The Digital Signage Expert

Presenters

JCDecaux – Jeremy Male – CEO UK & Northern Europe

Kinetic James Copley, UK COO

JWT Paul Banham – Digital Creative Director

The Impressive Year
Another well attended breakfast briefing organised by The Screen at The Hospital Club in London. It was well attended with many of the older delegates yet with the appearance of many new faces. I didn’t expect less as all these events are successful and inspirational. They’ve hosted several forums over the last year with 50 speakers and an attendance of 800 delegates. This has put The Screen on the map of “must attend” events. A steady progressionof breakfasts to conferences and recently tours assures pedigree, allowing them to reach wider communities.

The question everyone asks me, how are you doing and where do you think the industry is now? As for me viewing the industry from a reporter’s eye, I did well thank you. The industry? From what I have reported and the frequency of installs I’d say the sector has lifted off the runway and is “Gear Up”. The economy, if it holds, will help propel this rapidly growing industry onwards. From my perspective I’d say there are cracks in the facade, yet they can be overcome with good management and sales team. As I mentioned at the beginning of this year, management has supplied us with a great kit bag, it was down to the salespeople now. So, all in all it has been a good year.

Is DOOH in the mainstream? Frankly, it’s not in everyone’s vocabulary yet, this I take from reading trade papers every day, we still need to educate more of the troops. It has however edged respectfully closer approaching the coveted tipping point with each day. As to investment into infrastructure I’d say it was commendable.

The JCDecaux Bombshell
Jeremy Male, CEO of JCDecaux U.K. and Northern Europe, kicked-off the event by underlining that JCDecaux has had a watershed year and will double its digital presence in rail and malls in the coming year. The investment they have made in their network allows them to reach more people everyday than all midmarket national press put together, and more than radio over a two-week campaign. With the UK the 2nd largest digital signage market behind China, they are expecting to double their footprint in the UK next year.

Without doubt it was events this year that has driven the digital signage market well, especially during the election, World Cup and Wimbledon. This helped with awareness among the agencies who will be seeking even more creative use of the platform. Similar to my own statement at the beginning of 2010, Male said that we’ve invested but now we need to do the marketing. One pound in every eight is being spent on DOOH and with the Olympics just around the corner this share could reach one in five by 2012.

JCDecaux will extend coverage of national rail and widen their Mall presence across the UK.
All this will be moved along by “The Power of Creative” whereby 52% of increase in market share comes from creativity. Yet still we are showing 65% of new media based on old media methods and mind-set. A lot of educating needs to be done.

By 2011 digital signage will be reaching 50% of the UK population, this fact means the industry is now mainstream and not a niche anymore.
Another interesting fact is that 80% of UK national digital signage can be found in London, national expansion is necessary. Male feels that a tipping point has indeed been reached and forecasts revenue of £115 million in 2011, the ever expanding national footprint will also attract a host of new brands helping the forecast.

Kinetic
According to Kinetic they own about 25% of market share, they also conclude that outdoor can now be classed as mainstream. The drivers being: Investment, Scale and the consumer.

Investment means continued rollouts, new formats, new environments and joining the mobile consumer.
In scale they see properties in all major cities and that all opportunities are well represented plus rail, they are assured that development will continue.
The consumer is being presented with an ever increasing sophistication of advertising with more interactivity plus facetracking.
To sustain the future more investment is needed, their growth expectation is 15% in 2011. Continued investment means they will retain and improve on flexibility, an important factor.

JWT
Paul Banham highlighted that today’s Poster/Billboard is well armed. With Bluetooth server, mobile, camera, touch and gesture interactivity it is well equipped to harvest marketing data by the bushel. Facial recognition is just scratching the surface. He agrees with other speakers that we’ve gone mainstream.

The future?   “Stop thinking it’s a poster”

James van Etten, Editor CLIPPINGs