RiseVision

To promote the release of its new series, Strike Back, Cinemax constructed a huge street-side interactive wall in New York City. Check out the video:

That’s 18 screens, each 46″, and a ton of stuff to poke and prod. It appears to have mobile interactivity as well.

What Works

It’s huge, really huge, and there’s pretty much no way you can walk down the street and avoid this. The size of the interactive combined with the attention-grabbing motion visuals are a compelling reason to stop and look. The awareness is 100%.

A few years ago, the cost of technology and software would prevent this type of display. Now, agencies can re-use all these components for different promotions. They easily get their money back on the cost.

What Doesn’t Work

You see interaction, but you also see indecision, a lack of knowing what to do. At the :20 mark, the man has touched the screen just to see what it can do, not to follow along with the engagement. This happens a few times in the video, and leads me to believe there isn’t much intuitive interactivity here – an experience that is easy to follow so that the message (the promotion) is delivered. Instead, I think most people will just touch screens to see what happens. In that case, it makes me wonder if there will be a return on the investment. No matter how large an out-of-home display is, it still must be compelling.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you put something like this up? If so, what would be your strategy? Share your thoughts.

Creativity-Online.

Digital signage, as an industry, continues to grow. And I continue to learn.

Last week I attended the Retail Customer Experience Executive Summit in Minneapolis. One of the (unsurprising) trends discussed throughout the two-day conference was digital engagement, from the opening keynote from Bob Phibbs, to the closing talk from Caitlin Kelly.

During day one, the conference broke into six working sessions. I moderated a discussion on digital signage, and my table had the highest number of attendees compared to the other five. That speaks to the desire for retailers to understand this space. Veteran retailers Cabela’s and Gander Mountain were joined by newcomers including a vineyard. Three main topics came out of the 90-minute discussion.

Digital signage is a many-headed monster.

Not one single person at the table considered digital signage to be just a screen or just a single channel. All of them considered it to be TVs, kiosks, tables, mobile, online, or a mix of them. They subscribe to the philosophy that if it’s a screen designed to move the customer, it’s digital signage, regardless of its form. While the numerous channels offer up incredible opportunity to connect and engage with the customer, adding just one new channel to the mix created compounding challenges in two main categories: technology, and management.

With technology, the challenge becomes integration – how does this device/platform collaborate with the other devices/platforms already online? I asked Patricia Murphy from NEC Display about the challenges that her clients face. She said it was the ability to incorporate several channels into a manageable system.

The second challenge is management. Like technology, as more channels become available, more people need to be brought into the discussion. So when executives administer policies to integrate, the dance gets crowded. Egos, politics, and power often come into the process that can very easily hamper progress.

Digital Signage is efficient for both sides of the register.

At the table were members from both marketing and IT, so when I asked about the benefits of digital signage, I was surprised to hear that good digital signage execution has a lot of benefits for internal teams. For example, Cabela’s has two teams that leverage the in-store digital signage network. One handles the customer-facing aspect, and one handles the employee-facing aspect. But, by working together, they build a synergy that benefits the enterprise as well as the customer. The network is leveraged to educate and inform employees on new policies, procedures, and campaigns that, in turn, create efficiencies for the customer-facing network.

Marla Thompson, Vice President of Consumer Sales and Service with Alaska Communications talked briefly how digital signage, specifically kiosks, helped her build efficiencies on both ends. By installing kiosks, customers that preferred the digital interaction instead of human interaction did not clog up the line of people who wanted human interaction. On the other side, the employees were able to focus on the customers that wanted to talk with someone. It’s a win-win effect.

A Return On Impressions (not Investment).

Cory Keen, Retail Programs Manager with Cabela’s provided outstanding thoughts on ROI, which is always a question asked in any discussion about the impact of digital engagement. Coming from a national retailer, his insight carried a lot of weight.

“It’s important when speaking to ROI that we know it may not all be about short term financial goals. Also, it might not be something that can be measured.

“ROI to me is not only about the 25 new customers I just got to come into the store today, but rather the one customer that I just retained for the next 30 years. Certainly we want to attract new customers. But, how often do we reflect on the customer that has the positive experience which drives them to come back with [his] 24 friends?”

