Hello and welcome to the second podcast in this series by Jeff Collard, President of Omnivex. These podcasts cover the digital signage industry and more specifically how software is used to manage all aspects of digital signage networks. Jeff is the driving force behind Omnivex’s sales and marketing activities, and has been recognized globally as a leading authority on the digital signage industry. Jeff, can you recap what you discussed in the first podcast in the series?

Yes, last time we got into a little bit of what was driving this business and where it was going to, and the thing I always like to focus on is getting people to get over looking at this as digital signage – because the name implies something relatively limiting and it’s not very specific. I always like to expand that definition into visual communications and talk about how we make communications better, how we can help companies do their business better; either communicating to their employees, to their visitors, or to their customers in ways that help them make decisions and facilitate a decision.  That’s really where the value in a digital signage network is, and we’re always looking for ways to help people do things strategically with information rather than just simply looking at this as a simple ad.

So I think that in our first series, really the intent was just to lay the foundation or the ground work for what digital signage is and how it can help you. I think as we go forward, it would be much more interesting to get into specifics about different components within that.

Okay, so in this podcast we’re going to focus more on content. Why is real-time data so important to the success of digital signage?

Well, Marie, we live in a world where we’re terribly over communicated and things are constantly changing. The pace of life today is so much faster than it was for our grandparents, and it’s going to be faster for our kids yet to come. Somehow we managed to handle the emails, voicemails, and instant messaging and all the distractions through our day. And it’s very, very difficult to take all of that information we’re being bombarded with and get down to the things that can allow us to make a decision. And somehow we’ve managed to develop filters that block all this information coming and just pick out the pieces that are important to us, so that we can hopefully get through our day and make a decision.

And I think that for a message to be heard you have to provide a message in a form that’s relevant to the viewer. And the great thing about using real-time information is that it’s very specific, it’s useful to the audience, and it has impact. Every business is awash with data, the problem is how do you make data actionable? And what digital signage does is allows you to go out and get that information and present it to people in a graphical way that’s easier for them to understand and interpret and just give them the pieces of information they need to help make that decision that they need to make. And that’s really an empowering type of thing and really helps people move forward and really is all based around how I get real-time information, because that’s where the relevancy is.

So we hear a lot about flashy content attracting viewers, why is content not enough?

Well this is kind of an extension of the earlier question, great imagery is very effective and it’s very compelling and it certainly can attract attention, but it doesn’t have any relevance to the audience, and there’s no impact to it, it doesn’t really drive a decision or make something happen. So I always worry about flashy content and lacking the pertinence and the information to drive an action.

You also gotta think about the state of your network, you can have spent a lot of money on high-def video, it can look beautiful on the screen, but if the video that you display has to play at the appropriate time and if it’s the inappropriate time to play it, or if the screen isn’t turned on, or if it’s not at the proper input then on those cases no one is going to see that video, it doesn’t really have any impact. And so there are pieces of information that we can use to make that presentation much more impactful to the audience. We can use data to trigger when that ad will play or when that piece of information or message is conveyed and we could use data to also tell us what’s the state of the device that’s playing it; is the screen even on, is the input even set to the appropriate input, or is it running television because somebody wanted to watch the game last night?

So those sort of things really are important and we need those triggers to help to tell when to play that great video. We need that information included into that video to help create that relevancy. If you don’t do that then all you’re doing is playing glorified television. And TV doesn’t help provide individual messages to individual people. And you take a look at where people are going, people are going away from television, advertising has moved away from television and to the web because it’s more of an individual kind of connection to the customer, and it helps to deliver something specific to specific people and that’s one of the things that’s great about digital signage.

So can digital signage change viewer behavior?

When it’s done right, yes. Digital signage can inform, it can educate, and it can empower the viewer to take action. When it’s done wrong, it can bore people, it annoys them, upset them and that could have a really negative effect on the message that you’re trying to covey because the message becomes part of that medium and – if you provide a piece of information in a way that ineffective, you make the message ineffective. The one thing you don’t have to worry, the digital signage is always gonna have an impact, the problem is ensuring that it’s the impact you desire.

So to what extent is digital signage an active medium?

Adding motion to any kind of static signage doesn’t necessarily make it better. When information is based on current conditions like real-time information, then the information is useful to the viewer and it stimulates a response or an action on a part of the viewer. Digital signage can be passive or active, it really depends on how you’re going use it and I go back to my earlier comment about television, if it’s sitting there being used as basically in-store or an in-company TV station, it’s really a very passive medium. If it’s you’re going out and getting real time information and you’re providing that to people to help them to facilitate a decision, now all of a sudden it’s an active medium. And now all of a sudden it makes things happen and it becomes bigger than itself simply by driving some sort of action and then based on that action, something else might happen on that screen, or something else might happen through the message you wanna convey. So digital signage is – can be a very effective medium, or it can be a very, very placid one, depending on how you use information and how strategic you are about its purpose.

So finally Jeff, what business benefits do you see is the most important?

Well that really depends on what business you’re in. Delivering specific information you need to make a decision, precisely the kind that almost confronted with that option really makes life easier for both the decision maker and for the facility providing – asking the question of what you want do here.

Better communications make for better decisions and visual communications is much easier for people to comprehend. They can pick it up faster, they can take action quicker, and they can spot trends much easier, in a more easy form.

I think that people, too often, overlook the potential of two-way communications. Digital signage is not only an aid to the viewer, it doesn’t just push things out to the viewer to help them understand or convey a message, it can also be used to provide information back to the organization as well. A really great example of this is a – well we have a customer that uses a devise where you go and pick up a telephone, you pick up a digital camera, or a device and as you do it tells you about that devise. If I picked up two of them, it would give me a comparison between the two and help me make a decision as to which is the best one to purchase for my needs.

That’s a great application for digital signage, but what people don’t look at is how do I take that same information and feed that back to the company, let them understand what people compare, what different units they use, and how often do I pick up one model verses how many I actually buy through my POS system? That kind of information of digital signage is also collecting and all that reports back into the company, that helps them plan their promotions, that helps them manage their inventories better, that drives costs out of their business, which then should eventually turn back into making – allowing them provide more competitive pricing to their customers. So everybody wins when a digital signage is properly looked at and using information both to aid your customer or aid your audience, but also the information that generates back into the organization that’s providing the message to make their message better.

Great, this is great information, Jeff. Thanks on your thoughts on digital signage and content. How can people find out more information about Omnivex?

Well, Marie, the easiest way to find us is on the web, we are at www.omnivex.com or you can call us in North America it’s a toll free number (800) 745-8223 or you can call us directly at (905) 761-6640.