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Building a Successful Digital Signage Team - Creative Services and Merchandising

Author: Bill Gerba on 2005-10-05 09:47:57

The third article in our series about assembling the best team for your digital signage network has been posted at Kiosk Marketplace.  This time we set our sights on the creative services and merchandising staff, whose roles and responsibilities range from content creation and advertising to marketing and merchandising.  This group is responsible for ensuring that each digital sign is as attractive and eye-catching as possible, while keeping it refined enough to avoid becoming annoying for store patrons and employees.  Here are some highlights from the article:

Many digital signage firms lack a background in the traditional Point of Purchase advertising industry, and thus don’t fully appreciate the responsibilities of the creative and merchandising staff (I'll call them "creatives" for short). I think that’s at least partly due to the nature of the end product: while some of the things that creatives produce are easy to grasp and understand (such as a Flash movie or video clip), others are more complex and less visible. But that doesn't mean they are any less important. In fact, some jobs that creatives are tasked with have as much or even more impact than the number of screens deployed, the number of ads sold, and even the amount of financial wherewithal a digital signage company possesses. Thus, instead of delving into the nuances of content production and the different types of content that get produced for different narrowcast networks, I'm going to focus on some of the creative and merchandising challenges that many firms don't think about until they're already knee-deep in their deployments.

From a functional perspective, perhaps the biggest problem with retail-focused digital signage companies today is that they don't realize that they are in fact an extension of traditional point-of-purchase (POP) display and visual merchandising firms. Consequently, the challenges below will be well known to individuals coming from one of these disciplines. Still, many firms — whether starting from scratch as new digital signage companies or branching out from their existing core markets and competencies — treat digital signage as a special exception that doesn't adhere to the usual visual merchandising rules.  Here are a few of the important things that creatives need to think about, especially in the context of digital signage:

• Store layout and traffic patterns
• Screen layout and content format
• Sound   
• Lighting conditions

Head on over to Kiosk Marketplace to read the complete article, which adds detail to each of the four items listed above, including ideas for optimal screen placement and screen layout.  If you're preparing for a digital signage deployment, you might also want to review some of our past articles, including:

• Avoiding Common Kiosk and Digital Signage Project Pitfalls
• Plan ahead for your next interactive kiosk or dynamic digital signage installation
• Budgeting for a Digital Sign or Electronic Sign Network
• Optimize Your Digital Signage Text Size, Comprehension and Readability
• Digital Retailing Content Encoding
• Securing your Interactive Kiosks and Digital Signs

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