He’s absolutely right. ROI is much less about the short term financial return and more about building loyalty through engagement. Another way to think about this: Which is more valuable, the 25 people who came into the store today, or the one person who, through word-of-mouth, got 24 friends to come into the store?

Collaboration is key.

At the end of the session, I saw members from Cabela’s trading notes with members from Gander Mountain. Cabela’s and Gander Mountain are direct competitors. The gentleman from the vineyard was listening in on that conversation. He soaked up as much of the 90 minutes as possible.

Even though networks are like snowflakes (no two are alike), each of them still have challenges that are common.

At the end of the day, I think I got more out of the discussion than they did!

[Image Credit: Hydra - Goosemouse: Cash Register by ravsitar; Loyalty by ThomasTucker]

This is how all QA looks, right?

Paul has been doing most of the blogging recently, so I figured I would give him a break and go over how we do QA (Quality Assurance) for the Rise Vision Platform and Gadgets. This may be informative for Network Operators building their own content and Gadgets. I have two parts to this blog. Part one is the six golden rules of QA. Part 2 is how we do QA.

PART 1: THE SIX GOLDEN RULES OF QA.

In past lifetimes, I saw the flaws in how QA works. QA falls into a real peril sometimes, Support says it doesn’t work right, Developers say it is WAD or Working As Designed. I decided (in what may have been a bout of insanity) that Support and QA should be done by the same guys. The fact that I had done Support for Rise Vision for years and probably have the biggest mouth in the Company meant QA was about to change. The way I see it, there are 6 golden rules to QA working like a well oiled machine:

1. Have a clear understanding of how every element of the system works, and how it is meant to work.

Knowing how a Gadget is supposed to work with all default settings isn’t good enough, you need to know how it will act with changes to every option. Saying “It shows the data returned” isn’t good enough, you need to know how it will format the returned data and how you should format your source before you decide if it is working as intended.

2. If it doesn’t work or look right, bring it up LOUD AND CLEAR to EVERYONE.

If something is broken, it is QA’s responsibility to make sure it doesn’t get released that way. The more people that know about the issue, the less possibility there is of anything getting missed.

3. Don’t Rush.

We release a lot very fast, but that doesn’t mean we give anything a quick once over. With so many options in Gadgets and the overall system, every single item must be accounted for, and that takes time. Deadlines are pointless if you are delivering an inferior product. Take your time, adjust your delivery date, and focus on what you are testing.

4. Know your environment and test on what your customers are using.

Testing on machines that are 4 times stronger than what people are using, or monitors that have less resolution that what your users are showing Presentations on is worthless. Testing on what the user base has means you’ll get the same results, same quality, and same issues.

5. Have 3 environments: one for developing, one for testing, and one for the finished product.

Developers develop in their arena. Once they deliver to QA we do our part in the test arena. When it’s deployed, it’s in the Production arena. All these environments are in different states, and the same Gadget will likely have different outcomes in each.

6. Follow your Unit and System testing guides exactly and record everything.

Don’t “remember” all the testing you are doing. Record every detail of every action in a Spreadsheet. All our Gadgets are tested using “Unit Testing”. This is where we test the Gadget in the Rise Vision Platform. For our Platform releases, we do “System Testing”, which tests the entire system. We thought our test guide was big with 100 tests when we started, and we’re now at 600+ individual tests in Unit and System testing.

Next week, I’ll explain how we do QA here at Rise Vision.

LivingSocial has created a social experiment that involves Digital Signage, interactivity, social media, and real-life experiences. I’ll let the video speak…

Why This is Great

Interactive Digital Signage. The experience leverages interactive Digital Signage in the taxi. There has been a lot of discussion around the industry on the value of Digital Signage in taxi cabs. This is a great example of making it engaging for the traveler.

The Real-Life Experience. With a roll of the digital dice, the experience becomes real and personal. It proves that Digital Signage can be part of a great experience.

via The Next Web

[Image Credit: jamiesrabbits]