DIGITAL MEDIA

Archive for March, 2010

It’s no secret digital signage to this point has been a child amid grown-up media outlets. But a couple of signs have emerged that indicate this new medium may be reaching if not maturity at least adolescence.

While its boosters have long proselytized the medium as a powerful complement to other in-store promotional techniques and messaging, dynamic signage in the retail environment has remained “well poised,” “an emerging voice,” and other euphemisms for not mainstream.

That’s easy to understand, based on the timing of its arrival on the communications scene. A recent Self Service article reporting on the “Building Your Digital Signage Business” conference in Chicago last month, quotes CAP Ventures analyst Norman McLeod as saying that reasons beyond the control of the digital sign industry have held back its growth.

The article, by Bryan Harris, quotes McLeod as saying the 2000 bust of dot com companies sucked venture capital from the market. Then, “we saw the biggest decrease in advertising since they started tracking it,” he’s quoted in the article as saying, in 2002. Only in 2005, did the market fully rebound.

However, with that rebound have come a couple of signs that in-store and out-of-store dynamic signs may be hitting its stride. In Britain, the Screen Association has published the first-ever directory of UK-based digital signage networks that accept advertising from third parties, according to a report from Clickpress.com. The directory, “The Screen UK Advertising Networks Directory,” provides a full index of 62 such networks with details about the networks and contacts at each.

Publication of the directory indicates that diffuse digital signage networks at least in the UK may be congealing into a definable market that advertisers, advertising agencies and marketing professionals can quantify, measure and ultimately specify in their media plans. That’s a big step for in-store digital media on its path to reaching maturity.

In the United States, a similar development indicates dynamic signage may be entering adolescence. Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the leaders in the outdoor advertising market, announced last month that it was expanding its digital signage network with several new installations in Tampa, FL, and Milwaukee, WI.
Reporting on the move for MediaPost.com, author Erik Sass quotes company CEO of Clear Channel Outdoors Paul Meyer as saying the move will help Clear Channel attain its 2006 goal of deploying digital signage in four to six markets.

As with conventional billboards, the LED signs, which measure 14ft by 48ft, will be positioned near heavily traveled roads. However, use of digital sign technology will allow Clear Channel to “day part” advertising to better meet the advertising needs of its clients and potentially charge a premium.
As with news of the UK directory of digital signage networks, the latest announcement from Clear Channel demonstrates the congealing of the digital signage market into a medium advertisers can easily grasp. One can imagine national brand television advertisers supplementing their brand and product commercials on such giant electronic billboards. That opportunity will only grow as Clear Channel Outdoors and others build their inventory of outdoor digital signs across America.

What appears to be happening in the digital display market are the first signs of an amalgamation of individual signs and networks into something that more resembles a definable medium than a scattershot straying of public venues and retail shops with unrelated networks and signs.

Market researchers frequently set about measuring the strength of the digital signage market in terms of forecasts, such as researcher iSuppli’s recent projection of a $12 billion dollar value by 2010, its true health may better be predicted with the formation of viable advertising markets that exploit these sorts of digital signage networks.

While no one would argue that these networks trumpet the arrival of a fully mature medium, such developments indicate digital signage is reaching adolescence.

David Little
http://www.articlesbase.com/multimedia-articles/signs-of-growing-up-whats-in-your-media-mix-79377.html

Sometimes you can learn a lesson from a big brother, and that seems to be the case when you consider large billboards -commonly referred to as outdoor advertising, or OA for short- and their smaller plasma and LCD siblings in the retail environment.

Consider the case of an advertising forecast for 2007 from Watchfire Digital Outdoors. Makers of outdoor digital signage that’s every bit as large as a conventional billboard, Watchfire Digital Outdoors does for outdoor advertising much of what conventional plasma and LCD digital signs do indoors.

The Danville, IL, company earlier this month published a 10-point forecast for digital outdoor billboard advertising, many of which apply equally well to the indoor digital signage market in retail settings.

