Chuck Gose from MediaTile, who formerly worked for Rolls Royce, presented on this topic that goes by many names: video signage, dynamic signage, video bulletin boards, etc. It’s intended particularly for reaching workers who may be on a factory floor and may not be at a computer screen during the day.
Hardware and software required includes LCDs or plasma screens, Integrated PC, set-top box or controller, and a physical or wireless network. The message and strategy should define deployment of this kind of system, not getting the cool technology and then figuring out how you’re going to populate it.
Key advantages include the ability to change the message on the fly, enhance the message with video and/or dynamic Flash, target the message to the right work areas, and grab employees’ attention.
In Indianapolis, Rolls Royce had two manufacturing facilities, a million square feet each. Digital signage was a way to start discussions on the shop floor, or what Chuck calls “social media in the social realm.” It can reach both the connected office workers and others who don’t have computer access.
Digital signage can increase “access” and can tease/drive traffic to your social media efforts. For example, an RSS feed of news stories from a company blog could automatically appear as a ticker on your digital signage. One thing Chuck is experimenting with is using a Twitter feed to populate the ticker. They also subscribe to RSS feeds from press releases and automatically feed it into the signage. That way the employees find out news at the same time as the outside world.
In summary, Chuck says digital signage:
- Provides greater access to your social media program
- Increases ROI by increasing visibility and offsetting printing and placement costs
- Effectively communicates to employees while they are on the run
- Delivers messages to often “unreachable” employees
- Provides message flexibility.
I think using RSS feeds to populate content and having a “ticker” is one of the best ideas from Chuck’s presentation. It can keep the presentation fresh automatically, and those same feeds can keep the intranet presentation timely, too.
I have to say that tickers can be quite useful when used correctly! Don’t write them off! We have clients using tickers in house quite successfully to get crisis/important messages to staff’s PCs in a better way than email…
And in the context of digital media, I was having a close look this morning at the coffee bean and tea leaf DM screen – they have vertical, visual tickers on the R and L sides of the main video content, and it worked pretty well… but not for MESSAGES – the R was a scrolling list of upcoming sports games, and the right was stock prices.
But why not have a headline ticker at the bottom of your digital media, esp if you’ve got about 15 mins of video content cycling… Staff eventually will get tired of the 15 mins and start to read the ticker in the lunch room out of boredom!
Touche. Sound arguments. Keep up the good effort.