The Digital Signage Expert
Crime scene: Zürich, Niederdorfstrasse
Time: Friday, April 30th
Crime: Running winter olympics videos while promoting the spring sneakers collection!
I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Mild Friday afternoon and favorite window-shopping hours were completely ruined by this outrageous sight.
On pretty comfortable 23degrees, and chased by conscience because of my low fitness level, I stepped into one of many sports’ equipment shops in Niederdorfstrasse. Only blind would have missed the huge promotion that was guiding the attention of the buyer to the separate room. Yes, sneakers’ spring collection was there! As a typical consumer with bad conscience, I followed the signs obediently, and ended up infront of around 100 new examples. The room was small, obviously dedicated to promotions only. The highlight of the room were the two Samsung screens, running the advertising content… or, at least, I believe it was the idea… But, instead of promotional videos, filmed in greenery, with spring look&feel – the highlight of the room was running the videos from winter olympics. Instead of the green, spring feeling, one felt like going back to winter jacket. Should we emphasize the importance of the content that the digital signage networks are running? Hereby, I am nominating this example for the Digital Signage in Retail Flop of the year!
We hear a lot of talk about contextual relevancy in digital signage. This example is exactly what it is not. This misapplication of content not only gives digital signage a bad rap but also fails to fully exploit the medium’s potential to educate consumers or lift sales. It’s a shame we have to call attention to bad examples of digital signage to remind people what good digital signage can accomplish. I hope your next post, as amusing as this one is, will showcase an example of digital signage done right.