Archive for March, 2009
Bring on the Noise! Delving into the Issue of Audio Content in DOOH
I read an article about today about the “Voice for Signage” today in conjunction with a little discussion with @TexanAtHeart, which totally reminded me that a critical component of DOOH has not been discussed here yet. This is the controversial subject of “Audio.” I’ll related this to the Digital Out-of-Home / Advertising worlds as it seems to be the space(s) where this topic is the most “sensitive,” and is also what I know. There are actually 3 perspectives to think about, which I believe kind of ties in together:
1. The Agency Perspective: It is well known in the OOH/DOOH circle that agencies; even those specializing in these fields, still view DOOH similarly to broadcast television. In this sense, having audio capabilities becomes a natural expectation for the brand they represent, as well as the strategists/planners, and buyers.
2. The Media Holders/Networks: In the DOOH, or the Digital Out Of Home Advertising world, the obvious and ultimate objective is to generate revenue from advertising, so they must cater to the desires of the brands and agencies, and not having audio could make a Digital Signage Network highly unattractive. At the same time, I’ve also seen resistance from the networks and/or franchises themselves due to the belief that having audio is a disruptive force in their business environment. So there is a fine line even between the Media Holders and networks themselves.
3. And this is the kicker; The Employees at the locations where the signage and audio are placed & played: No matter what the location or business is, there are always employees working in them for hours at a time. Simply put; when Audio, including product/service announcements or music is on a loop for a long time (I’ve seen as long as a 1 month and as short as a 2 hour loop), this can simply bore them, or even drive them Crazy. I’ve heard the complaints from store managers and associates themselves several times over. What do they do? They simply just turn the audio off, which is a constant compliance issue in ad delivery terms. Employees also know that they won’t get cut for turning the audio off; nor should they. That’s just harsh, and an over-reaction on the management part.
So what do we have here? Brands and agencies want audio, and that makes sense. Media holders and networks need to have audio most of the time to make the network desirable, so that also makes sense. But then again, employee don’t want the same audio content to be bashed into their heads over and over again; Definitely understandable, and could be perceived as some form of sick Chinese water torture.
In a serious sense, bad Audio content could probably have a detrimental effect on employee performance, and in fact, the sales revenues themselves; there’s got to be a study on this some where… I think there are few things that need to be questioned in relation to the topic of “Audio content in DOOH” and all the parties involved:
1. Is audio really necessary to get the brand’s message out there? There are tons of great and powerful visual content that can even have a better effect / outcome.
2. Is audio be fitting to your network’s environment? If the thought is that audio is disruptive, you must have the guts to say “no thanks,” and that is in the best interest of the overall business. There are prices to pay either way, so this is sometimes a choice between the lesser of two “evils,” I suppose.
3. If audio is to be a part of the content offering in a network; and this is Ideal, Has the Audio Content Strategy been well thought out and planned as much as factors like network deployment, ad sales, and visual content strategies? The keywords here are probably “Refreshing Audio Content.” If the audio content is fresh and new as frequently as possible, then it is less likely that employees will be dissatisfied and the issue of compliance becomes less so. Maybe employee and consumers will even actually enjoy it!
Ultimately, Audio Content strategy is some thing that has not been discussed much, but if strategized and executed right; yes, it is critical component in offering up a more fuller message /communication, and more importantly; Everyone is happy! If it is considered as a “side note,” it could be as intensely bad for a network, as it could be intensely good when produced in the correct manner.
Weekend Scores: L.A. Planning Panel: 0 – Out-of-Home / Billboard Industry: 1
Borrowed from the L.A. Times at a 10 Point Interest Rate
Through the newwire / straight from the horsey’s mouth, came news towards the end of last week that the Los Angeles Planning Panel FAILED to pass the much discussed Out-of-Home / Digital billboards / supergraphic / probably some other forms of OOH media. GREAT NEWS! If you have been here before, you might have read my near-insane rant (“The Day the Out of Home Display Advertising Earth Stood Still”) about my issues with this proposed ban and the logic behind this non-sense. Well maybe someone up there heard me, cause the proposed ban actually got “banned” itself. 
No, it’s not banned, and according to the L.A. Times, it was indeed a close vote; 4-3, to be exact. Whew.. That is one close vote! And you can also be sure that the OOH haters will keep fighting to try to get their way still. Ultimately, this is positive and as long as the industry makes sure that placement and content are tasteful; perhaps this issue will go away for good so companies can go on with their businesses. OOH is not part of the bailout programs, but take this as the bailout: a Major DMA is safe for now!
