customer and brand experiences. The technology, and all of the bells and whistles, are great to look at it, but the sheen of these objects fade if they aren’t framed within the greater context of digital signage’s far reaching impact.

Many people I spoke with described the show floor as “cluttered” or “difficult to navigate.” For some, it felt like a summer camp reunion, drawing the conclusion based on a limited number of attendees outside of the digital signage and technology industries. If you got a nickel for every agency or brand rep. that was at the show, you would barely be able to afford a fast food combo meal.

One industry friend who is extremely knowledgeable on digital signage technology even admitted that he dreaded walking the show floor. This sentiment came from someone who loves digital out-of-home media. I can understand why he felt this way. For anyone who was new to digital signage, these end users were met with software companies all appearing to do the same thing (some claiming they could do more, others claiming best-in-class solutions, and none willing to admit that a potential customer would be better suited speaking to one of their competitors).

One of the few advertising agency reps. in attendance equated the expo to a “picks and shovels show.” He found the show lacking in relevance to his specific discipline. He commented that his agency colleagues don’t have anywhere near the same interest in technology as he does. They just want to know that it works.

A screen is a screen, but a true digital signage solution is an experience. This is an ethos that needs to be shared across the industry and, most importantly, carried throughout the Digital Signage Expo.

Technically and financially, we’re there. But what about content?

The conventional wisdom is that digital menu boards don’t need to have any particular whiz-bang about the creative. They can be jpegs or motion vector graphics (like Flash or Silverlight), and maybe there’s embedded video. The few digital menu boards I have seen look like regular menu boards.

Is that the optimal way to do it? I haven’t a clue, as my fast food patronage doesn’t extend much beyond buying coffee at Tim Horton’s now and then. But there’s an interesting piece in Wednesday’s New York Times (you may need to register to read it, but that’s free) about the psychology of menus that is worth a read if planning or peddling menu boards is in the cards for 2010.

Restaurant operators are fiddling, the story says, with combinations of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page to try to coax diners into spending a little more money.

The use of menu engineers and consultants is exploding in the casual dining arena and among national chains, a sector of the business that has been especially pinched by the economy. In response, they are tapping into a growing body of research into the science of menu pricing and writing, hoping the way to a diner’s heart is not only through the stomach, but through the unconscious.

This piece, I should stress, is all about the menus a waiter or waitress hands to you, not menus up on boards. But there is good stuff in here that is broadly applicable to anyone trying to get people ordering more.

In the “Ten Commandments for Menu Success,” an article published in Restaurant Hospitality magazine in 1994, Allen H. Kelson, a restaurant consultant, wrote, “If admen had souls, many would probably trade them for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an advertisement in every customer’s hand before they part with their money.”

And like advertisements, menus contain plenty of subliminal messages.

Some restaurants use what researchers call decoys. For example, they may place a really expensive item at the top of the menu, so that other dishes look more reasonably priced; research shows that diners tend to order neither the most nor least expensive items, drifting toward the middle. Or restaurants might play up a profitable dish by using more appetizing adjectives and placing it next to a less profitable dish with less description so the contrast entices the diner to order the profitable dish.

Research by Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and the author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” suggests that the average person makes more than 200 decisions about food every day, many of them unconsciously, including the choices made from reading menus.

Menu design draws some of its inspiration from newspaper layout, which puts the most important articles at the top right of the front page, where the eyes tend to be drawn. Some restaurants will place their most profitable items, or their specials, in that spot. Or they place a dotted outline or a box around the item, put more white space around it to make the dish stand out or, in what menu researchers say is one of the most effective tools, add a photograph of the item or an icon like a chili pepper.

Interesting reading, and a good reminder that our emerging industry can learn a lot from the efforts made on the more traditional sides of businesses.

The retail world now sees more money spent on a single point-of-purchase display than many stores spent on an entire campaign two decades ago. The effort on getting the customer to choose you rather than the other guy rockets freely into the millions of dollars without so much as a free ornament (the plastic kind) for your tree.

Today, the brand reach created by a campaign extends beyond anyone’s wildest dreams of engagement. The internet and social media have allowed end-users to absorb campaign material and keep it forever, literally. We enjoy reminiscing about great retail campaigns from bygone days thanks to the likes of YouTube.