Forecasted points that could just as easily been have been made about retail digital signage and advertising include:

* The availability and use of more sophisticated selling strategies;
* Networks of digital billboards rivaling other media for ad revenue;
* Solidifying of revenue models.

With regard to more sophisticated selling strategies, Watchfire Digital Outdoors makes the point that new approaches, including “exclusive category sponsorships, unlimited copy changes and automated database-driven updates” will be used as incentives or upsells to entice advertiser to use digital outdoor signs in 2007. The same is true of retail digital signage networks. As that medium coalesces, retailers will find the same opportunities can be employed to attract and win advertisers. Like their bigger brothers, digital signage networks can be changed in an instant and offered on an exclusive basis to an identified category of advertisers.

Another commonality is in the emergence of digital signage as a rival to existing media, especially radio and television. As I’ve written about in the past, retail digital signage networks are congealing into a quantifiable, measurable, sellable medium that will offer advertisers more than a wish. These networks will deliver concrete demographics and audience numbers.

Just as Watchfire Digital Outdoors forecasts digital outdoor signage networks coming into their own as a competitive medium, indoor retail digital signage networks will offer advertisers a targeted demographic as an alternative to traditional media -one that reaches consumers closer to the cash register.

Watchfire Digital Outdoors also forecasts that revenue models will solidify as outdoor advertising companies get comfortable with offering “board sharing, day-parting, exclusive sponsorships, short-run premiums” and other incentives. Again, retail digital signage networks also are seizing on these types of new product offerings to create an entirely new medium. Tracking retail signage messages to match the demographics of shoppers as they change throughout the day and offering “short-run premiums” are also integral components of retail digital signage that will be exploited to drive ad sales.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a big brother. Finding retail digital signage networks share some vital commonalities with large

LED-based outdoor digital signs that are poised to explode onto the advertising scene should give marketing executives, advertisers and retailers something to smile about as we enter the New Year.

David Little
http://www.articlesbase.com/multimedia-articles/sign-of-the-times-84214.html

Cutters are a natural fit in any decorated apparel business. The advantages they offer are numerous, including:

They work with a huge array of materials, including vinyl and film, and you can get a full-blown system, including supplies, for as little as £2000.

These materials can be applied to cotton, cotton/polyester blends, nylon, 100% polyester, leather, canvas, wood, and metal. And in addition to apparel, you also can decorate accessories and extras such as umbrellas, helmets, cd bags and coolers. It’s just a question of picking the right material for the substrate.

You have complete design control, allowing you to do things like custom fit long names on small jerseys, change fonts and colours, and so on.

You’re not dependent on a supplier’s schedule; you make designs when you need them. If you run short of a vowel or a number one or mess one up, you make one more.

Depending on the cutter you purchase, your new equipment may allow you to make a digital transfer of things like corporate logos, a left chest, or full-front design, which allows you to enter a host of new markets.

In addition to teams, you can expand your markets to include local community projects, uniform wear, and all kinds of corporate businesses.  

And when you figure that somebody is going to be making healthy profits doing that business — well, it might as well be your shop, right? In the long run, this kind of market and decorating versatility can only help your business. With that in mind, here’s a look at what you need to know about buying a cutter.

Understanding the Basics
Cutters are available in two types: friction-fed, which includes roll cutters and sheet-fed cutters; or flat bed.

Most friction-fed cutters aren’t designed to handle twill, although there are a couple of significant exceptions. Typically, flat-bed cutters costs around £4000, can do the job extremely well. The ability to handle twill and appliqué means your shop also has to add a sewing or embroidery machine.  And you need to be aware that flat-bed cutters can’t be used with roll materials. Many shops that do both have a friction-fed and a flat-bed cutter.

In either case, the cutter hooks up to your computer (generally not included as part of the purchase); much like you’d connect a printer. You’ll also need a heat press and materials to feed into the cutter. You send a design from the computer to the cutter, which then cuts it from the material — which you then weed (to remove unwanted material) and heat seal to a substrate.

