- By David Trounstine -
Recently I was asked to speak at the first annual
Digital Signage for Corporate Communications conference. It was a wonderful event where many of us got to share and learn about the experiences of working with digital signage in a corporate communications environment.
Corporate communications content really is its own beast, and all too often treated as a lower priority. I firmly believe that the better a company does at communicating important, relevant, and motivating messages to their employees, the better they will do at customer service, productivity, and worker retention. Informed employees are happier employees, and that's what we're all after.
The presentation I gave was geared toward the idea of treating your digital signage network as a company "television network". I encouraged communicators to think of their employees as their audience, and create content that was built for them. The use of personally relevant content is going to help foster a relationship between the employee and the information network, which will invariably lead to higher viewership.
I, for one, had a great time at the event, and I hope that the information I put together was informative and helpful. Here's my presentation. Enjoy.
I'm catching up on my blog reading and there for a while I'd have to declare Google Reader bankruptcy. But I'm glad I didn't.
I came across this
post from Chris Brogan and about tightening up communication. In his post, he focuses more on public speaking but the lessons learned apply to all forms of communication, including employee communications.
With attention spans shrinking all of the time, communicators must get tighter with their communication. This could be newsletter stories, messages for your intranet or digital signage content.
At this month's Digital Signage for Corporate Communication event,
Mediatile's David Trounstine showed examples of how important it is to simply get the point with your content. With digital signage, you might only have somebody's attention for three seconds.
What will they get in those three seconds? That's up to you. David showed a series of examples of content going from multiple paragraphs down to one sentence with a headline. And even if an employee just read the headline, they'd get the gist of it.
The key to is regularly review the content you're displaying and make sure it works for your audience. As Chris writes, "Work on your efforts, and tighten up."
____________________
Photo credit, NeoGaboX
The first Digital Signage for Corporate Communication was a big success (in my opinion of course) because for an entire day we had communication experts focused on how to best use the technology internally. The day-long event also included a tour of Eli Lilly & Company's network, in addition to content presentations from David Trounstine and Steve Crescenzo.
Digital Signage Today was kind enough to publish the list of
top opportunities and obstacles facing digital signage used for employee communication. The challenges faced by these networks are often quite different from those that are public facing.
Please check out the full detail on
Digital Signage Today but here's a sampling of what the group cited:
The Top Opportunities (in no particular order)
Flexibility – Forget cluttered bulletin boards and printing flyers. Recognition messages, HR updates and daily notices can be changed instantly and often through digital signage software. Also, you can play a variety of content, including static images and video.
Gives content depth & context – Through the use of images and/or video, digital signage templates, messages from screens can resonate better with workforces than flyers, whiteboard messages or company memos.
Interactivity – The network's messages will resonate better with an engaged user of digital signage. Interactive screens on the user level can also be used to access the company website or perform HR tasks, such as requesting days off or checking 401k statuses.
Break news to a non-wired workforce – Believe it or not, there are still members of the workforce not on e-mail all day. These groups can still be informed via update messages through digital signage.
Passive channel - E-mail can be very intrusive to an employee’s work day. Digital signage places key messages in the environment and lets employees digest the communication at their pace.
Reinforce & redirect – Digital signage can provide basic info and redirect employees to communication channels better suited to deliver the full message.
The Top Obstacles (in no particular order)
Money – We are still feeling the effects of a recession, and the initial non-reoccurring cost (capital expenditure) of a network is not something companies are eager to be shelling out.
Executive buy-in – This is along the same lines as the money example. CEOs have to have the final signoff on the network and are generally concerned about the bottom line. Executives have to be presented with a detailed cost/benefit comparison in order to get them on board. It’s best to do this early in the planning process.
IT – Successful digital signage is a collaboration between IT and marketing departments. Often times, IT staffs are strapped as it is without the responsibility of managing operations of a digital signage network.
Risk & security – Because operation of the digital signage network often lies on the company’s LAN infrastructure, proper IT security measures need to be put in place to ensure there is no misuse of the network.
I have been asked by many for details on the next event. All I can say at this point is stay tuned. I'm determined to make sure that each event is worth the time and expense it takes to attend events like these.
