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Digital-media networks get ready for their close-up. A roundtable featuring: Andy Austin Laura Davis-Taylor Suzanne Alecia Stuart Armstrong
What is the right mix of ads to entertainment with digital in-store signage? Laura Davis-Taylor: Folks have been quick to put digital in-store media into the TV “box” and try to make it fit apples-to-apples with the TV model. But that’s the wrong model. This is digital media and the closest model to it is the internet, where the content is targeted, flexible and accountable. Digital in-store media can be used for many things — one-way, two-way and personalized communications. It is also highly measurable, so that if viewers aren’t responding, content can be tweaked to stimulate results. It’s the internet world that we need to be looking to for the potential of all current and emerging in-store digital media — whether we aim to attract, engage, sell, entertain or converse with it. Andy Austin: When you come into one of our AT&T stores, you’ll see digital signage and flat-screen monitors that have the ability to present an electronic brochure. You’ll see our home-TV entertainment wall that brings our wired Universe and Dish-network products to life. And then, of course, you’ll see our initial launch of Microsoft Surface, which allows our customers to use a touch-screen tabletop to interact with the coolest coverage map in the industry. They can also interact with physical objects as well as things like rate plans. It is a fully immersive, fun, interactive shopping experience. When you take a look at our wired and wireless networks and the cornucopia of products that is available on them, bringing those products to life would take a wall-full of brochures. Using technology that has an easy-to-navigate roadmap, a salesperson can bring our products to life for a customer. That’s why we’re so excited about what digital in-store media can do. Suzanne Alecia: I’ll qualify the question a little bit because the content might not always be entertainment; it might be information. Shoppers are in a certain frame of mind, and while some might be looking for entertainment, digital in-store media really is also an The right mix of ads to entertainment within in-store media is going to depend on the venue, how people act within that venue and where the screen is placed. So, the mix of ads and content in a checkout line is going to be different than the right mix of ads and content in other parts of the store. It’s all related to what we call “dwell time,” which is how long the shopper is in front of that screen. Is there a formula today of what that means? No, because digital in-store media is still new and so there’s still a lot of trial-and-error involved. Stuart Armstrong: The mix will vary based upon the way in which the ads are served up and the frame-of-mind of the shopper. In many cases, ads and entertainment can be the same thing. For example, the trailer for The Dark Knight can be very entertaining and can also be an ad. If you’re in a pet-supply store and you’re running an ad for Beverly Hills Chihuahuas, that’s both an ad and entertainment. The same is true when the content is informational and also entertaining.That could be tips on how to manage allergies during the high-pollen season. It’s not: pop a Claritin. But it can be: brought to you by Claritin. How do you make sure the content aligns with the shopper’s frame of mind? Davis-Taylor: You need to start by putting your strategic mind directly in their shoes! Brand planners are excellent at this, as they try to live and breathe the consumer’s point-of-view so that they make sure to appeal to them with their communications. If you do the due diligence to understand the shopper experience in your store and what they like, what they don’t like, what they want and how they want it, the answers fall out from there. And I can guarantee you that they won’t say, “Give me more advertising!” It will more likely be something along the lines of, “Help me navigate the store and find what I need, then maybe make some suggestions on things I might like.” This is a very different content mindset than advertising. I tell everyone to try to move out of the “Find Me/Sell Me” into one of “Know Me /Help Me” and you can’t go wrong. Austin: What really brings it to life at an AT&T Store is the ability to download or sideload your favorite music to that device and then put on headphones, listen to your favorite artists and think, “Wow, this really is something I could do when I leave the store today, when I’m at the post office, when I’m at the dentist, when I’m running errands.” We’re trying to hit their emotional buy-in and make them comfortable with the purchasing decision they’re about to make. So, we have digital signage to help the shopper understand how broad our products and services are and how great our network is. If they want to put their hands on our products and get really immersed in them, then they can do that. If they would like to be a little more passive and watch a video about how other customers use these products, that’s available to them as well. But at all times, we believe that it’s important that their experience is guided by a knowledgeable salesperson, who also utilizes these tools and helps our customers feel very comfortable and that they’ve had all their questions answered. Alecia: Aligning the content is going to be based on the response you get from the shoppers. Much like any other media, you start to get feedback from your audience on what they like and what they don’t like, and you can start making decisions based on that. Many of these networks have some cool technology, where shoppers can use SMS technology to give feedback in real time. From a retail perspective, partnerships with marketers inform some of the content that’s there. What is exciting about this space is that it can always evolve and change because the technology enables the distribution of real-time content and