Chevy Aveo Out Of Home Billboard: Made of REAL “Pennies”
Taking advantage of the “Hard Times” that is the global economy these days, Chevy embraced the opportunity by promoting their Aveo in creating a billboard in London full of pennies (penses?) in the shape of the car. Very smart concept. According to autoblog.com, “769,500 pence price of the car, but it didn’t stand a chance against the prying fingers of passersby. In a mere 30 minutes, human vultures had picked the billboard clean of currency.” Damn right! I would’ve been at this billboard with a shovel! Another great example of great creative conception, understanding the environment, and getting the brand/product out there.
Holograms That Will Make Hungry Models Go Even More Hungry (PG-13)
No, seriously (and Just Kidding Next agency gals; don’t kill me!); we’ll still need those beauties. But here is what a fashion store is doing to get attention to their window display. A Holographic model trying on their warez instead of the usual and perhaps boring mannequins. Observe all the “eyes-on” they are getting. Obviously, this type of technology/display has a lot of implecations in the DS/DOOH world in terms of delivery and content creation. I personally thought this tech was still far away, but it seems that is it more reality, rather than fiction. Very cool stuff, dig the song.
When I Grow Up I Wanna Work in Advertising
It’s Friday. You all (or some?) have been working hard. Time for a comedy break brought to you by justoutofhome.com to help kick start the weekend. This was the intro video to the ADDY Awards created the by Meyocks Group. This is the reason why I wanted to get into advertising! ;)
And Zis is Out-of-Home Media
Found a pretty cool picture that pretty much shows what Out Of Home (OOH) media is mostly. Some say Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) and OOH are one of the same. I can see why, but I personally don’t think so. There is a distinct difference in that Digital Out-of-Home media utilizes Digital Signage / a form of electronic display and/or communication; where as Out-of-Home utilizes more of the print, event, and human variety. Both great; both needed as a part of your daily breakfast to get an effective and integrated message out there to the peeps.
Held hostage from blisscommunication.de and zi Germans
ROM: Return On Message™- A Media Tile Report on the “5th Screen”
I keep pushing Twitter (especially today, it seems) simply because you are able to gain access to industry insiders, and information that you may not be able to have easy access to in other manners. Here’s another example of the case in point. @sixteennine (a.k.a Mr. Haynes of www.sixteen-nine.net; it’s also on my “Roll”) threw me a gem today related to Media Tile’s report on “ROM: Return On Message™” on the “5th Screen;” I like to call it the “5th Element”… I still love that movie. Anyway, it’s not an article, but a nice little intro / key points of what is deemed to be one of the more critical methodology of research and metrics going on in the DS / DOOH industry today. Alas, it is not the full report, but give you a nice intro to the issue of ROM, and if you don’t know about it, you certainly should learn about it and perhaps get the full version. I’ll be waiting for the “ROM: Return On Message for Dummies” Mr. Haynes.
Link here for the ROM intro: http://www.mediatile.com/filebin/pdf/MTC_ROM_abstract.pdf
Again; Mr. Haynes’ “OVAB Guidelines for Dummies” just in case you missed it.
Digital Signage Content 101
I’ve discussed my thoughts on wirespring and it’s architect, Mr. Bill Gerba before on the blog and why you should read his blog and follow him (@billgerba) on Twitter. Simply put; he is very insightful in many thing in the Digital Signage / Digital Out-of-Home world. I’ve also waiting for him to make today’s post “Content for Digital Signage: Motion and the Infamous Ticker” in order to for me to finalize the concept I had for this post for a long time now, which I dub; “Digital Signage 101.” This title has probably been used actually… Hmmm, but SO good that this guy is going to have to add “Content” as a new category on this blog. Anyway, following are 3 sections and links that anyone in the DS and DOOH industries should read and synthesize in your brains. It WILL make you a better Content Producer, digital signage / Digital Out Of Home Ad network, although justoutofhome.com does not offer a refund policy. After all, the knowledge Bill gives out is Free; although it shouldn’t be, and you are sure to learn. Summaries are as follows:
Making great digital signage content: A quick reference guide:
- Making great digital signage content: The serial position effectPlace your most important messages at the beginning and the end of your list. Introduce the first item on the list at a slower speed, and leave enough time at the end for people to remember the last item. If possible, choose your two best messages and get rid of the rest.
- Making great digital signage content: Get better recall with chunking and codingGroup key phrases or concepts together — batches of three usually work nicely. Repeat important words and phrases 2-3 times in a row for reinforcement. Consider using alliteration and rhyme, since people are trained to respond well to these patterns.
- Making great digital signage content: Optimize for context and eliminate distractionsUse imagery and symbols that are relevant to the viewer. These should make sense based on the tasks viewers will be looking to complete when they see your screens. Be careful when including images that are very attention-grabbing, like people’s faces and pictures of babies. These can easily divert attention from your core message.
