Friday, December 15, 2006

Digital Signage: Shark in the Water...

This morning an article was posted to The Street.com which announced the official entrance of Cisco Systems into the digital signage market via the acquisition of Tivella. Whoa..... if ever a validation of the market was to be made, this is it.

I guess this is really no suprise. I've been to several tradeshows of late only to find Cisco teatering on the edge of a true digital signage product via their new ip telephony and training applications. They have also drilled me with questions and I had a suspicion their interest was beyond just learning about the space.

Now I don't know much about Tivella but a quick read of their site tells me their product is more geared towards the Corporate Campus. It is also built from the ground up on Cisco equipment and technology. Another check mark on the "makes sense" scale for a Cisco acquisition.

My conclusion on this announcement is that the consolidation game is on for real in the Digital Signage space. The race has been on years now but the big boys are going to start coming hard. We only have to look at NEC, Planar and now Cisco to see that writing on the wall. This is definitely a good thing for the industry. More money, more talent and certainly more visibility will propel our products and opportunities at an even faster rate than before.

If you would like to read the article about the acquisition, you can find it here

Friday, December 01, 2006

Digital Signage: Ad Agencies Say They Are Taking the Leap; Sounds good to me!

I’ve been in the marketing business for quite some time now and I’ve always pushed a non traditional product of some sort. I fully believe that the more unique the promotion can be, the more memorable your product will be. I also continue to preach that the combined effect of a unique and memorable promotion will make for a more successful impression on your audience. The problem is that the “unique and memorable” media vehicles are often difficult to measure, lack the longevity necessary to prove a concept and do not offer the reach needed to create the buzz across a brands target audience which exceeds the expense of each event. In other words, you might remember the inflatable Dean’s milk bottle mascot at the football game (obviously I do) but there is little chance you will find Dean’s Milk dumping the greater percentage of their ad budget into funny mascots.

Now please do not misinterpret my comments from above; I am not comparing an inflatable milk bottle to digital signage. But I am saying the in many respects we have been lumped in with other interesting and innovative advertising vehicles that are believed to make an impression but have yet to be measured with any uniformity.

Digital signage, in my opinion, has been a bit of a leap of faith on the part of both vendors (like me) and customers that implement the technology. By leap of faith I mean that we have been pressing along without the advantage of hard statistics generated from years of studies performed under the direction of similar or universal rules. As I’ve repeated many times on this blog, until we have a set of principles in place, the fragmented state of our industry will remain. This fragmentation becomes particularly challenging as advertising agencies start to take part in the review and introduction of digital signage products for their customers. .

Ad agencies are in business because they sell and create media. That media might be in the form of a local ad in a small newspaper or a Super Bowl ad. Regardless, when they go to a multi-million account for approval of their media plan, they are hesitant to risk the entire account for an untested vehicle. That has been the state of affairs for many decades but a recent article from Adage suggests things might be changing a little.

Today, no one can deny that grabbing the attention of a consumer via advertising is more difficult than ever. In order to be successful, a brand must be focused in their message, placement and delivery. Advertising agencies know this and are eager to find a vehicle which can alleviate the declining rate of return being presented by traditional Print, Radio and TV. With that in mind, they have turned at increasing levels to digital forms of media.

To date the digital media I just referred to has been on the internet. That media has also been effective and measurable. I think it would be difficult to find an agency of any scope which does not have a department dedicated to purchasing of media on the internet as well as generating media plans which include increasing percentages of budgets directed towards online initiatives and advertising.

From my perspective, the success of this media sets the stage for Digital Signage to be the next great vehicle. We still have a few years to go until true convergence comes to fruition but we are getting close. One by one we have to each continue to push customers, vendors and agencies to take the leap of faith. If we can do that, statistics and principles for gathering statistics will certainly emerge. That emergence will close the chasm which sits below the person or entity taking the leap of faith with Digital Signage.

You can find the link to the Adage.com article here .
Hyper Smash