Campaigns are no longer the five or six major calendar holidays they used to be, either. Campaigns revolve around calendar events for dozens of cultures. The holiday campaign includes Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, and opens the can of slogan worms on what to call it. Happy Holidays? Merry Christmas? Happy Hanukkah? All of them? Brands and retailers find themselves walking a fine line between spreading good cheer and kicking political correctness in the shin.

And, campaigns are no longer cultural events; they are social events. Best Buy devoted the entire month of January to its Home Theater campaign so that you could have the perfect home theater for the “big game,” the Super Bowl. Some retailers build promotions around the Academy Awards. They have a countdown leading to it. The day after the show, the movies that won awards are proudly displayed in the front window DVD shelves, and you can find the latest celebrity fashions online to purchase for yourself.

But there is a point where the efforts of branding via campaigns become suspect. If “brand purpose” is to create an ecosystem in which people can engage, then the idea of campaigns is contentious. Brands are not built through episodic events; they evolve through long-term relationships.

When brands spend too much time and money on a campaign, they spend too little time on the brand itself. While working at Best Buy, I spent almost 10 months of every year in projects that concerned a campaign. The other two months were spent cleaning up from the other 10 months of work. I rarely spent ample time simply focused on the brand — the foundational engagement with customers that we strived to achieve.

It was kind of like putting a new coat of paint on an Edsel.

I believe that in this culture of short attention spans and fast knowledge, it is much more important for a brand to embrace the engagement with the customer and utilize campaigns as talking points, not as brand builders. Campaigns are conversation starters, not conversations. They are a great way to get customers in the door, but not very good at keeping them there. When a campaign ends, you should never hear your customer ask, “That was fun. What now?”

How do you keep them after the campaign? Some do it by hammering another campaign down your throat. The back-to-school campaigns seem to start earlier each year; they cannot get here fast enough on the heels of the 4th of July campaigns (in the U.S.). That doesn’t work. At some point, the campaigns stop.

You build your brand by focusing less on how you look during a particular time of year and more on how you look at all times.

When building a campaign, three questions come to mind:

a. How does this campaign support our brand as a whole?
b. How will this campaign be perceived AFTER it expires?
c. How does this campaign work with the next campaign?

These are only three questions, and they may appear elementary, but when you have several internal teams working on a campaign, you will get several different answers, and not all of them will be right. This is crucial in knowing the role your brand plays in the culture, and the value you have in your customer’s lifestyle the next day.

Effective brands build relationships; they do not have affairs. Affairs always end bad.

Damn near everyone is using the same sales pitch.

I am talking suppliers. And I am talking operators.

When you manage to escape from the bubble that is your company, or the larger bubble that is your general technology or media proposition, you start to realize the sales and marketing pitch – those bullet points that people use to excite prospects – is pretty much the same one the next guys are using. And the next guys. And the next guys.

Everyone is the industry leader. What they do is the next generation. They’re the best in class. The audience is premium. Their medium is highly targeted.

My work now gives me the blissful perspective of looking from the outside in at the industry, functioning as a smarty-pants consultant and communications specialist. I get asked now to help companies pull together their marketing copy and strategy, and enable them to stand out from the many other companies that offer variations on essentially the same products, services or audience.

The problem is … most companies are so busy getting everything else done — to organize, launch and run a technology or media company — that the actual time spent developing a compelling set of marketing messages is minimal. It’s one of those, “Oh crap, we need a sell sheet and some stuff for the Website!” situations, that usually involves someone who shouldn’t be doing marketing pulling together a few points during spare moments.

I have done a couple of competitive analyses for technology companies lately, and what really struck me was how similar the value propositions are between technology companies. Go through 15 company sites and you will find most of them highlighting the things that everybody else is highlighting, like flexibility and scalability and support for most media formats.

Ad network operators are not as bad, but the same issues apply.

Volkswagen markets itself on statements like “The art of rocket science.” It does not plaster signs on its windows reading, “Tires on our cars are filled with air!”

So why, when I go to many Websites for vendors, do I read excited bullet points about Day-part scheduling!!!

Well, woohoo! Peddling features and benefits that just about all your prospective customers already assume you have is not the path to glory.

There are clear indications much of what gets written and trumpeted is a variation on what a competitor has on its site. Chances are, that copy was ‘inspired’ by another competitor’s copy. And so on. Companies need to spend more time thinking about how they set themselves apart from the mob, and far less worrying about how their competitors market themselves.

