What Do Social Media and Digital Signage Have in Common?

How many times have you seen this? You walk into a beautifully merchandised store. It's perfect - the right amount of product, the right displays, even the right space in the aisle. Then, stuck up on the wall, is a flat-screen TV.

It's wrong in so many ways. First of all, it's too high. Naturally, the store design people and visual merchandisers didn't want to give up an inch more of selling space than they need to, and so they pushed for the screen to be hung at a much higher point than the eye naturally seeks - that prime real estate is reserved for product instead. This relegates the screens to a cobwebby land of irrelevance.

Second, the content is okay, but not great. I think nine times out of ten, when I see content on a digital sign outside of a grocery environment, it's too long. Grocers and CPG manufacturers have (for the most part) figured out that even 15-second spots can often be too long. Non-grocers tend to go for "environmental" content - content that is less about products or offers and more about creating a store environment that reinforces brand values or propositions. But in that context, there is no context - there is no relationship between the sign and the shopper. It's a fancy poster that moves. It's pretty tough to achieve an ROI on that kind of premise alone.

Image via Wikipedia

Third, there is no sound. I mean, seeing as how the sign is hung ten feet off the ground, there's little opportunity to use the screen's speakers anyway. And someone spent a lot of money designing the sound already piped into the store. Not to mention that the entire network of signs is not synced, so sound from those signs would be chaotic and pointless anyway. See point 2 above: it's a fancy poster that moves.

Here's what I would like to see. If digital signage is going to be more than its name implies (which is exactly what should happen), then screens need to be designed into specific displays. They need to have a specific point - they can have more than one point, particularly if they are interactive, but every use should be tied directly to a shopper objective. If you are a retailer that houses multiple brands, then an example of a specific objective might be to showcase a single brand. Or explore additional products that might be available online, or to feature product reviews about specific products, or provide sustainability information about the manufacturer - take your pick.

The point is, there is a ton of information (i.e., content) that can be shared about specific products or brands - including the retailer's larger brand. But it's not going to make an impact on a consumer when it's divorced from the products or the overall store environment. This is not an easy thing - what you think consumers will glom onto may be completely different than what actually sticks.

For example, I thought Picture People's digital display installations were great when I first saw them. They stuck a ring of big flat-screen TV's above the registers. When they weren't in use, they became advertisements that were big enough and flashy enough to attract attention from outside the store. When a consumer had pictures to select, those images went up on the big screen, larger than life (and a sneaky way to let proud parents show off their kids to passers-by), while a sales person worked with the consumer to select the right batch of photos to print.

What happened to those signs? At least in Park Meadows Mall, they have been removed. As a consumer using those signs, I can guess why - they were too far away. They didn't work the way that consumers wanted to view and select their pictures. And so they went.

The digital signage industry faces the same challenge: work your way into the consumer shopping process. That means interactivity, that means connections to internet-based content, and it means relevance for your shoppers - helping them achieve what they seek to achieve in the way that they choose to achieve it. None of this easy. It's certainly a lot harder than tacking screens up in the dead airspace above your merchandise. But whether it is easy or hard, ultimately, it's about connecting with consumers. And that is rapidly becoming a base expectation for all retailers.