- Making great digital signage content: Crafting your copy and call-to-actionKeep your text simple and clear. When writing your call-to-action, start it with a verb, keep the verb and subject close together, and either leave the call-to-action on screen the whole time, or show it several times per spot.
- Making great digital signage content: Sorting out font faces, sizes and stylesUse sans-serif fonts and large font sizes so that viewers can read your message at-a-glance. Don’t use too many fonts in a single piece of content, and don’t go overboard with colored text. Avoid writing in all caps.
- Making great digital signage content: Does color matter?Choosing one color over another rarely has any impact on the success of your content. So, pick colors that meet your business and stylistic goals, e.g. those that match the color schemes of your venues or advertisers.
- Making great digital signage content: Use contrast to your advantageMore contrast between foreground and background is a good thing. A minor change like increasing the contrast by 10% can make the content easier to read, and recognizable to a much larger audience.
- Making great digital signage content: Motion, silhouettes and animationUse motion selectively: you don’t want to interfere with readability or comprehension. Give people enough time to read the text, and don’t move your text around abruptly. When you’re animating an element, try to pick something that has a strong and easily-identifiable silhouette. Consider keeping your logo and other important features on the screen at all times, without excess motion.
- Making great digital signage content: Composing shots and scenesRemember that digital signs have more in common with posters than with TV. Match up your text and visuals, and treat each slide like it’s a stand-alone poster. Use visual transitions to link related slides within a larger piece of content.
Making great digital signage content: Motion, silhouettes and animation
- Just because you can make it move doesn’t mean that you should. Chances are, the out-of-home environment where your digital screens are located already has a lot of visual clutter. This is true for retail stores, health clubs, airports and practically everywhere else. Adding motion to multiple screen elements may not make them any more noticeable or visible from a distance. So far we’ve only found this to be true in very cluttered environments, but you’ll have to try it in your own venues to be sure.
- Don’t let motion interfere with readability or comprehension. This one’s easy: if you’re relying on text to get your message across, and the motion you’ve added makes the text harder to read, your content’s performance is going to suffer.
- You get only 1.5 – 3 seconds of full attention for glance media. Thus, any period when important text or other critical message components are off the screen is potentially a missed opportunity to connect.
- Leave enough time to read the text. Don’t trust your own judgment — if you’re the designer, find somebody who hasn’t seen the content before and make them read it. If they can’t read your message at least three times in the alloted amount of time, either take out some text or leave it on screen longer.
- Treat moving text like it’s not there at all. I’m not talking about a slight jiggle or flash here and there, but if you have content whirring across the screen from left to right, nobody’s going to be able to read it — or at least, not all of it. So if you really want to make sure there’s enough time to read your text, don’t count your transition times towards the amount of time you’re leaving it on screen.
- Motion on the periphery is more subtle than motion in the middle of the field of view. A small animation on the border of your screen will exaggerate the eye’s natural left-to-right sweeping motions as it reads along. Putting animation in the middle of the screen next to text will pull the eye away from the text during these natural eye motions, which are known as saccades.
- The most important features of your spot should be static. If you have an easily-recognized or well known logo, a common catch phrase or slogan, or some trademark imagery, keep it on screen for the full length of the clip. That way, even people who don’t get the chance to see the clip in its entirety will still be able to associate what they’ve seen with your brand or core message.
Content for Digital Signage: Motion and the Infamous Ticker (Those of you who know me, know my stance on them Tickers… Anyway, some key finding from the CNN’s use of Tickers; I like case studies. BUT read this entire post as well)
So “that’s about it.” ~ You’ll have a lot of reading to do, and will need even more time to take it all in and actually execute these principles, but whether you are on the DS side, or the Ad side, the basis of content creation starts right here.
A Murakami L.A. Billboard Taken Down for the RIGHT Reason
Below is a billboard that was originially promoting the Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami’s exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. His work is very cool and cutesy, (I had the pleasure of seeing his installation at Rockafeller Center a few years back); but soon after the billboard was put up, two graffitti artists, AUGER and REVOK, sprayed over the billboard to show off their “art.” These two and their “pieces” (term used on the “streets” of NYC/graf. world; yeah, I’m cool like that!) are also famous on their own right; not that I “officially” know about this stuff, or know them from “a legal stand point”.. 
Anyway, soon after these two showed off their Krylon skillz; the billboard was obviously taken down… The Catch? It was NOT taken down by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art or the City of L.A., but actually by Murakami himself! The reason? He LOVED the art/work of the two artist on his billboard, and Had to have it for himself! Art within art, and makes me feel kinda fuzzy inside. That’s rare in itself. Don’t tell me all billboards are “eye sores” you vote hungry politicians and uptight-ers!
