Bring on board team members from varying fields.
According to industry experts, firms succeed in their digital signage campaign when they think and bring in people from outside the box. Designers and technical officers are a must-have, but consider bringing in members from the sales, finance and communications department as they may have invaluable input from an outsider’s perspective. A lesson in leadership helps understand this concept – “it’s not about being the smartest person in the room, it’s about finding the smartest people to put in the room”. Being a good leader is to hire someone who can do better at something that you are capable of but do not excel in.
Passion and commitment lead to success.
The success of digital signage solutions depend heavily on the success of two critical departments – IT and marketing. It is important to incorporate technical knowledge to create and support excellent hardware and software. However, the human touch for these two departments to collaborate and succeed is just as important. There has to be a genuine passion to work towards the best digital signage campaign. The entire LED signage department has to realize that indoor and outdoor signage is an essential part of everyone’s life.
The industry is also learning the value of local signage, where targeted and relevant messaging is of utmost importance. During the lockdown, electronic signage operators throughout Europe realized that digital displays were being unused and thus made use of emerging technologies and mobile interactivity to keep up with the evolving metaverse.
Another aftermath of the pandemic was businesses downsizing their brick-and-mortar spaces to save on lease fees and make use of shared working spaces. As a result, there has been a rise in room and desk bookings. Moreover, hybrid and remote work has become more common, thus increasing the mergers taking place between digital signage firms. These kinds of consolidations have been taking place in several industries as they are proving to be beneficial for all parties involved.
Content is not an afterthought. It requires communication.
Many industry experts are citing that content as an afterthought has become a major problem and the root cause of this is poor communication. This conveniently just becomes an issue of people not talking to each other. For example, the technical department prepared the LED displays but the marketing department was not told to design content for it. Or maybe they were told but no one gave them any guidelines within which the content should be designed. At the end of the day, this miscommunication leaves a bad reputation on everybody. Consequently, people blame digital signage itself being too complicated, too much work, and so on. Clear communication is essential for the project, for the organization and the industry as a whole.
Use as much automation as possible in preparing content – social media and other existing channels have a routine of content that is being produced and this content has already been tested on your audience. Take that content and re-design it with human touch. Small details like localization and personalization make viewers feel like the advertisement appeals to them and is not just a generic digital display that they walk past every day. Another suggestion is to add some humor to the content to make it more intimate and interesting to passersby. Sometimes, more than the content, it’s the message that is the king and is being overlooked. It’s not just the huge 360-degree installations that offer immersive experiences; true immersion is when it touches the heart – because that’s when viewers start absorbing the message, that’s when the line restricting it from becoming immersive dissolves. Whether it is a huge installation or a small LED display at a store, as long as the message is relevant, it becomes immersive.
