Banners are for birthdays

"Banners are for birthdays." That phrase still brings tremendous amounts of pain and angst to me. Back when I did internal communications for a living, we designed these beautiful vinyl banners to hang on the shop floor to increase employee engagement and product knowledge. They were quite stunning, 8'x12' with a special mounting system so that we could move them around. I thought they were exactly what we needed, directly linked product back to employees and hopefully improving employee engagement.

But then a certain VP, who was the end client and who had approved the project, walked by and said, "Wow, those look great, but banners are for birthdays." He wasn't being unreasonable. Only then did I see what he saw. "Happy Birthday Sally." "Bon Voyage Rick." Tens of thousands of dollars spent and a disappointed client -- never a good combination.

A change is taking place. We're now seeing digital signage replace the dated vinyl banner because they provide flexibility (update the message whenever you want) and robustness (rotate through several dynamic messages).

Eli Lilly is a client of ours in Indianapolis. They are using MediaTile component players for this very thing. Senior leadership grew tired of seeing banners hung in their corporate lobbies and employee entrances. They aren't cheap and can require quite a bit of labor to keep put them up and take them down. Sound familiar? There wasn't anything necessarily wrong with the message or the method. Leadership wanted something that would draw attention to the message, was easy to maintain and fit the corporate image.

MediaTile hardware, coupled with 65" commercial-grade screens, provides the Lilly communications team the digital signage tool they need to succeed. We'll talk to Lilly's Chris Bias in an upcoming post about his experiences and discuss with him the feedback he's received using our cellular digital signage.

Banners are for birthdays. . . does someone have a wall they can lend me? I need to bang my head against it.