Some suppliers offer packages that include the cutter, a heat press, and materials. In all, expect to spend roughly £2,000 and up for all the required equipment, including a good heat press and supplies — a low price given all the capabilities you’ll be adding to your shop.

Software. Cutters usually come with the software required, either in standalone form or as a plug-in for graphic arts programs such as CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator. Essentially, the software acts as a driver for the cutter. While it’s a plus if you know graphic arts programs, you can happily get by without that knowledge; with some other software available that automates many of the functions, that would normally take more knowledge. Still, having the flexibility of a full-fledged graphic arts program really expands your capabilities and what you can do for your customers.

There also are CAD-cutting design programs that offer a wide range of predesigned templates geared to the team and sports market. Customers simply choose the typeface, design, colours, and layout they like best, and these are plugged into the template, and out comes a professional-looking design ready to be heat sealed. Another option is to rely on suppliers who offer artwork services. They will clean up your customer’s artwork and vectorize it so it’s ready to output to your cutter. (Cutters work only vector artwork, not bitmap or raster images.) Most clip art companies also offer thousands of mascots and images that can easily be imported into your CAD cutter programme and incorporated into a design.

Material. Materials come in sheets and rolls. One big advantage of roll goods is you do not have to stand there and feed sheets into the machine. You can load up a roll, which will then continuously cut until the job is done. There’s also no limit to the design’s length, since the roll is continuous. Rolls generally come in 38cm and 50cm widths.

Cutters also can do sign vinyl, which is usually a self-adhesive material; film, which is a heat-applied material used for apparel; sand-blast material; magnetic material for making refrigerator magnets and magnetic vehicle signs; and, in some cases, transfer paper. This means that not only can you offer the school football team numbered shirts; you can print up the team’s season schedule on magnetic material and sell it to teams and fans who want to put it up on the fridge.

As an alternative to vinyl, certain select suppliers also offer polyurethane materials, or PU which is more environmentally friendly. It is actually thinner, looks better and feels softer than vinyl. Furthermore, the PU product “loves itself” and you can, therefore, stick more layers together. An important feature of PU is that a two-colour, two-layer design will feel like just one layer However, some customers may prefer the thicker, shinier look of traditional vinyl.

For markets such as dance, fashion, and safety, you’ll find a multitude of film options, including foils, glitters, metallic, fluorescents, and reflectives. Reflective materials, which have recently become available in a variety of colors, are popular for safety where visibility is crucial, for example, for school children walking with backpacks. Now children can be safe and make a fashion statement at the same time!

Size. Cutters come in many widths — anywhere from 20cms to 160cms. Of course, the cutter’s cost increases accordingly, from about £700 to £10,000. Generally, though, expect to spend roughly £1000 to £1,500 on a quality cutter.

Unless you’re only going to use the cutter for hobby work, you should avoid anything less than 38cms wide. A 60cms width is considered a standard minimum size for a sporting goods dealer doing team shirts.  

Other Cutter Considerations

When shopping for a cutter, there are some other features to be aware of. They include:

Memory. Look for cutters with an adequate buffer memory as. This allows the unit to quickly download designs from the computer to the cutter.

Down force. Find out how many grams of force the cutter has. Some have about 150 grams of force, while others have about 450. Depending on the material you’re cutting, more down force may come in handy. You must have sufficient down force to cut heavier materials like twill, for example. So make sure your salesperson is aware of all the materials you anticipate cutting.

Optical eye. This is a relatively new feature available on cutters but one that can save a tremendous amount of time increasing productivity. A cutter with an optical eye sets up registration points and, with the software included, allows you to quickly set up contour lines around even complicated designs. It then quickly and precisely cut around any design.

If your cutter has an optical eye (this should cost from £1,400 – £2,000), you can then add a low-cost inkjet printer, and cut out full-colour designs for dark garments.  With an optical eye on your cutter you will not have to worry ever again about using scissors to laboriously cut away the white border around your designs. Just print the designs on transfer paper using the inkjet printer, use the cutter to contour cut the printed image, and use the press to heat seal the image onto the garment. An optical eye also allows you to contour cut items such as window stickers.

