Article

Digital signage a big presence at ISME

The In-Store Marketing Institute's event was heavy on technology as it affects the point of purchase.  

November 19, 2008 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance

Digital signage was well represented at last week's In-Store Marketing Expo in Las Vegas, chiefly in the Digital Signage Pavilion. Sponsored by the Digital Signage Association and Digital Signage Today, the pavilion was home to 25 companies that ran the gamut from cutting-edge hardware to amazing innovations in content creation.

"We're very excited about digital signage – we think it's potentially the greatest bright spot in the future of communicating with shoppers," said the show's executive director Peter Hoyt.

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At the INVENTIVE MEDIA booth, focus was on a metallic pedestal with a digital screen built into the top. Covering the front of each unit was a full-color skin, attached by magnetic strips. In about ten seconds, the unit can be totally repurposed with new static graphics by peeling off the skin and popping on a new one; as for the dynamic graphics, those are just as easily changed by swapping out a flash card.

THE BECKER COMPANY, which has a 40-year heritage designing POP materials and custom retail fixtures, was on hand with its stylish digital signage. Company president Joel Becker, whose father founded the company, said all of their screen campaigns are designed for vertically oriented screens. "You put it in horizontally, that's a TV," he said. "You put it in vertically, now you've got a sign."

Becker recently installed screens in the six-location Wisconsin grocery chain Trig's. They negotiate co-op ad purchases with the in-store brands, often by using events to bring people in and show them the system. For one recent event, Becker said 200 vendors came out to the stores to see the content system in action.

London-based OUTFORM used its booth to show about two dozen variations on its iDisplay, a modular unit that comes in seven- and 10-inch varieties, both of which are also available with a touchscreen option. The self-contained units run content loops from SD memory cards; larger iDisplay units can be outfitted with a product shelf emanating from the front.

CBS OUTERNET was on hand with statistics from some of its larger in-store networks: GameStop TV, which is currently in 4,000 stores; AutoNet, which serves up automotive info in 5,000 stores; and The Grocery Network, currently found in the checkout aisles of 1,500 groceries.

Traffic frequently bottlenecked around the ENCORE PRODUCTIONS booth, where a stunning "no glasses needed" 3D display showed some very convincing effects, thanks to a rendering engine that captures eight different images per frame. View video.

MADIX STORE FIXTURES offered demonstrations of its ShelfCast interactive branding shelves. Each shelf contains a small touchscreen, flush with the surface of the shelf. Content on the screens ties in with the printed graphics on the shelf and the surrounding merchandise areas. View video.

For sheer bigness, nobody was able to top THRUST MEDIA GROUP, whose display consisted of a large bus that had been outfitted with 10 LCD projection screens, five to a side. Using Vikuiti film from 3M, projectors inside the bus send vibrant HD content to the "windows," content that ranges from multiscreen scrolling messages to Xbox 360 games. Chief information officer Mark Woroch said there are currently 10 of the buses in production, and once completed they'll be shipped nationwide wherever the demand is. View video.

The content scrolling across the four side-by-side screens at the X2O MEDIA booth was impressive enough, but jaws dropped when it was revealed that the software pushing out that amazing creative was PowerPoint. Account manager Steven Lamphear demonstrated the tool – basically, the mother of all PowerPoint plug-ins – that allows anyone familiar with the ubiquitous presentation software to make some truly incredible, broadcast quality loops.

The giant iPhone-esque displays at the ECAST booth tantalized attendees with the promise of on-demand music video and interactive games. The company currently has 10,000 machines deployed, primarily in hospitality and nightlife locations, with an increasing emphasis on using the technology for interactive product demonstrations at retail. View video.

Representatives from ROKU were on hand to demonstrate their BrightSign digital signage and kiosk controllers. The colorful booth also showed off the company's high-def content delivery tool, BrightSign Network Manager.

DIGITAL VIEW used the show as an opportunity to demo its new ViewStream 400 player, a 1280x720p media player with built-in 120 gig storage space. The company also showed off its interactive "mini-app" for Suunto watches, an assisted selling app entirely housed in a 7-inch touchscreen mini-kiosk. View video.

The CAPITAL NETWORKS booth was massive, but probably the most crowd-catching thing in it was very, very small. Staffers wore the company's "personal digital signage" device on their lapels – a 2.5-inch, high-brite screen that loops content and grabs eyeballs. Aimed at retail sales teams, the devices get 8 hours of life on a single battery charge; those batteries are charged up on a docking station that also uploads new content and new scheduling rules each time the devices are plugged in. View video.

MAGNETIC, which manufactures a 3D stereoscopic add-on for high-def displays, showed off its impressive lenticular 3D system. Each frame in a piece of content is broken down into nine zones, meaning each bit of content is rendered nine times to produce an amazing three-dimensional effect. When standing in the "sweet spot" of the display, the results are truly lifelike and appear to be coming directly out of the screen with no "ghosting" or double vision.

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