- By David Trounstine -
Some of our clients don't have the in-house expertise to create, manage and deploy their own content. That's why our team exists. In fact we have some clients who completely rely on us for everything that is shown on their digital signage network. As the economy has forced many of us to tighten up our budgets we are starting to enable these clients take on some of the creative work in an effort to help keep them in the black throughout these tough times. The process is tougher than you might think, but it all comes down to taking small steps toward the goal.
Charles Fleharty, MediaTile's Director of Content Development and one of the engineers behind the new Human Kiosk with 4G VideoPresence, in conjunction with our portal engineering team created a fantastic web-based application that we call Composer. Simply put is is a content editing tool that allows a user to change pre-built templates to include relevant and up-to-date information without the use of a cumbersome and expensive set of digital design tools.
Using Composer our clients can create great looking content with a few simple steps, all within their web browser. The templates can be custom built to the needs of a client. They can include a number of very cool dynamic functions such as RSS display, time & date, and even weather. All parts of the template can be animated, and when the user makes changes to the text or imagery the animation is preserved.
We met recently with a client who uses interactive content to engage their users and provide them with current event information relative to the local area. It would be very development intensive to provide them with a "template" version of this touch screen application, so instead we suggested moving some of that content out to an attractor screen. Allowing passers-by to see the content, and be encouraged to learn more by interacting with the touch screen.
We are pushing forward with the next version of the software as I type this, and the new features will really make the template approach shine. I highly recommend that our clients check it out, and if you aren't a MediaTile client consider making templates that work for your system to aid you in achieving your design goals.
As lame it sounds, yesterday was a dream come true. I've worked on digital signage at various employers for more than seven years now and couldn't be happier with how yesterday's Digital Signage for Corporate Communication event went.
Despite some travel issues and cancellations, we assembled a great group of communicators looking to discuss digital signage and learn more about how they can integrate it into their employee communications.
In my opinion, the best part of the day was our kickoff "show and tell" session where companies each talked about how they are using the technology and discussed some of the challenges they've faced.
My only complaint is that more companies weren't able to participate in the conversation so I hope going forward that we get more companies there and more companies using other digital signage hardware and software.
So where does it take off from here? Stay tuned...
The first-ever Digital Signage for Corporate Communication conference is just a week away and there are still seats remaining. Please sign up today if you run an internal network and are interested in hearing stories and picking up tips on how you can fine tune your network.
For less than $150, you get to see LillyTV, one of the world's largest digital signage networks dedicated to employee communications, along with hearing from two industry experts and a corporate communication guru. Not bad for such a low cost of admission.
Digital Signage Today ran a very
complimentary article about the event and I'm very appreciative of the attention it has received.
Several people have contacted me who aren't able to attend this session due to vacation or travel restrictions but are interested in attending a future one. At this point, I'm not sure what it will look like down the road, but the feedback received from next week's event will determine steps forward.
If you have any thoughts, please leave them in the comments section below.
(Today's Guest entry comes from Mike Foster, CMO and Co-Founder of MediaTile) 
On my morning commute, I couldn’t help but draw the analogy between the business value that 4G brings to the digital signage market with flying cars. A strange thought, true, but while stuck in traffic, I began to ponder the problems LAN and Wi-Fi networks present to digital signage as being similar to roads and infrastructure, and how 3G and 4G completely eliminates these barriers.
LAN and Wi-Fi networks, like roads, limit where you can go, and are costly deploy and maintain. If you’re relying on LAN and Wi-Fi “ip-roads” for digital signage, you can realistically only deploy signage where ip-roads currently exist, create your own ip-roads at a significant cost, face long-term ip-road maintenance fees, and continue to deal with ip-road traffic, especially during rush hour. Even if you’ve got sophisticated network management gear, you might be able to create a special commute lane and manage traffic, but again, you’re dealing with lots of costly infrastructure.
3G and 4G networks, like flying cars, allow you to go (deploy) wherever you want; you won’t be dealing with all the other traffic on the road, you have the ability to go as fast as the bandwidth allows – as fast, or even faster, than the traffic below. Sprint’s 4G network delivers 3-6 Mbps download rates, plenty to get your media to its destination quickly and securely. And even from a security standpoint, you’re not subject to having to “park” your player on an ip-road, where it can be seen and potentially broken (hacked) into. You’re on your own private and secure 4G road in the air. For these and other important advantages of 3G / 4G digital signage, please check out this whitepaper from Digital Signage Today.
