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Burger King, Samsung deliver top digital signage lessons

With a tool as diverse as digital signage, we can always learn something new. Recently on Digital Signage Today, we learned how to make digital signage simple and effective with Burger King and how to draw customers away from their phones by…making them charge their phones with a Samsung interactive display.

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September 5, 2019 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator

This is part of a monthly series looking at the top digital signage lessons from articles and blogs on Digital Signage Today.

With a tool as diverse as digital signage, we can always learn something new about how to use it for maximum effectiveness. This previous month on Digital Signage Today, we learned how to make digital signage simple and effective with Burger King and how to draw customers away from their phones by…making them charge their phones with a Samsung interactive display. We also learned that measuring ROI for digital signage becomes much easier once you have clear goals in place.

I'll take digital signage to go

Burger King has been in the news recently for its Impossible Whopper, a vegetarian alternative to the Whopper that is supposed to taste like real beef. The QSR has never been a stranger to innovation, as its digital signage proves.

At one Burger King location, it used displays in various corners of the restaurant to deliver content such as:

• Newest products.
• Job offerings.
• Movie trailers and entertainment.
• Loyalty program information.
• Dynamic temperature and weather conditions content.

All this content was on simple unintrusive displays, which would only up the volume when it was playing the latest movie trailers. What made the display truly effective was that it delivered simple information and used natural techniques to draw in audience's attention, like the aforementioned volume increase when playing trailers.

Burger King's displays also regularly looped through content, so it never got stale even when sitting still to eat a meal.

Put the phone away

One big problem with non-mobile advertising is how do you get customers to look up from their phones to even pay attention to the message. Samsung found an interesting way to accomplish that task with an interactive phone charging display.

The cell phone and display manufacturerpartnered with OOH advertising company JCDecaux Singapore, a subsidiary of JCDecaux, to craft displays to allow users to charge their phones at multiple bus stations in Singapore.

The main purpose of the display was to advertise the Wireless PowerShare feature of the Samsung Electronics Galaxy S10+, which allows users to share power between phones by simply putting phones on top of each other.

With the displays in particular, customers could place their phones vertically against the display to charge them. When not in use, the displays would show advertisements from the Galaxy S10+ as well as an attract screen telling customers to "Charge up while you wait. Power up your Qi-compatible device with Wireless PowerShare," according to a video.

One way to get customers to engage with your digital signage is to give them a very tangible incentive such as charging up their cell phone. Sometimes it can be difficult to clearly communicate the benefit for customers to pay attention to an advertisement or to take action, but by utilizing interactive signage, you can more easily make your case.

How am I supposed to measure this?

Simply throwing money at digital signage(or any advertising tool for that matter) won't deliver the best return on your investment. If you really want to get a good ROI, you got have some guidelines down, which a recent story on Digital Signage Today provided.

First you need to ensure you have clear objectives. What is the main goal of your signage? Is it to increase sales, increase staff efficiency, better customer satisfaction?

Next you need to consider factors such as time frame. For example, what is going to be your total cost of ownership of the digital signage over time? You have to consider factors such as updates, repairs and training.

Lastly you need to measure how your customer's feedback both before and after installing digital signage. This can help you determine the real impact of the investment and if it is meeting your overall objectives and goals.

About Bradley Cooper

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Bradley Cooper is the editor of ATM Marketplace and Food Truck Operator. He was previously the editor of Digital Signage Today. His background is in information technology, advertising, and writing.

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