Presets. For each type of material you cut, the machine must be programmed with the specifics of that material. If you’re going to switch back and forth between vinyl and film, for instance, it’s handy to have a cutter that has a number of presets. This way, you simply push a button and the unit is ready to handle that material.

Warranty. Some suppliers offer extended warranties at no additional cost, so be sure to ask what type of coverage is included. Also, ask if the supplier will offer a free loan machine to use to keep production going should your equipment need servicing.

Training. Using a cutter requires only limited training, which you can get online or in person. In fact, many training programs take only an hour before you’re up and running. Find out whether the supplier offers in-person or virtual training, or both — and at what cost, if any.

Speed. Find out how fast the cutter operates. Most suppliers measure in terms of cms per second. A speed of about 38cms per second and higher is good. Keep in mind that more complicated designs will sometimes require a much slower speed.

Cut quality. Take a close look at the manner in which the cutter does its work. Are the cuts clean and smooth, or are they ragged? Watch the unit in action, and carefully examine samples produced on the machine.

With these considerations in mind, you’re ready to start shopping for a cutter for your business. It’s almost as if you’re purchasing not just a piece of equipment but a new employee who can handle an amazing array of tasks. With a cutter, you’re no longer limited by anything but your imagination.

Printer/Cutters Close Up 
While a cutter has an incredible amount of versatility, a printer/cutter unit ups the ante by adding printing capabilities to the mix. A single unit can output full-color images—usually using inkjet technology—and do contour cutting all in with the same machine.

Using such a unit makes it easy to create customized signage with UV-resistant ink, and do digital transfers for apparel and other items—and it can still do everything a traditional cutter can handle. Of course, such capabilities come at a cost: Prices start at about £6,000 and reach £10,000 and upwards.

Target can be contacted at www.targettransfers.com or call +44 (0) 1376 326351.

Martin Borley
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-ideas-articles/boost-profits-expand-markets-with-a-digital-plotter-cutter-724675.html

Not everyone is a physicist or a LED expert and designer. The average electronics consumer (that might know a few things about LED devices or any other illuminating apparatus) has to be informed on the important place LEDs hold in our life. Because everyone has seen a LED, but perhaps doesn’t know of its existence, we consider it our duty to tell you some things about it.

LED stands for Light Emitting Diode and it performs a great variety of functions, being found in many household appliances. Every blinking LED is a genuine unsung hero of the electronics’ landscape. The amazing LED colors vary, depending on the composition of the materials used and the outside conditions of the above mentioned semiconductor, ranging from almost ultraviolet to the visible spectre or even the infrared light. To put it shortly, a LED sign is simply a small series of light bulbs that can be inserted rapidly into electrical circuits. The major difference between a LED and some other common incandescent bulb is that, the LED doesn’t contain any filament which may burn out or get too hot. You can burn your fingers with a LED, as every LED is illuminated just by the rapid movement of electrons in a semiconductor material. A standard LED generally lasts as long as a normal transistor.

These devices can create the ciphers on digital clocks, light up your wrist watch, send information from a remote control or even warn you when an appliance is turned on. When altogether connected because of decorative or practical reasons, they can accomplish marvellous things as the LED illuminating sign of an everyday traffic light. In fact, the most obvious purpose LEDs have is to advertise and sell services and products.

After getting acquainted with what a LED is, one can focus on the uses of a standard LED. Our company has to step in at this moment to give you some ideas on how you can use a LED. We welcome you to the LED Signage Revolution, a concept created and put into practice by sign experts and top LED specialists. Xstreamsign.com offers you the most recent sign LED solutions in colour changing signage. This revolutionary sign technology gives you the chance to accomplish extraordinary things with your company’s branding sign and attract as many clients as you wish.

If you know exactly how you want your clients to perceive your image, if you want your brand to stand out when people pass by, if you want to capture everyone’s attention, then you have to appeal to the best LED effects and use the best colors and shapes for your sign. To get your brand profile known on the market and to develop new and improved connections with your company’s clients you have to use the advantages a LED sign can give you. Yes, LED signage is useful not only for appliances, but for marketing also. Sign LED technology can make it easy for you to change your corporate colors and improve your business.