What is it that you guys do, or have, that makes you different? Are you particularly strong in a vertical market? Does your technology have some whiz-bang component that’s rare or unique? Is there something you are doing that others can’t touch?

There are companies I won’t name who market themselves on technology offers that aren’t even unique, but they’ve nonetheless made that gadgetry their own. They’re the guys who do (insert not terribly unique thing here) and they let people know. Compare that to what most companies go out with, which is essentially: “We’re one of countless industry leaders and we offer the same dynamic, flexible and cost-effective stuff for digital signage networks that you’ll find on the next 14 sites you browse and sell sheets you read!!!”

Try this exercise: Print off your main Web pages and sell sheets and grab some Hi-Liter pens. Underline in yellow those phrases and features you’ll admit are common across many companies, and in another colour highlight those features that are unique or more compelling than common. If there’s a lot of yellow, you need to get to work.

There are many, many reasons why a company might prosper or fail, but a really strong predictor for failure is a company that can’t put into words how it is different and why that matters. The same disciplined work that goes into product development, budgets and staffing needs to also go into how your company goes to market and sets itself apart.

If you can’t differentiate, you perish.

Zen and the art of the elevator pitch

There’s more to success, of course, than merely honing and delivering the perfect elevator pitch. But that pitch can go a long way toward getting the relationship off to a great start. Or killing it before it ever gets started. Walking the floor at the DSE in Las Vegas, you couldn’t avoid it. The pitching was pervasive. Every single one of us played one of two roles — the pitch-er or the pitch-ee — in a numbing yet necessary exercise, kind of like the business version of speed dating.

Some found it to be exhausting. They peeled off to take haven in either Starbucks or that mediocre cafeteria with the unfortunate combination of long lines and inflated prices. But none of us schlepped all the way to Vegas just to drink coffee or eat pricey, mediocre food. We were there to fact find. With all of the industry players back-to-back and booth-to-booth, fact finding should have been no problem, right? Not exactly — at least not for me. The DSE show floor (and virtually any trade show floor, for that matter) comes off like a sea of sameness. The challenge for exhibitors: how do you make your pitch stand out? The challenge for attendees: how do you cut through the crap?

Stories from the floor

Jennifer Nye leads the in-store digital marketing solution program for Harley-Davidson dealerships. In other words, she’s a retailer. And at DSE, retailers are coveted. Highly coveted. Like gold. “I don’t even listen to elevator pitches,” Jennifer says. Pity the rookie retailers walking the show floor for the first time who might not know what they’re in for. In my days with Nike, I quickly learned to play defense. I flipped my badge backward to maintain anonymity. Jennifer agrees. She employs a proactive strategy at DSE and all trade shows. She does her homework, pre-screening specific exhibitors who have products and services relevant to her business. She’ll seek out those exhibitors, and only those exhibitors, limiting her exposure to the pack. “I like the way the DSE floor is organized but I won’t walk it (the floor),” Jennifer says. “Everyone’s software will do everything. They all tell you what they think you want to hear.”

When people like Stuart Armstrong and Rebecca Walt hear comments like those, they recoil. And they sense opportunity. Stu, President of EnQii North America, and Rebecca, VP Professional Services at Reflect Systems, take a completely different tact. For them, it’s not what they say, but what their clients say that matters most. “We provide solutions,” notes Rebecca, “and you can’t provide solutions unless you listen to the problems and goals of the client. How big is their network? What are they trying to accomplish? How do they want to speak to their audience?” Of course, Rebecca still has a pitch. Stu does too. But they both know when to weave it in and when to hold back. Experience has taught them to avoid leading with a cookie-cutter “our widget is better than their widget” approach. That comes much later, if at all. “I have no problem in telling a prospect,” Stu says, “that if our solution isn’t appropriate for them, I will recommend one of our competitors.”

When your reputation doesn’t precede you

Reflect Systems and EnQii, along with a mere handful of others, are proven players with solid track records. And when you’re proven, the first impression precedes you — the elevator pitch is not do-or-die, as it might be with newcomers to this space. Or as the great philosopher Yogi Berra might put it, “If you need a good elevator pitch, you probably don’t have one. And if you have one, you probably don’t need one.” But what are those newer companies that might lack a positive reputation, track record and client list to do? How about those like, well, like me, Pat Hellberg, and my newly-formed Kaicon Consulting group? In the space of three days at DSE, I delivered a couple dozen variations on my own pitch. Each time, I tried to adjust to the audience, zigging and zagging according to the tell-tale signs: body language, eye contact and verbal interaction. Each time, there was a personal post mortem, ranging from “I nailed that one” to “I didn’t really say that, did I?”

