I have been reading up quite a bit lately on the digital signage industry–as if you couldn’t tell by the amount of blog posts I have written lately on the subject. The digital signage blog is one of my favorites. Nate Nead offers some witty, but often accurate views into the industry. His topics range from industry content to hardware to best practices and often to critique of other writers and companies in the realm of out-of-home.

In a review of the digital signage expo, he wrote the following about some of the drama going on lately:

Many of the industry’s organizations—under the guise of industry promulgation and professionalism—seem to be exhibiting just the opposite in their spirit of competition. The activity here is not in the least bit surprising, given the simply cutthroat nature of things in digital signage. Treating things like a zero-sum game exhibits a self-fulfilling prophecy-like result—wherein you receive exactly what you expect.

He tells it like it is. From what he saw at the expo, it sounds as though the industry is on a bit of a rebound for those who were able to make it through the tough times over the last couple years. While I was not at the expo, it certainly sounds like the industry is still ripe for growth going forward.

Keep up the good work Nate, there are many out there who are reading, following, and taking note.

The digital signage market is growing. The digital signage blog just released an interesting piece outlining where things are moving for digital signage in 2010 and beyond. It is very interesting. In the post Nate Nead gives 14 predictions for digital signage in the coming months ahead. I have listed his predictions below.

Companies: barriers to entry will be more formidable.

Customers: barriers to entry will continue to erode.

Technology marriages will become more widespread.

The dust from the hardware/software price war will settle.

Some large “industry leading” companies will fold.

Company consolidation will continue to occur.

Stick around, you may be able to get some software for a song in the months ahead.

Searches for terms relating to “digital signage” will somewhat plateau.

Re-engagement with dead/cold leads will increase.

Seekers of the technology will be more educated and more qualified.

Funding and VC Pocketbooks will open.

Content creation will become more of a industry necessity.

Digital menu boards will begin to see an explosion.

Digital signage will become more of a household name.

I personally believe in almost everything Nate had to say, with the exception of the fact that VC pockets opening. I think the luxury of digital media will not make it as safe an investment as other outlets for VC firms going forward. Other than that, the post had some great points. Certainly with all the hype of the digital signage industry, we will continue to see more expansion in that sector.

It is plainly obvious to us that you are pulling information from the Digital Signage Universe Directory (You would not have gotten this email address any other way) in order to build your own Directory. While we can’t prevent you from doing this, we would strongly recommend that you make your directory “significantly” different from ours, otherwise we will shove a lawyer so far up you’re a**, you wont s*** for a year!  Don’t say you weren’t warned, we are keeping a close eye on you!

Best Regards,

Digital Signage Universe

[edited for content]

I’m in my mid twenties and have only been in business for a couple years.  However, there is one thing that I’ve already learned about the grand scheme of business – competition.

Competition is healthy for consumers.  Through competition they receive higher product quality, lower Continue Reading »

Today I was in the middle of a conversation and hit a proverbial wall. I needed a word to describe a potential product that I’ve been working on. The product is still in R&D and still ‘under wraps’ so I didn’t want to make the mistake of using it’s name. I needed something else to call it, but the word I normally would have used in a situation like this, widget, has been de-definitionized. What I mean to say is that the old definition that I’ve lived with for my whole life has been replaced by a new one. The new definition, while now only adopted by tech savvy geeks such as myself, does not allow for the use of the old definition in most conversations.

Definitions

Old definition: widg-et (wĭj’ĭt); an unnamed or hypothetical manufactured article

New definition: widg-et (wĭj’ĭt); an element that runs on a social networking site or a computer users desktop that provides useful and timely information Continue Reading »

If you have a business with any public space are you using it to your fullest benefit?

I walk past the same businesses every day I take the train downtown. What continues to surprise me is that these businesses have great advertising real estate (front windows and doors, exterior walls, signage placards) that they are not utilizing. If you have a retail or office location that has ANY public traffic you should be utilizing it.

Digital signage displays are the easiest to maintain (no need to manually change out signs every day, week, etc) and offer a lot more attention grab for your buck. Digital signage options are varied, and include kiosks, point of sale, ambient, or informational.

Digital signage is affordable too. Considering that the images, advertisements and information can be Continue Reading »

Thomas Friedman, in his best selling book The World is Flat, writes about the boom in technology as “steroids” that have the potential to heighten our abilities.

I call new technologies the steroids because they are amplifying and turbocharging all the other flatteners (the idea that the world is becoming an open global market). They are taking all the forms of collaboration… – outsourcing, offshoring, uploading, supply-chaining, insourcing, and in-forming – and making it possible to do each and every one of them in a way that is “digital, mobile, virtual, and personal,” … thereby enhancing each one and making the world flatter by day.

Through this mention he coined the idea that technology can act as steroids which can inseminate business and personal growth with success and achievement. He focused mainly on how technology enriches our abilities to collaborate, work more efficiently, and to be more innovative. He didn’t touch on how technology acts as a steroid in the social media and marketing aspects, however. I’ll go out on a limb and say that it was because his first edition was published in 2005, long before the rise of the Twitter/Facebook/MySpace empires.