information. It’s important that the advertising community understands that digital networks are not like television or the internet. It’s its own thing. Armstrong: You need to ensure that the content is relevant and engaging. If shoppers are in a supermarket and time pressured, they want to get in and out. In that case, you had better deliver quick solutions right away that are visually appealing so they don’t have to think about it very much. If you’re in a “browse” or “discovery” type of environment, such as consumer electronics or apparel, then there’s an opportunity for longer content that tells a story. If I’m a bass fisherman and I’m in a sporting goods store that sells lures and fishing equipment, and I see video of folks demonstrating bass-fishing techniques, that’s going to be compelling to me and I’m going to watch that. Where does all the content come from? Davis-Taylor: Some groups are staunch about creating content from the ground up, so that it’s exclusive. Others embrace repurposing assets and some go out and purchase content from syndicated resources or specialty content providers. Regardless, you should think about all of the rich assets available in your company’s digital-asset management system, ensure that it can be used in-store, determine the best content resource for the kind of shopping behavior you seek to activate, and make sure that whatever you do is integrated with out-of-store communications as well. Austin: AT&T designs everything we use. We have a strong in-house creative team. However, Avenue A Razorfish did the Microsoft Surface execution, and we really enjoyed working with them. They did a great job. We use other local firms for a lot of our other digital in-store content. Our digital media is distributed via a software tool that’s a lot like a digital jukebox. If you go to our stores that have this technology you’ll see digital signage driven by a computer that’s connected to a flat screen. The software allows us to target that content specifically to what we want to say. For example, if we want to zone a store specifically to be a business zone versus an entertainment zone versus a basics zone, we can do all of that. It’s very easily done through our web-based interface, which allows us to change content at a moment’s notice. Alecia: The content comes from a variety of places. Channel M is a content development company that has done a lot of original program production and compilation for networks. Certainly, established content entities like NBC, CBS, and to a lesser extent ABC, have been using their content resources to create for these networks. There is no set formula for it. What most of these networks have learned is that 30-minute shows that have simply been repurposed into these spaces is not the way to program. You won’t see that anywhere because it all has to do with dwell time. It’s programming for that space and that time and that experience that the person has in that venue. Some networks have the ability to offer content at the community level. The content might be a local weather forecast, neighborhood events or even classified ads. It can be a community bulletin-board, if you will, which can be very cool and very dynamic. That kind of content is highly relevant. It’s more like a service than just an ad trying to sell them something. Armstrong: When I’m talking to retailers, the content typically comes from one of four buckets. One is in-house. We’re talking to a retailer right now that has a huge library of supplier content, such as how to carve a turkey, as well as other content they’ve developed to support their point-of-purchase activities. Another source is in-store agencies that help with the development of in-store visuals, such as the large-format photographs that are popular now. All of that kind of content can be repurposed into digital signage. Then there are the manufacturer’s agencies and creative houses that have a lot of rich content that can be repurposed and reutilized. There are also syndicated sources, RSS feeds — both visual and textual. Certainly things like weather and stock indices, sports scores, news and popular culture can be used. There is also original content that can be designed and developed. This can be done in a very smart way when you’re developing through templates or animated templates. The efficiency of developing effective content is certainly being perfected. What are the greatest lessons you’ve learned with digital in-store media? Davis-Taylor: The most important lesson is to be relevant or be gone. There are way too many cases of in-store digital out there that is not doing much for anyone other than blasting messages. There are also kiosks that are too hard to use and gizmos that are cool but not “curing a real disease.” Google said it best when I heard them share that the formula to their success is to find out what people want and then give it to them, and the revenue model will follow accordingly. We could learn from this. Another lesson is that if the program is not involving a fully integrated internal and external team, you might as well hold off on it. Like it or not, these programs are complex and they are change agents. Inside of a retail organization, change is slow and not always easy. So, you need to be in it together, shirtsleeves rolled up and working together. Otherwise, the lack of cooperation or missing elements due to a critical department not being engaged will likely sink the effort. Austin: It’s all about the simplicity of message. We need to make sure we don’t overwhelm the shopper with all the different products and services that we have and that the message is consistent with all the different media. I’ve got interactive in-store media and then I’ve got the passive in-store media, which is my digital signage. Then I’ve got other things like the TVs that sell our TV products. You need to have a single team of people who will make sure that the message is the same and that you don’t go overboard on one piece of