Awards Highlight Growth of Digital Signage in Corporate Settings
Mar 23, 2006 8:00 AM
“Retail is what everyone sees, but the corporate market has a lot of great digital signage applications,” says Scott Stanton, director of product and technology services at The Digital Signage Group, commenting on the prominence of corporate users among those honored with DIGI Awards recently.
“We think the corporate market is really strong right now,” Stanton adds. “It’s easy to build a system that does things corporations have been doing for a long time.”
For example, Stanton cites waiting room communications. In lieu of the familiar stack of corporate annual reports and other literature scattered on coffee tables, many companies today are opting to put their messages on digital signage screens. Those messages could be as simple as text because most companies certainly have text available that they can display, Stanton says.
However, any company that does advertising, any kind of corporate PR, or shareholder communications should have ample raw material for signage messaging, Stanton says.
Corporate clients earning DIGI Awards took their signage several steps further. Rita Edwards Multimedia LED, Rancho Cordova, Calif., observes a similar surge in interest in digital signage among corporations. Her company provided signage design, implementation, and content for JP Morgan Chase, whose huge LED display in Times Square was honored with a DIGI for “Excellence in Technology.”
“Digital signage has evolved significantly in the last five years and has become part and parcel to the overall branding mix that several Fortune 1000 corporations utilize,” Edwards says. “Many key advertisers are now demanding digital platforms for their extended messaging.
“Corporations are going through a learning curve on the appropriate content to use and are now realizing that this is a media platform unto its own and requires specific content creation to effectively make an impression on consumers,” Edward adds.
JP Morgan Chase’s project involved a 45-yard, curving LED display in New York’s Times Square. Other corporate clients whose signage implementations gained DIGI attention included Radio Shack, which designed an interactive model home of the future to showcase its technology products, and worked with Creative Realities, Fairfield, N.J.
Nygard International worked with GFX Dynamics to develop a system that linked video messages to customer actions in handling specific packages, which were equipped with radio frequency ID tags.
Stanton concedes that many corporate applications of digital signage still strongly overlap retail uses, but he also says more and more companies are discovering uses for signage that far transcend point-of-sale—those waiting room signs, for instance.
“You can put your PR pieces up on the wall and people will actually pay attention,” Stanton says, noting this isn’t always the case with print literature. “You can reduce people’s perceived waiting time if you give them something to do.”
Other corporate users are opting for digital signage “way finding” systems, delivering interactive maps and directions to visitors to help them navigate office buildings, plants, and other facilities. “We see all kinds of really cool applications for the corporate market,” Stanton says.
Brand management is likely to be a major use of digital signage, Stanton says, and this orientation will continue to blur the line between sales and other corporate messaging.
The 2006 DIGI Awards honored 10 winners in four categories: Excellence in Technology (three winners), Excellence in Creativity (three winners), Excellence in Innovation (three winners), and Judges’ Choice (one winner). Details are available at the The Digital Signage Group’s website.