Unlike 4G services, which are now in more than 30 markets and growing, the promise of flying cars is still a ways off, but getting closer. You can learn more about the first commercial flying car or visit Terrafugia and even put your $10,000 deposit down for an early order!
If you go to other corporate communication conferences (or any conference for that matter), they always run an impressive list of logos across the screen of companies who have attended in the past. It always looks good, but how long ago is "the past?"
Since this
Digital Signage for Corporate Communication conference is a first-ever event, I can't show the logos of past attendees. But I can do better, showing you the list of companies who have already signed up are confirmed for this event. Needless to say, I'm pleased with the response.
In addition to a "Show and Tell" portion of the event, we also have three outstanding speakers supporting the event, including David Weinfeld from
The Preset Group, David Trounstine from
MediaTile and Steve Crescenzo from
Crescenzo Communications. It's important to note that Steve was recently voted #1 speaker for the third year in a row from IABC. I'm thankful that we have all three gentleman helping out the event.
We are less than a month and there are still plenty of seats to be had. If you run a digital signage network that supports internal communications,
sign up today.
Several digital signage gurus have suggested that tickers (or crawls) run on digital signage networks are somehow maming the industry. To raise awareness to this "plague," David Weinfeld from
The Preset Group have suggested that today, July 9, be
Ticker Free Day 2010. Even the folks over at
DailyDOOH are falling in line.
But why you ask (and I do, too)? Apparently, they are hoping to prove that networks can run relevant and engaging content without tickers.
Of course they can. Networks can also be run well without video. They can be run well without Flash. They can be run well without the inclusion of weather. It all comes down to content and the choices made. Who knows? Maybe we'll see No Flashy Flashy Day around the bend. I hear September is kind of slow.
I love Cap'N Crunch cereal. It might be my favorite. So if somebody told me that July 9 was Free the Cap'N Day 2010 and that I shouldn't eat the cereal, I wouldn't go along with it. Why? Because I like Cap'N Crunch cereal. That's great if somebody else doesn't like it, but I do.
I blogged that I recently went on a
mid-pilot visit with one of our clients running a corporate communication network. We sat down with groups of employees to discuss what they liked or disliked about the network and what could be done to make it better.
Take a guess what the most positive feedbak tied to? Information in the ticker. Our client did a nice job of mixing up the ticker content between both internal news as well as external news (like weather, sports scores, etc.). The employees liked it. And if this company participated in the Ticker Free Day 2010, employees would not like it.
Take another guess if they are going to participate Ticker Free Day 2010 by removing their ticker. David does acknowledge in his post that not all tickers are bad and that they can be used the right way.
So I propose that instead of just telling people not to use tickers, let's teach them the right way.
(Today's Guest entry comes from Mike Foster, CMO and Co-Founder of MediaTile)
Sprint has included our 3G/4G cellular digital signage as a key element in their public 4G road-shows, the first of which is in Kansas City this week.
Our
HumanKiosk will be prominently featured in Sprint’s 4G Retail solutions “vignettes”, showcasing the live, 2-way video chat using our
MediaCast SaaS content management system and 4G Video Presence technology. With 10x more bandwidth over 3G networks, 4G eliminates any remaining variance between hard-wired, high bandwidth networks while providing all the advantages of a cellular solution: more secure, more flexible, easier to deploy, higher reliability and linear scalability. I’m excited to be in Kansas City as this 4G road-show kicks off.
Sprint has accelerated their marketing efforts around 4G, and is now offering 4G services in more than 30 US markets. We are very excited about the 4G opportunity, including the soon to be released 4G LTE platform from Alcatel/Lucent and VerizonWireless.
4G networks could very well be a tipping point for the entire digital signage industry, accelerating deployments and enabling new market opportunities. If you’d like to know more about the impact that 4G will have on digital signage, please visit Digital Signage Today and download the newly updated version of the "3G/4G Cellular-based Digital Signage" guide. This guide includes the latest 4G information and commentary by carriers, users and integrators.
