Overview and Impressions

by Josh Coffman

Digital Signage Jeopardy!

The Strategy Institute's Building Your Successful Digital Signage Business 2007 took place November 28th and 29th at the Hilton Indian Lakes Resort in Bloomingdale, IL (Chicago area). The familiar sponsors (LG, Peerless, Arbitron, Reflect Systems, Aerva) were all there with the addition of a few new ones (iGotcha Media, Dynamax, ChyTV, Roku). Overall, I felt that last year's event provided more applicable information. This year still featured a lot of highly knowledgeable speakers and advanced attendees, but it required a grind with the limited networking time to get the good info.

Positives

• Highly knowledgeable and experienced speakers and attendees
• Networking opportunities

Negatives

• A lot of basic information. A moderator asked how many people were planning on launching a network in the near future and very few raised their hands. Not sure why a majority of presentations were geared towards newbies.
• Agency panel and speakers were extremely basic, vague, predictable. Last year's event had a session where 3 network owners and operators pitched ad veterans like Jack Sullivan.
• Several sessions did not have Q&A sessions because they went too long. The Q&A could have saved the sessions with basic information.
• A handful of speakers left immediately after their presentation. This isn't very respectful of other speakers or the event as a whole.
• There was a lot of vendor push. Many speakers spent considerable time giving the attendees a full history of their company. My favorite was when the moderator asked for the panelist's elevator pitch and ChyTV's Jeff Cohen proceeded with a 10 minute answer, noting several times that their solution provides the best graphics of them all. We also were subjected to some shots between vendors. "My company is older than yours!" - "My solution is unhackable!" - "Mine has multiple patents and can even bake brownies!".

Recap

Some of this will be old news, but here is what came of the conference:

• Agency people said that there are too many of us and too few of them. They would like to buy digital out-of-home (DOOH), but they need it to be easier. They want us to speak their language (i.e. CPM) but also to be held to higher standards than traditional media. Sometimes, DOOH is only included because it shows the client they are progressive. Offer reach. Offer it for free. One agency panelist notes that if you bring him males 18-34 or women with 2 children, he will always buy. Another suggests to think hard about how you can carve an attractive niche. Then we hear it has to have reach though. So niche with big reach. Sweet.
• The crowd is told repeatedly to partner, partner, partner. Partner with vendors, partner with competitors, do joint proposals, etc. It is noted that nobody out there is doing it all yet. While true, anyone involved in this emerging industry more than a few weeks should know that partnerships are necessary.
• After the interactive panel, the majority of attendees raised their hands when asked if offering interactivity is where digital signage needs to go. Apparently, digital signage = interactive signs/kiosks. Or maybe the crowd was just brainwashed from watching the Microsoft Surface video or from Avenue A. Razorfish's Loca Moda/Clear Channel/Hotels.com airport project, which has (admittedly) no idea on whether or not it will be a cost effective way to capture double-opt in SMS users.