By Dane Grover

Anyone who has ever tried to sell a municipality on a brand new idea or product, can relate to the story of how the Mauston Room Tax Committee got digital signage.

The City of Mauston is located on Interstate 90/94 exactly half-way between Chicago and Minneapolis. While it’s a natural place to stop for a fill-up or a meal, city officials are constantly looking for ways to draw people from the interstate into the rest of the city and surrounding area. After all, the Mauston area boasts the second and fourth largest lakes in the state of Wisconsin, and offers all kinds of activities like boating, fishing, horseback riding, camping, riding the bike trails, snowmobiling, etc.

So Mauston created a Room Tax Committee to oversee the room tax collected from guests at local motels. According to Wisconsin law, the major portion of the room tax funds must be used to promote local tourism.

This is where I entered the scene. I work for Innovation Marketing Systems, Inc., a Midwest company that not only makes digital signs, but also provides a Web-hosted solution for accessing them and getting them to generate revenue for the sign owner. One day I was talking to one of the local restaurant owners about digital signage, and he said, “This is something the Room Tax Committee might be interested in.” He was a member of the committee, so he got me on the agenda for their next meeting.

Knowing I would have one shot and one shot only at presenting to the committee, I pulled out all the stops. I decided to take a digital sign, pre-loaded with ads promoting the Mauston area. I got there early and set up the sign so it would be running when the members arrived.

I’m not sure that they heard a word I said during my presentation; they were mesmerized by the digital sign.

One member of the committee, Sheila Marx, later told me, “It was fun and colorful. It was obvious that people would watch it. I mean, if you could get us to watch it like we did, we figured anyone would watch it.”

Knowing how municipalities worked, I knew that it would be a long haul before they would approve anything. And it was, with a few setbacks here and there. But they were a forward-thinking bunch and really wanted digital signage, so we all stuck with it. They now own two outdoor digital signs located in the fuel aisles at the Mauston Park Oasis convenience store and restaurant.

“This is really an excellent fit,” Sheila Marx said, “because it tells all our incoming visitors what is going on in the area.”

Although the City of Mauston owns the signs, it decided that Jamie Navis, owner of the Mauston Park Oasis, should get some display time for graciously allowing them to place the signs there. So the city assigned a username and password to the Mauston Park Oasis, and the c-store/restaurant manages its own ads.

Sheila Marx from the Room Tax Committee said that the two people managing the digital sign content are amazed at how easy it is through Innovation Marketing System’s Web-based control panel. They create the ads in the graphics program they are most familiar with – one even creates her ads in PowerPoint and saves the PowerPoint screen as a .jpg – and then they log onto the Web site with their username and password and easily upload the ad, setting the dates and times they want it to run. They can schedule content as far into the future as they want to.

The funding for the digital signage came from the room tax at area motels, but they have already had several businesses – mostly real estate agencies – express interest in advertising on the digital signs. So that could easily be another revenue stream for them. All they would have to do is assign a username and password to each business for a specified amount of time, let the businesses manage their own ads, and then sit back and collect the checks.

In addition, Innovation Marketing Systems soon will be launching the U-Choose Network – a digital signage network where advertisers can place their content, and then digital sign owners can choose which ads to run and get paid for running them. So that would be a third revenue stream for the Room Tax Committee.

Sheila Marx said there were several things that influenced the Mauston Room Tax Committee’s decision to get digital signage:

-          The ease of use

-          It was a new medium

-          People have changing lifestyles and this was a way to get their attention while they were doing something else

-          Innovation Marketing Systems, Inc. was very easy to work with

Sheila said, “We just thought it was the most innovative idea, the most innovative plan, and everyone just jumped on it.”

In fact, they are so pleased with their outdoor digital signs that they are in the process of purchasing two much larger ones from Innovation Marketing Systems, Inc. place in a large welcome display near the interstate.

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