I know that
Steve Crescenzo has been preaching this for years, but some people just don't seem to be paying attention. . . including IABC. It was irritating at this year's World Conference that everybody (speakers) seemed to be focused on strategy and tactics and plans and blah, blah blah.
There is nothing wrong with those, but that's what people have been (or should have been) doing for years. What's missing is creativity, which was also missing from the IABC conference.
If corporate communicators ever want to gain the respect they think they all deserve, then you have to plan, be strategic, use the vehicles, report results
AND be creative. Doing things the same way over and over have never worked before and won't work again just by repetition.
When corporate communication was part of my daily life, I used to drive my bosses nuts with the "How about this..." and "What if we did it this way..." Everybody's worried about being fired, but you're not going to lose your job by being creative. You're going to lose your job but not getting results. And a good way to do that is by being boring.
Look at new tools like digital signage. Write your newsletter articles differently. Use video more. Do whatever it takes to improve communication.
Don't be boring. Vent over.
For the next few days, I'm traveling across the New England area with a client of ours who's been piloting
digital signage for the past three months. They looked to MediaTile to help them augment and improve their employee communications efforts.
This is the halfway point of the pilot so it was a good time for me to travel around with the project manager. We'll be traversing by planes, trains and automobiles (one of my favorite movies) to make it all happen. What's particularly cool about the visits is that we are sitting down face-to-face with employee groups to solicit their feedback on what they think of the technology and NOT just walking around looking at the displays.
One of the challenges this company has faced over the years was caused by numerous acquisitions. Employees at these specific sites do not have any specific or noted loyalty or ties to the larger corporate brand. Their hope was communicating dynamically through digital signage would improve their internal branding efforts.
The way the MediaTile approach works is the larger corporate entity can embed their messages on screens everywhere whilte still granting local control to communicators. It's one of the few vehicles that can be corporate, regional and local - all at the same time - each with their own control and input.
We're also going to find out which messages resonate more than others, which messages have a larger impact, and which messages are more engaging. We want to hear what the employees really think. The goal is to to determine if this technology is improving communication to their field force.
If I have any updates or revelationsalong the way, I'll be sure to share them.
Later this week,
MediaTile has a cool opportunity to be part an internal event with
Draftfcb this Thursday in Chicago. They invited us, along with 19 other companies, to show off what we do and educate them on how our digital signage solution can help their clients.
This is a great showcase opportunity for Draftfcb employees to see the technologies that impact clients' business for years to come. Our own Roger Sanford and Heather Whalen will be there representing MediaTile and showing off our approach to digital signage so hopefully we come away with some great pictures and feedback.
What's interesting about Draftfcb is that they abide by "The 6.5 Seconds That Matter" mantra, recognizing the brief time marketers have to capture the attention of consumers and then quickly motivate them. Many businesses looking to improve communication with both internal and external audiences could benefit from the same approach.
Be daring. Be inspired. Be there." And we will with Draftfcb.
Why is it that Corporate Communications and Information Technology professionals can never seem to work well together? That was the recurring theme I heard over and over at the
IABC World Conference in Toronto.
It has to stem from the fact that each group may not fully respect what each group is responsible for doing, or, more likely the case, they don't actually show the respect they have for each other. I listened to how corp commers describe their IT departments. Just imagine what IT people say about us.
In talking to attendees about
digital signage for employee communications, every time this communications project became an IT project the communicator lost control. The communicator who is trying to deliver messages is then at the mercy of IT. I can remember feeling this way about past projects in my career. This apparent loss of control is not a good feeling. Communicators need to be in control of their messages.
So with our approach to digital signage and using the existing cellular networks, IT can be left out of the conversation. Not that they necessarily SHOULD be left out, but they can if the two sides aren't playing nice.
Companies who are successful have found an ally inside the IT department who understands what corporate communications is trying to do and "translates" it to the IT pros. Find your ally.
I'd love to hear your success stories of IT and corporate comms working together.
_____________________
Photo credit, Ben Margolin
It's not easy being in two places at once, but we are going to make it happen to help spread the digital signage gospel. . . so to speak.
