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Paul Bleimeyer
Mgr. Media Systems
Mayo Clinic
February 2010 Question
What was the most effective digital signage installation and/or digital out-of-home advertising campaign you saw in 2009, and what do you think made it so effective?
One of the more interesting ones is from the Monster Media Group earlier this year. They have been responsible for a number of non-traditional marketing campaigns across the US. The more recent project in 2009 with MTV for a reality TV show known as "The Buried Life" was positioned in an interesting way. The idea for the show was originally based on a documentary that was filmed in 2006 and then selected for development by HBO/MTV in 2009. A campaign to get potential viewers of the show to join in was developed and place in a major city in the US.
The interactive video wall permitted passers by to enter their answers into the digital signage wall that was over 20ft tall and positioned on the glass of the building. Now this type of projection has been done before by various groups, but what was interesting was not only the feedback loop to draw in participation from people on the sidewalk and then to see the feedback appear in the digital signage, but it would also cross post the information into the users face book account if they wanted to. The link to social media offerings continues to grow at incredible rate. Linking with facebook, twitter, flickr, YouTube are all examples of how groups are using social media in their campaigns now.
They have also done several other campaigns involving groups such as ESPN for Monday night football. The use of the various technologies such as Classic touch screen activation, Full body response user tracking, and combining it with a real time application that tract the data is very interesting and involves the user becoming extremely embedded in the experience.
This shows where groups are doing the same thing that marketing groups had to do in 1999 as Generation Y began to hit the market as overall consumers. My nephews are a part of Gen Y and have grown up in world where not being online and part of the Internet is completely foreign to them. Not having the ability to time shift watching TV or listening to something seems strange to them and they are often perplexed by the fact that information is sometime available at less then instantaneously. This same Generation Y now has over 4 million kids per year becoming licensed drivers. Another interesting fact is that by 2015 they will have more buying power than all of the Baby Boomers and Generation X combined.
I see the Gen Y's becoming much more involved and completely comfortable with Kiosk style Digital Signage solutions like this in the coming years. The Generation X group are also now some of the parents of this Gen Y group and have come up on Walkmans, and moved into IPods right along side their kids so they also are deeply affected by non traditional advertising too. The Gen Y kids who have been born in the last ten years are now about to enter the pre-teen years and have had at least 5 years worth of exposure to digital signage in some form. It is not new to them at all.
I fully expect that they will continue to become so used to this experience level that they will not fear it nor will they be pushed away from it by the high degree of interactivity it presents. This is one example in many where the level of interaction continues to increase and the level of engagement or response can be directly measured at the time of the action by the participant. I see where many other groups will continue to utilize this style of digital signage engagement method in the coming years even if doesn't work for all parts of the current market demographics.
Ref: http://www.allbusiness.com/population-demographics/demographic-groups-generation-y/13344347-4.html
Ref: http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_07/b3616001.htm