media and not support it in other pieces of media. Alecia: The greatest challenge is, how do you monetize these networks? What is the value proposition for all the constituents involved? Any time a new media emerges, the number-one thing that comes to everybody’s mind is, “Well, I’ll just put advertising on it and that’ll be my model.” It’s not that simple. It’s very important that those who install an out-of-home video network understand the nature of measuring media audiences and then selling those media audiences into the advertising community at-large. There are a lot of challenges in doing all that and we need to break down those barriers. Much of the confusion over the last five to ten years is that some of the networks are not reporting their audiences the same way. They are using different terminologies, or they are using old terminologies from the outdoor-media world. If you’re going to sell your network as a media that delivers an audience, it’s very important that you report those audiences in a very similar way to other media. Armstrong: Some retailers tend to over-screen retail environments — putting up screens willy-nilly, not zoning them properly, not making them part of the overall décor. They just put up a communication overlay as opposed to making it part of the overall understanding of shopper journeys and their frames-of-mind. Another lesson relates to the visual merchandising within a store. Consumers shop a retail store at an angle of about 12-degrees down. They are not going to be looking up toward the ceiling when they shop. So, make sure that they’ve got good sightlines and there is intimacy between the screen and the shopper’s journey. You also have to have technology that’s scalable, reliable and that does not depend on store personnel to intervene. By making sure that everything can be dealt with remotely, you can increase the compliance rate. Finally, make sure that your text is large, your visuals are compelling and you’re not designing something for the intimacy of the web or television. What is the potential to integrate digital in-store media with other media? Davis-Taylor: The potential is huge and we believe it will one day be the status quo. It’s all about connecting the “four-screen world” of TV, personal computers, handhelds and place-based screens. But, once again, I can’t stress enough that the content strategy for each must be contextually relevant and make sense to the user at the time that they are exposed to it, or it will be rejected. Austin: Digital in-store media and the internet must be closely aligned. The internet is a fantastic tool for customers to get a lot of understanding about what they’re looking for, get an overview of what AT&T can do, and become convinced that we have the industry leader suite of products and services. You have to be sure that the internet messaging is supported passively and actively when the customer comes into the retail location. If you don’t do that you’ve missed a fantastic opportunity to support your brand and close that sale with a larger shopping cart in a shorter period of time. So, we have a great opportunity with the internet. We have a great partnership here at AT&T where we don’t believe that we’re competing channels. We’re very complimentary channels. There is a lot to be gained and a lot to be saved in being able to share those assets across the two channels. Alecia: I’ve got a dream that one day all the talk about moving toward consumer-centric media planning will come true and all media forms will make it easy for an advertiser who wants to be in front of a certain audience to give them the information so that they can follow that audience wherever they go. That will make it easy to integrate across different platforms and times of day and venues where their consumer is. We’re not quite there yet because of the way advertising agencies have set up their business over the last 10 to 15 years. They are media-siloed and separate from the creative process as well as from the planning process in many cases. Armstrong: The just-in-time ability of mobile marketing is very powerful and digital signage is one of the strongest on-ramps for that. You can put an SMS dial-in number and keyword on anything, but you can’t do it with as much targeted precision as you can with digital signage. You have an opportunity to create levels of engagement by connecting stores with the shopper’s community. Let’s say I bring my dog to a retailer in Manhattan for training or grooming. The digital sign could tell me how to sign up to receive messages on my cellphone on topics or events of interest in the Manhattan area. Maybe it’s the opening of a dog-walk in Central Park, or an update in the local pooper-scooper laws. There are also great opportunities to integrate online and in-store merchandising, using digital signage as the interface and the cellphone as a kind of remote-control device to get more information or even order an item that may be out of stock in the store but available online. Digital signage can help retailers capture sales that otherwise might have been lost. n -- Laura Davis-Taylor is the founder of Retail Media Consulting, specialists in in-store digital-media initiatives. She is also co-author of Lighting up the Aisle: Principles and Practices for In-store Digital Media. Andy Austin is director of retail customer experience for AT&T, focusing on the use of technology to present AT&T’s industry-leading suite of products and services to shoppers. Suzanne Alecia is president of the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau, promoting the growth of digital place-based media. Previously, she was with the Hotel Networks, the Hallmark Channel and Oxygen Media. Stuart Armstrong is president of EnQii Americas, a global leader in digital displays for out-of-home and in-store solutions, with offices in New York, Toronto, London, Dubai, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
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