These complex devices are organized by a Sign Brain Cell, meaning an extremely tiny controller, the smallest in stature digital LED programmable controller built until now. Even though it measures only 80mm x 40mm x 20mm, this piece of equipment for sign illumination does a miraculous job. It ensures that your company’s colors attract potential customers by all means. It enlightens about the possibilities your company can offer and sells your image in the most appealing way.

The X-Stream Sign system is represented by a modular RGB LED signage option. This modular system refers to the fact that it can be complex or simple, depending on your choice. Some high-tech sign modules are interconnected to form small basic systems or larger ones for more sophisticated signs of different scales and with color changing animated Sign drawings. These last complicated ones are run from a computer over a connected network and can indeed be called a work of art. A lot of work is put into the creation of a LED sign, but the effort is repaid through an eye-catching light show.

Our company can provide digital LED signage that can vary from the simplest advertising text to still pictures and to 3D animated videos. There are even available audio options. Generally, retail industry operators of digital signage firms see their colorful full-motion banners as comparable to TV broadcasting channels, entertaining parading or data distributing advertisements. The LED signs are popular and they enchant, inform and thrill just like any of the above mentioned ways of promotion. So, if you are company looking to get noticed, you should definitely try a LED sign!

Amelie Mag
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/led-signage-a-way-to-make-your-company-seen-58543.html

Last week, I made a simple point in this space, namely that just because a display device, such as a plasma or LCD panel, is flat doesn’t mean that it’s capable of displaying high definition content as part of digital signage messaging.

By way of review of last week’s column, a display panel can be SD, or standard definition, ED, or enhanced definition, or HD, high definition. Displays are made up of individual picture elements, called pixels. Basically, the idea is the more pixels, the higher the resolution of an image. Thus, an SD display with a pixel count of 704 (horizontal) x 480 (vertical) has less resolution than an ED display with 852 x 480 pixels. HD displays, which have even more pixels and are at the top of the resolution food chain for displays, come in three flavors: 720p, 1080i and 1080p. (More on the “i” and the “p” in a moment.)

A 720p HD display has 1280 pixels (horizontal) by 720 (vertical); 1080i and 1080p displays have 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels, or more than 2 million individual picture elements. The letters “i” and “p” stand for interlaced and progressive, respectively. Interlaced displays, like ordinary TV sets and 1080i HDTVs, paint individual lines of pixels back and forth top to bottom across the display on the odd numbered lines (in HDTVs those are 1, 3, 5…1079) first and then the evens (2, 4, 6…1080) before beginning the process over and over. Taken together the odd numbered line “field” and the even numbered line field create one “frame,” or complete still image. There are 30 such frames displayed per second.

Progressive displays, like computer monitors and 1080p HDTVs, display lines sequentially (1, 2, 3… 1080) before beginning the process again. These 1080p HD displays paint 60 new still images on the screen every second. With twice the frame rate (60 versus 30), 1080p demands twice the amount of data as 1080i.

That difference in frame rates means different things to different parties interested in high definition. To marketers using an HD as the display technology in a digital signage network, 1080p is the top-of-the-line image quality they can expect to achieve for the foreseeable future. If the message they are communicating requires the utmost resolution, 1080p may be the right choice. However, 1080p displays are more expensive and there will be a price to pay in terms of content storage required to drive that messaging.

To broadcasters who must work within the law administered by the FCC for transmission of HD, 1080p is too much. Simply given what they must work with, 1080p is beyond their capacity to deliver. Thus, 1080i and 720p are the broadcast HD formats.

To movie studios wishing to distribute their films in the highest display format available in the home, 1080p is the answer. Much of the buzz over Blu-ray and HD-DVD optical discs is in part about the ability of the competing formats to deliver superb image quality. Those formats –and their use of a blue frequency laser with a shorter wavelength that can write more data per area of storage- were designed to be able to write the all of the 1080p data to disk that’s needed to playback a full-length movie plus bonus material.