I would like to take the opportunity and build upon his theory that technology is a steroid to success. In today’s world technology not only increases our productivity but also provides us with with many new methods by which we can market ourselves, our ideas, our products or our businesses.

Here are three steroids that can help you get your idea/product/self to market:

Medial-TEXTalin. This steroid increases strength of marketability and gives your marketing muscles a lot of WOW factor. Om Malik, a popular tech blogger I like to follow, wrote in a blog this morning about how text messaging was used with American Idol to generate a lot of cash. “AT&T says the most recent season of American Idol show generated 78 million text messages — up from 67 million last season.” This is not to say that you, who probably don’t have any revenue sharing contracts with AT&T, can make money directly off utilizing text messaging in your marketing. It does show how successful text messaging in marketing is becoming. Teens are texting a ton! Capitalize on it! Check out how Projective Marketing delivers results in text message campaigns it runs for clients.
Continue Reading »

Traditional advertising – television, news print, magazines, radio – is still heavily utilized by many large corporations.  Even small businesses can utilize these forms of advertising on a small local level.  I’ve looked into advertising my own business in a new local newspaper, The Afternoon Buzz.  However, after a Google search for SLC (Salt Lake City) Buzz turned up no immediate results I had to really dig in with my super power searching abilities before I could find their website.  It was so laborious that it actually took about 1 minute to find, versus the 5 seconds it should have taken.  Oh, pampered world that I live in…

Traditional advertising is still a great way to market your products or services, if you have a lot of money.  If your advertising budget is under $1000 a month though, then you may need to look at Guerrilla Marketing as your primary marketing source.  Guerrilla Marketing is an unconventional system of product/service promotions on a low budget.  It includes techniques such as viral or ambient distribution, text message advertising, or tissue-pack advertising – all discussed more fully below.

What is the benefit of using Guerrilla Marketing?

Simply put, the TEXT GENeration is no longer watching, listening too or reading traditional advertising.  With the advent of Tivo, internet video streaming, downloadable mp3 content, etc. there are fewer and fewer opportunities for businesses to target this age group with traditional advertising.

Guerrilla Marketing makes use of the technologies that are destroying traditional advertising in a way that covertly inundates the TEXT GENeration with even more advertisements!

Tissue-pack marketing: Some of the earliest examples of Guerrilla Marketing date back to the late 1960s, where Japanese shop keepers would distribute free tissue packs to people that passed by their store fronts.  On the tissue packs were advertisements!  Early on this received a lot of criticism for being high cost and low effect.  However, now this holds a sizable share of the advertising market in Japan, where 4 billion tissue packs are distributed annually.  Because people are out of the home more, and thus seeing less traditional advertising, tissue-pack marketing aims to fill the void of advertising in your purse or briefcase.  As such, it capitalizes on valuable advertising space that traditional advertising techniques can’t touch.

Viral Distribution: Teens are spending more time than ever away from home.  Teens don’t pick up newspapers or magazines much, and so traditional advertising is not able to target this high prized market segment.  Teens always manage to check their social networking pages, their email, and their text messages though.  Viral distribution marketing puts ads with YouTube videos that get shared on teen social networking pages and through email linkage.  Viral distribution marketing also joins forces with TEXT GEN popular social networking sites directly, to distribute ad content.

Ambient Distribution: This marketing form capitalizes on the fact that people are very visual learners.  People see things and then think about what they see.  When something they see seems out of place they think about it even more.  If a business can get prospective consumers to think about their brands, products or services then they have made a very successful advertising impression.  Lately, all the bananas at the local Smiths Marketplaces have had Jamba Juice stickers on them.  I have been used to seeing the Dole brand on them, so I thought about it!  While this was a new experience for me, it seems to be a trick utilized for quite some time.  Back in 1999 Ask Jeeves ran a huge campaign where they put their stickers on more than 15 million apples!

Text Message Advertising: Text message advertising, a favorite of Projective Marketing, the firm where I now work, is quickly catching on with the TEXT GENeration.  The TEXT GEN always has their cell phones with them and so why not capitalize on that “in the pocket” billboard space?

Some say it would lead to a barrage of unwanted SPAM being sent to phones.  This fear is warranted, but unlikely.  When Projective Marketing decided to jump into the text message marketing game it had to go straight to cell phone company aggregators (the guys who route the text messages) with very specific details about how each advertising campaign would work.  Unlike email, text messages are highly regulated and the chance that we will ever see SPAM proliferation is unlikely.

With text message advertising businesses can put a specific high powered call to action in their menus, marketing collateral, billboards, etc.  For example, one Projective Marketing client in the Seattle area wanted to advertise their coffee shop with text message advertising.  Everywhere they put an ad (billboards, etc.) they used the simple call to action “Text ‘COFFEE’ to 32075 for a 50% off coupon on your next coffee!”  When people texted in the coupon was sent to their phone.  This is a highly effective means of advertising because each time the person would scroll through their text messages they would see this ad (repeat impressions) and think about the coffee shop again!