The dynamic world of Digital Signage

Gone are those days when one would marvel at a huge poster with a static
picture. Now keeping up with the change in the market dynamics where the
challenge is to attract customers, more and more industry verticals are adapting
the digital form of merchandizing and advertising. Apart from the these, digital
signage can also be in the form of screens mounted on free-standing towers or
hung from walls and ceilings, electronic displays in the supermarket and the
common electronic billboards.

Digital signage has an upper hand over the static ones in terms of rapidly
displaying the dynamic content in a more interactive and interesting way.
Depending on the line of business and the medium of merchandizing used,
companies may also refer digital signage as narrow-casting, screen media,
digital merchandizing, digital media networks, digital out-of-home (DOOH) and
captive audience networks.

Digital signage helps brand building and promotion while increasing product
exposure through a visually engrossing environment. More importantly, digital
signage reaches out to the target audience in a particular area and manages
dynamic digital content. According to an AC Nielson study of Wal-Mart in-store
network, the average recall for TV advertising at home is 24% and the average
recall for advertising in an in-store network amounts to 57%.

How it Works

A crude digital signage system, may be an MPEG player, connected to a
television or a monitor where the content is drawn from a pen drive. The content
from the pen drive fits into the flash templates already available.

In this case, the content for the signage needs to be changed manually.
Typically these days, most digital signage setups being network based, comprise
of four important partsnamely display, servers, management station and
distribution infrastructure. Content is uploaded on to a centralized content
management system (CMS), which may be located on a local desktop PC or server.
Once stored, the content can then be scheduled into playlists. The playlists
gets transferred over a network like a corporate VPN, local LAN or to the media
players which then gets translated into a series of playback commands; and
hence, sends the content segment which is connected to the screens. In a similar
way, content can also be managed across multiple screens in the same network.

Common Applications

Presently, digital signages find a lot of applications across different
industry verticals such as retail, banking, hospitality, healthcare, corporates
and so on. Of late, the government sector has also been making use of digital
signages in its important offices. The usual places where one can find digital
signages are malls, stores, hotels, and to some extent in metro stations. It
would not be wrong to say that others verticals such as banks and hospitals are
waking up to the need of advertising their offerings within their premises so
that the product or service advertised is available readily to their customers.

We have adopted digital signage for our key branches across the country for
effective consumer service communication and cross selling of our products. We
felt that digital signage in the banking sector offers three major benefits. It
helped us to layer all the information in a way that each of the offerings were
distinguishable from each other since there are multiple products vying for
limited display space. Digital signage helped communications at the branch
level, thus, helping the branch meet its targets, says Rohit Mull, executive
vice president and head, marketing, HDFC Bank.

Major Players

In India, the major players in the digital signage space are Digital Signage
Network, TAG Media, doPublicity, Nec India, Infoserve India, Laqshya Digital
Media, and OOH Media. Each of these players are catering to several industry
domains. Each player over a period of time has developed their own niche in the
market. To some the retail sector looks interesting, and to some the corporate
sector looks inviting. The digital signage market in India is growing. To me,
hospitality sector looks very inviting. Hotels do provide forex within the
premises and do a lot of cross property promotion. Since the hotel space does
not offer too many distractions compared to the retail space, a tourist can get
relevant information and services within that given space, says Seetu Jagtiani,
director, doPublicity.

Godrej is one company that not only offers digital signage solutions, but
also avails digital signage services. Godrej provides end-to-end solutions which
include the display (plasma, LCD or LED panels), display software, content
hardware and media boxes. To add to the offerings, they also have LAN and WAN
solutions for multiple display and PC contents. On a broad scenario, we provide
hardware like display panel, media boxes; and back-end signage software solution
is provided by our partners. Interestingly, we also use digital signage in
individual branches for step-in customers through important announcements, quiz
contests, birthday wishes to improve the visibility of our own products. These
have helped to retain our old customers, says Nitin Sharma, senior consultant,
AV products, Godrej.

Indian Retail Sector

Retailers adopt digital signage to complement their point of purchase (POP)
displays, advertise products sold in-store and also to conduct experimental
marketing by improving the in-store environment. The entire package, including
LCD displays, software and the requisite network can be set up for approximately
Rs 1.5 lakh to 3 lakh.

In retail, the space allocated for the signage plays a vital role. Research
suggests that the media placed at or near the points of choice/purchase can have
a significant impact on purchasing decisions. At Spencers, there has been a
scientific mapping in terms of the placement of digital signage tools. FMCG
along with food & beverages are high consumer traffic zones. These are the
places where there are most number of LCD displays. For the flagship Spencers
store in South City Mall in Kolkata, there are ten to twelve screens only in the
FMCG section, says Sumit Puri, national head, customer relationship management
and alliances, Spencers.

Similar to these retail hypermarkets, the malls, which fall under the
category of organized retail, have adopted digital signage in a big way
considering the fact that an increasing number of people have become brand
conscious and head towards the malls for buying branded stuff. The central aisle
of a mall is the most important place and has the potential for generating a lot
of traffic if the digital signage is properly positioned. In MGF Metropolitan
mall in Gurgaon, digital signage has been implemented not only in the form of
LCD TVs and plasma TVs for advertising new schemes and offers from different
brands, but also for signs and symbols that help people locate other specific
areas such as lifts and staircase, says Gautam Monga, DGM, marketing and
communications, Emaar MGF.

Challenges

Adoption of any new technology will definitely pose certain challenges. In
this case, there are four major challenges faced by those who opt for digital
signage to increase customers or client yeilds. These are uncertain RoI, lack of
interoperability, complicated value chain and lack of understanding. Since
everything now is RoI driven, so there are companies that might feel reluctant
to go for digital signage because of the cost involved in the installation
process. Digital signage products are mostly proprietary and hence, it is
difficult to advertise the same content across digital signage networks running
different solutions. Lack of knowledge or understanding of the positioning
requirements of digital displays is another major hindrance that prevents this
tool from being effective.

Atreyee Datta

atreyeed@cybermedia.co.in