But here’s the most important party in the 1080p HD resolution equation: the audience. Whether you’re a digital signage marketer, a broadcaster or a movie studio, you are faced with same question: How do I affordably deliver the level of quality to my audience that satisfies my desired communications goal? In other words, how much resolution is enough for the communications task at hand?

Only you can answer that question. To illustrate how subjective the answer is, consider this: ABC, ESPN, Fox and My Network TV rely on 720p, or 720 progressive lines, for HD service while NBC, CBS and PBS rely on 1080i. Perhaps before you decide which level of HD resolution is most appropriate for your high definition digital signage network, you should flip between ESPN’s “Sportscenter HD” (720p), “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” (1080i) and “March of the Penguins” (1080p) playing back from an HD-DVD player or “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” (1080p) from a Blu-ray player on your 1080p display. You may be surprised by what you observe.

David Little
http://www.articlesbase.com/multimedia-articles/digital-displays-a-little-more-about-high-definition-135215.html

The most obvious thing about digital signage is the display panel. It’s the first thing you see, and probably the last thing you think about once it’s hung and showing the content you want others to see.

But did you know that just because your digital signage messaging is playing back on a flat panel plasma or LCD that it’s not necessarily being shown in HD quality? While they’re somewhat less common today, for the past few years display makers have marketed -right next to the HD panels- something known as ED panels or TVs. EDTV stands for “Enhanced Definition Television” –something that’s better, to be sure, than the ordinary television in most homes across America, but nowhere near as good as HDTVs and HD monitors. So, what makes one panel “enhanced” and another “high-def”? Basically, its pixels, scanning and terminology.

Pixels first

If your interest in digital signage is more about what it can do for you than how it does it, you might not be very familiar with some of the basics. First, a pixel is a picture element. Many say it’s the smallest picture element in a display, but maybe a better way to think of it is as the smallest whole picture element in a display. That’s because just like Gaul, all pixels are divided into three parts –red, green and blue. Those parts are often referred to as sub-pixels. But for the sake of this discussion, let’s stick with pixels.

In plasmas and LCDs, pixel count is pretty cut-and-dry. These displays are made up of rows and columns of picture elements or pixels. An SD panel –or standard definition panel, the closest thing to your ordinary home TV- will have 480 rows and 720 pixels across. EDTVs have the same number of rows, 480, and 853 pixels across.

Besides having about 20 percent more pixels across, another important distinction between the two is the type of scanning used. An SD display is interlaced just like your fingers are when you do “Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple….” Drawing one complete picture, or frame, in an interlaced display requires the monitor to scan the odd number rows in an image sequentially first, i.e. 1, 3, 5 etc. and then the even numbered rows 2, 4, 6 etc. Together those two interlaced “fields” make up a frame. There are about 60 fields per second, or about 30 frames per second in SD video. (I won’t trouble you with the why regarding the term “about.”)

These interlaced fields are displayed so quickly that the scanned odds are still aglow, although decaying, while the evens are being scanned. However, that decay in the glow and constant refresh account for a flicker that’s visible to some.

ED monitors are progress scan displays. Like computer monitors, they scan lines, 1, 2, 3, etc. all the way to line 480. It’s the greater number of pixels and this progressive scanning that makes them better than SD, or in other words, enhanced.

Enter HD

HD or high definition can produce a view of the world that’s lifelike. If you doubt that, flip on the Discovery Channel and then flip over to Discovery HD on an HDTV. You will be amazed.

There are many different types of high definition standards, but you only have to be concerned about a few things when it comes to digital signage. First and foremost, HD is pixel count. If it’s got at least 1280 x 720 pixels, it qualifies as HD. However, here’s where things get a little confusing. HDTV and monitors also come with 1920 pixels across and 1080 pixels vertically, and they come with lots of different pixel counts in between. Those “tweeners” have more to do with the manufacturing capabilities and priorities of the company making the panel than they do with the actual HD standard.