I'm in Toronto for the
IABC 2010 World Conference, a collection of nearly 1,400 corporate communication, marketing and public relations pros, and Heather Whalen, MediaTile's VP of Sales, is in Las Vegas for the Strategy Institute's
Digital Signage Technology Summit, as well as
InfoComm. Heather's out there on her own but I at least I have the help of
MediaTile Canada.
Whew.
Both are very important events for MediaTile to be a part of so that's what we are going to do. We're each hoping we'll be able to provide some unique perspectives on the events, as well as our own commentary on how we are seeing digital signage impact the marketplace.
Should be fun. . . and a bit hectic. But that's how we love it.
I spent the day with one of our current digital signage customers who's looking to expand their network to help with a new internal branding campaign.
First, I love going behind the lines (so to speak) and seeing how our clients are using all sorts of measures to improve communication with employees.
Second, I love when they use digital signage to do it.
There divisions and lines of business have gone through some recent shuffling and they are banking on digital signage to help them through the transitions.
One of the features they love about MediaTile's approach is MediaCast, our
digital signage software. Because it is entirely web-based, they can now give more people access to contribute content to the network. And with Composer, our embedded content creation tool, they can now take advantage of flash templates so that content contributors can focus on the message and not the
This is our first time at the
National Restaurant Association's annual show and we're excited about it. AT&T invited us to be in their booth (#5666) and we're thrilled to be a welcomed guest. Please stop by the booth to learn more about how our digital signage can help your business.
We've laid our claim to
cellular digital signage and we're confident that NRA attendees will be impressed with what we have to show them.
I am far from a restaurant business expert (aside from liking to eat at them), but from what I've been told, there are many IT constraints inside the restaurants. But with signage connected on the cell networks, restaurant owners can update customers on the latest specials while also helping to educate employees on the latest promos.
If you'd like to learn more about the show, you can follow them on Twitter (
@NRAShow2010) or following with the hash tag
#nrashow. I'll provide as many updates as I can when I'm out on the show floor.
Absofreakinglutely.
I admit. I'm a pretty active user on Facebook. I keep my personal account updated, post photos and videos, manage a few Fan Pages (including
MediaTile's), and so forth. But it struck me today at what a great resource it can be for digital signage content.
Hear me out. Whether you're in retail or corporate communication, you're always trying to share your customers' stories, whether it's with other customers, your employees or hopefully both. But gathering these stories can be tough.
Well guess what? Facebook is awesome at this. I'm a fan of all of our digital signage customers' Fan Pages and see their updates in my news feed from time to time. One of our customers simply asked people what they liked about their service. This simple question received great answers.
They can now share these stories, not just on their digital signage, but across all of their platforms. The content is absolutely invaluable. True user-generated content is raw but also equally powerful. And it's content that customers and employees provide readily and freely if asked.
So not only can digital signage promote your social media platforms, but these social media platforms can also be a source for content. I believe in the business world they call this a win-win.
One of my favorite under-the-radar movies is
The Paper. It has a star-laiden cast of Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Marisa Tomei, Randy Quaid and so on.
Anyways, the movie is 24 hours in the life of a New York newspaper. (Think 24 the TV show before there was a 24.) There's one scene toward the end where Michael Keaton's character is trying to get a quote out of cop about a murder case. The cop finally says, "He didn't do it." It's exactly what Keaton wanted but couldn't believe the cop said the quote.
This week, I had my "He didn't do it" moment. I visited with an Ohio hospital group this week about installing MediaTile
digital signage to help with their employee communications. We were mapping out locaitons, content ideas, strategy plans and so forth when the director of communications said:
"It will revolutionize our corporate communications."
She said it. She actually said it. I thought I was the only one who thought this way, but apparently there are others. What a ride.
In case you haven't seen The Paper, I can't recommend it enough. Here's a clip I found on YouTube.
Sure, it's still a month and a half away, but I'm really looking forward to the
2010 IABC World Conference this June in Toronto. I've been a member of IABC for practically my entire career but my first world conference was last year in San Francisco.
Far and away, it was one of the best corporate communication shows I've ever attended. And according to the IABC website, they estimate more than 1,400 communications professionals will attend.
MediaTile exhibited last year and we'll be there again (booth #312). Many of the companies we are working with today on implementing digital signage at their companies I met at the 2009 conference. Given that Toronto is IABC's largest local chapter, I only expect more of the same.
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