We always think we can improve. Our distinguished blog host, Bill Gerba, has been in the digital signage game for nine years and says he’s still fine tuning his own elevator pitch. As for me, I’m also more than ready to admit that my own pitch is a work in progress, and probably will be forever. But combining some tips from the pros (there are literally hundreds of books and web sites chuck full of tips, like The Closet Entrepreneur, Twitpitch and TechCrunch Elevator Pitches) with my own personal experience (what has resonated vs. what has fallen flat), my working draft reads something like this:

Clients fall in love with the technology. They buy the hardware and the software. They hang the screens and turn ‘em on. The clients have the first three days covered for content. But they don’t know what they’re going to do for the next 362 days and beyond.

It’s like buying a great new car but only having enough left over for half a tank of gas.

I use the experience and expertise I gained in running Nike’s network to help clients craft a sustainable content strategy at a reasonable cost. And I have the resources to help them produce the content if needed.

A DS network represents a serious investment. A sustainable content strategy will ensure that the investment pays off.

By elevator ride standards that’s about 14 floors worth, depending on whether I’ve had any coffee.

A pitch that maybe we all can agree on

Take the idea of the pitch and expand it to the entire digital signage/DOOH industry. Ultimately, our business is all about grabbing someone’s attention in a small amount of time, and then providing content that engages and motivates them. When they leave our tiny sphere of influence, hopefully we’ve left them with an impression, a few small, memorable tidbits. In a way, all DOOH content is essentially thousands upon thousands of elevator pitches.

Having said that, it will serve us well to continue to evolve the pitch about ourselves, about our companies, and about the business in general. We still lack a meta-pitch that’s suitable for the industry as a whole. Are we in advertising? Storytelling? Information exchange? A killer pitch can be an important tool as we move this industry forward, even as more people outside our circle of “in the know” experts become familiar with what digital signage and DOOH really are.

Or we can hold out for a magic lamp.

Here are three very general areas where digital signage can play a positive role in a customer’s experience within an environment, and the potential pitfall each encounters with poor planning and execution.

Environmental Navigation. Navigation is usually the first impression a customer gets of a store. “Where can I find…?” Good navigation will make the shopper’s experience positive and can reduce time and stress. Digital signage can play a key role in making sure that two goals are met: Showing the customer exactly where to go and showing the easiest way to get there. But you don’t get a second chance at a first impression. Poor navigation techniques, or making the customer work too hard to locate the destination, will disengage a customer before he is even at the destination.

Education. Learning about a product or service through digital interactivity allows the customer to learn at her pace, not the pace of the employee or the store. The ability for digital engagement (most likely in a kiosk) to be flexible for the customer’s depth of knowledge and desire for education will generate interest, respect and loyalty from the customer. In contrast, poor education or programming that makes too many assumptions about the customer’s knowledge and has ignored important messaging will sour the experience.

Perception of Time. The ability to cut down on a customer’s perception of time is taken very seriously by environments where waiting (hospitals) or poor attitudes (returning an item that gave you a bad experience) are part of the customer’s experience in the space. Engaging content can change behavior and ultimately reduce a customer’s perception of time. However, poor execution on basic guidelines, such as the running time on a looping program being shorter than the average time a customer waits, can be a big disappointment. Customers don’t want to see the same thing twice. In addition, creating programming that does not effectively draw attention away from the customer’s purpose in the environment can backfire by making the customer even more aware of the time.

The detail that goes into each category is dependent upon the venue’s strategy with digital signage. Great care should be taken each time. Poor execution with one screen can wreck a customer’s experience in the entire environment. A bad digital signage experience can drive customers away just as fast as bad customer service.

To avoid that end, constant research and understanding will keep your digital experiences fresh and appealing for the customer and the venue.

Paul Flanigan recently formed a new consultancy, The Preset Group, with digital signage industry veterans Dave Haynes and Pat Hellberg. The group’s goal is to help established companies, media start-ups and investment groups plan and launch successful digital media networks. A regular speaker at the Digital Signage Expo, Flanigan writes about the digital signage industry at experiate.net. You can reach him at paul@experiate.net.