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7 Seconds to Impact (Track 4, Content, Session 4)

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 9:00 to 10:00 PM

Moderated by Vanessa Hartnoll (Impetus Consulting, President)
Speakers: Kent Hodder (Met/Hodder, CEO/Exec. Producer), Axel Vera (Televisa Mexico, Digital Signage Prod. & Oper. Mgr.), and Pat Hellberg (NIKE, Director - Brand Design Media Group)

While I have heard two of the speakers before, this session turned out to be my favorite and most valuable session of the expo. Kudos to you all, although PC would have had a few laughs if he was in attendance! (each panelist had issues with their Mac, haha!). But I digress...

Nike was in attendance at the Strategy Institute's Content Summit in Vegas earlier this year and was a proud recipient of a Gold Fourth Screen Award in the brand advertising category for their Hawk campaign. We also observed a few of their other spots at that time, but my impression (and that of many others) was that the Nike spots looked like TV! We all know that digital signage is not TV and it was almost perplexing as to how and why we were awarding TV ads with big budgets and pleasing visuals.

This time around at the DSE, Nike delivered. Pat brought along several videos that were created for in-store, and they proved to be excellent examples. They were much shorter than the Hawk ad and were better suited for the environment. Several that I remembered and enjoyed:

• Air Max 360- This one featured high-res visuals of the product up close, rotating. Also showed a man running and then the text "Run on air".
• Nike Pro- This is their Under Armour style product which Pat notes came out first but UA caught them napping on. Message here is stay cool, stay dry, be comfortable. Again, high res close ups of the product.
• Nike Free- This shows a person's bare foot and uses computer animation to draw lines on it and then the product is shown. Pat jokes about how they got this spot created on the cheap: they gave an intern $50 and a free pedicure! You can see a different spot for Nike Free online.

Pat continued to discuss the Nike Retail Network, which does not sell advertising or promote price. For the digital network, Nike does not use an outside agency; Pat's division works with Nike's own digital and interactive guys. It's main goal is to enhance the brand and improve the in-store experience. Pat provided a great example of how they were able to create cost-effective spots for the digital network- by piggybacking on a Nike still shoot they were able to create 14 videos from 2.5 hours of shooting.

Pat suggests using existing photo shoots to create unique content for the medium. He says that product is king so the product must be shown and you have to give customers a reason to watch.

Kent Hodder stepped up to the plate and mentioned his experience with Meijer's network and how they were able to make quicker decisions due to being family-run. He also stated his preference for portrait mode and explained that while full screen has been shown to be more impactful, they often use multi partitioned layouts. For the grocery environment, they approached it as a no dwell zone, they kept it simple, and treated the digital signage more like a billboard than tv. For many spots, existing assets were utilized from tv and radio. Keeping an image or text of the product and/or logo was a general guideline.

Some of the creative content he displayed (in portrait):

• Edy's- logo at top, TV spot in middle
• Shrek and M&Ms- TV ad on top half, logo on bottom. Call to action: get M&Ms at checkout.
• Dole- used billboard campaign
• Aquafina- used radio campaign
• Super Nanny Tips- logo at top, video tip in middle
• Coke Rewards- 15sec spot was significantly better than 30sec
• Hershey's Kiss- "Your cart looks sad" (in big text) followed by a closeup of Hershey Kiss

Kent's suggestions:

• The 7 second spot has to work without audio
• Have brand/product displayed at all times
• Programming- longer form at higher dwell time areas (ex: checkout)
• Your intuition is often wrong. Make sure to test. Companies like DS-IQ can make sense of data and provide measurement.
• Don't take a case study and run too far, there are far too many factors. One example: emotional ad was far more effective than appetite ad. After a holiday, the appetite ad won.

Axel Vera spoke about his experience with Televisa Mexico and the Wal-Mart de Mexico network, which operates in 300 stores and reaches approximately 60 million people each month. As most know, the Wal-Mart network has caught a lot of criticism in the past for having their displays too high and for resembling TV.

Axel comes right out and states that it [digital signage] is not tv and later adds that it is necessary for the screens to be higher because of forklifts, among other reasons. He parallels the in-store network with billboards, as shoppers will not stop in certain areas of the store much like people do not stop their car to get out and look at a billboard.

Their focus has been to keep the messages shorter and more frequent. 7 seconds is a proper duration for an ad because a 25 foot approach to the screen takes 5-7 seconds.

Axel's other observations from the Wal-Mart network:

• It is easier to move smaller brands in than larger brands, as bigger brands demand data.
• Hypersonic sound is often necessary. Looping audio can make employees "really really crazy" and cause them to cut cables!
• In the dwell zone areas, longer form content is displayed such as "how to use" segments.
• MPEG 4 video is used in many areas, but higher res video is used in electronics.
• Content duration- no more than 10s in aisles and no more than 15s in dwell areas.
• Call to action is necessary!
• Regionalizing content is important, as some areas use it differently (ex: pesticides).

Axel also brought along some GREAT content examples:

• Coffee Ad- static graphic is displayed on left half, video with call to action is displayed on the right half
• Pepsi spot feat. Trio- Da Da Da TV spot was inspiration for digital signage spot. In the DS piece, three Pepsi cans mimick the movement of the three band members from the TV spot. The same music track played in the background.

If anyone has any of the content examples, please send them over!