Customer Service within Customer Service
Some have the philosophy that the principles of “Branding,” “Customer Service,” and “Advertising;” especially in relation to ad sales, are separate entities. This is understandable on the surface. Although as Marketing (or Advertising, MarComm, or Communications) majors during our higher learning institution days we gained knowledge and were trained to learn and think in a cross-functional / knowledged manner; when we enter the “real world,” we tend to get more focused and / or “specialized” in just one of these fields or subjects.
At the same time, the basic theory that Advertising and Branding serves as the “voice” of an organization, and Customer Service serves as the means of providing and proving the real value of the brand or organization are still, and always, in tack. Especially relevant to advertising sales; one of the realms I have had personal experiences with, the issue of “Customer Service” related to how we conduct business and communicate with brands, agencies and media partners seems incredibly relevant in this manner and the up-most importance. So why suddenly the post talking about the issues of “Branding,” and “Customer Service” in an Out-of-Home Media blog? It is simply because in the past few months, I have heard and become aware of numerous cases where these simple underlining principles seems to have been broken and ignored; which was highly disappointing.
Whether they are cases of poor communications (or even no communication at all), providing shallow, inaccurate, or meaningless “proof” of performance/information/strategy, difficult access to the true scope of what is actually occurring, and even simply ignoring or having the “you can go to someone else if you are not satisfied..”-attitude because the scope or scale of the business or budget is small; this is a great blueprint for failure in any organization even outside of the advertising and branding worlds. Especially, the concepts of “ignoring” and moving business to someone else (a competitor, most likely) are factors I personally shutter to even think about. After all, most businesses around the world start small, and to have a short-sighted customer service strategy simply due to the scale of the business could be absolutely detrimental to the potential long-term relationship that an organization should always be seeking to build, and ultimately, can kill the “Brand” that is your organization. Would you provide poor relations and / or customer service to a Microsoft (started in a garage), or a Google (the result of two college grad dropouts)? Many actually did at the beginnings of these companies, and it would be a safe assume that those companies still regret their decisions (and the way they treated these two companies) to this day, and also pretty sure some “heads have rolled” within them since.
Lesson of the day, and a simple life principle to live by everyday: “Treat others like how YOU would like to be treated.”
A simple case in point: on Twitter; I’ve been following and communicating (vice-versa) with @thebrandbuilder (a.k.a. Olivier Blanchard of brandbuilder.wordpress.com). To get some sources for this post, I asked him to send me a link/site that discusses the topic of “customer service.” I didn’t pay him, nor is there some sort of promise of a return in service. He sent me a great site pretty much right away without hesitation. Is this because he thinks he will get something out of me? No. Maybe Olivier does thinks we are friends; and I hope so, but more importantly, what I Knew was that he is an information aggregator, and loves sharing knowledge like myself; FOR FREE no less. THIS IS HIS “SERVICE,” and I, his “Customer.” At the same time, we may be in different fields, but I also believe that you never know what’s thrown at you in life, and it could just as well be that we may work together professionally down the line. This is a simple example of how long term professional / business relationships are started, and also a great example of having an excellent “Customer/Client-Oriented Mentality.”
At the end of the day; this post is not going to be a “hit list” of organizations that have failed in these manners, but to serve as more of a reminder in terms of some of the basic principles that should be the basis of all organizations; whether you are in advertising, branding, or customer service-oriented industries or not. The source that was provided, serviceuntitled.com points out some of the basic principles related “Customer Service,” so read them below, and those who have been “sleeping;” Get reacquainted.
Customer Service Experience Priorities:
1. Resolving problem / answering question.
2. Working with someone who has a good attitude and is friendly, helpful, etc.
3. Getting issue(s) resolved quickly.
The first and most obvious suggestion is to not misrepresent the information in the first place. Consistently accurate information comes as a result of experience, training, and easy to access resources to verify information. Companies have to work very hard to strongly and actively discourage the giving of inaccurate information. Make complete accuracy a major quality standard,..
Apologize for the miscommunication. First of all, apologize for the miscommunication. Clarify what the correct answer / information is and then apologize to the customer for having to hear the wrong information. (And case of NO communication)
If it’s simple, give it to the customer. If the thing that was miscommunicated is easy to do or follow through with, just do it.
If it’s complicated, try to compromise. If it’s complicated to follow through with what the customer said was promised to them, try to compromise.
Some information about the customer. Don’t go into the call with just a name and a phone number. Check how long the customer has been with your company, what type of services they use, their support history, and so on.
Ask your customers to stop by. It lets employees and customers interact in a different way. When you have a strictly phone/email relationship with 99% of your customers, putting a face to the names and account numbers can be helpful. - It is a great opportunity to get ideas and feedback. - It improves the brand.