Like the difference between SD and ED, there are scanning type differences among HDTVs as well. First, there is progressive scan called 720p (row 1, 2, 3… 720). Then there is 1080i, or 1080 interlaced (1, 3, 5…1079 followed by 2, 4, 6…1080). Finally there is 1080p, which some HD marketers call Full HD (implying that the rest aren’t quite HD, which is misleading and self-serving in my opinion).

Not quite as they seem

Without a doubt, HDTVs are burgeoning in the home and HD panels are becoming popular displays for digital signage. Their ability to reproduce lifelike images is breathtaking. That’s powerful clay in the hands of digital signage sculptors.

But don’t be confused. Just because a panel is flat, it’s not necessarily HD. Look for the panel’s resolution in pixels. Find out what type of scanning it uses. Together, those two pieces of information can tell you what you’re looking at, even if your eyeballs aren’t sure. It can also save you the headache of mistakenly acquiring the ED monitors that seemed like a steal when you thought you were buying HD.

David Little
http://www.articlesbase.com/ask-an-expert-articles/digital-displays-things-are-not-always-as-they-appear-133643.html

Experienced signage network operators often deploy content that fails to produce results. Even worse, if they haven’t implemented a reliable tracking mechanism (a topic for another article), they may not even realize that their creatives are hitting a wall. The problem isn’t exclusive to the folks who are in charge of the system; a lot of times, the ad agencies and firms who are brought in to assist have the same problem.

Today, we’re going to take a look at how well glossy content works when it’s deployed throughout your signage network. The fact is, slick-looking creatives may look fantastic, but still fail to produce sales, leads, contact information, and other actions. But, there’s a simple science to developing messages that can captivate your audience while delivering the goods. Let’s get started.

The Effect Of High-End Production

First, let’s consider creatives that are developed with high-end production. Unless you’re leading a talented team of designers, you’ll probably hire a design firm to come up with them. These creatives cost a lot of money, draw viewers in, and hold eyeballs. But, do they actually drive people to take action (for example, buying a sales item)? Or, can they support a brand?

In fact, they can. People have a natural tendency to investigate dazzling, artful displays. So, a team of designers who can employ the latest Flash tricks with tantalizing music can easily capture the attention of passersby. What’s more, the high-end content they produce will often create a lasting impression in the minds of those who see it. Think about how films affect moviegoers. When Jurassic Park was first released, it dazzled audiences. It created an impression. High-quality creatives that are slickly produced can generate the same response.

The Beauty Of Simplicity

On the other end of the spectrum are simple messages. There’s nothing in them that will astound your signage viewers. The graphics are clean and often produced by using templates. The message is clear without the distractions of audio and visual effects. Most importantly, assuming the network operator or designer of the creative is knowledgeable about advertising, there’s a clear, concise call for action. So far, so good. But, does it work to generate a response?

It does. In the same way that people are drawn toward the glitzy, smooth, slick creatives, simple messages can be powerful. It may not be glossy or seductive, but when it’s created with an eye for effective advertising tactics, it can drive customers to the register (or kiosk). The trick, of course, is knowing how to develop that kind of content. Here’s a hint: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. The AIDA formula has been used with great success for decades. It’s just as potent when used in your signage content.

One Or The Other

So, which should you and your team generate, high-end content with a lavish production or simple creatives? Well, it depends upon your goals and your budget. If you’re building a brand, aren’t interested in immediately-trackable actions, and aren’t limited by a finite budget, glossy creatives may be a great solution. On the other hand, if you’re working with limited financial resources and need to produce measurable results, focus on developing simple messages. The trap you definitely want to avoid is blowing your budget on glossy content development that doesn’t generate the results you need to justify your signage network.

One last recommendation (and we’ll go into more detail on this topic in the future): avoid taking the middle road. Glossy content works. So does simplicity. But, the middle ground loses effectiveness quickly. There are reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, but stay tuned. We’ll get into that soon.

Frank Lucer
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/digital-signage-does-glossy-content-work-745131.html