McDonald's serves up digital signage

In Chicago, a newly rebuilt McDonald's incorporates content-managed digital signs. If successful, the installation could take digital signs from novelty to common-place status in McDonald's stores.

Operations manager Wayne Adamczyk has managed McDonald's stores for more than 30 years. In this blue-collar, south-side neighborhood where realtors still advertise in Polish, Adamczyk pays close attention to his customers, many of whom he knows by first name. He has no doubt the signs already have been successful.

"It's very difficult for me to measure return on investment," Adamczyk said. "But it's very easy for me to go to five stores within 10 minutes of here, and customers there talk about this. I want people to say ‘This is my kind of McDonald's.' It's all about personalizing the location."

Adamczyk said he wanted to give the signs a Las Vegas feel, with lots of color and motion. He said traditional in-store signs can't compete, because they are too easily lost in the surroundings too easily.

"I can ask a manager what's on the (traditional) signs out here and they can't tell me, because after two days it's wallpaper," Adamczyk said.

TAP TV built the deployment in three different parts running on the same system.

Eight 15-inch LCD flat screens set side-to-side on the face of a ceiling over-hang above the registers greet customers. The screens show synchronized marketing content continuously. For example, a McDonald's logo flashes onto a screen on the far right and zooms to the screen on the far left. Similar cross-screen effects are done with promotions on premium coffee and breakfast dishes.

Then there are 42-inch screens in the dining areas that run action sports videos and McDonald's ads. The screens are divided into sections. The videos play in the largest portion of the screen. Along the left side, scrolling full-motion video previews invite customers to text short codes from their mobile phone to change the video.

"Think of this like a video jukebox," TAP TV chief operations officer Tim Dorgan said.

Dorgan said the phone numbers collected when customers text in short codes were not yet being used for marketing, other than a ‘Thank you' message broadcast back to each user. But collecting the numbers could let them later send more promotional messages to users.

The third part of the deployment, inside the Playland, consists of another big screen with a camera and, across the room, a three-foot-tall, Grimace-purple kiosk. The touchscreen plays cartoons and marketing content. Kids can use the kiosk to choose which cartoons will run. For birthday parties and special occasions, a manager code can stop the video and turn on the camera, allowing the children to see themselves on TV.

The nerve center is the store's tiny office, which looks like a server room, including the several CPUs the digital signs require, and the many other computers required to run a modern McDonald's. TAP TV chief executive John Malec said the Linux-based computer systems use 2.2ghz AMD processors, Invidia graphic cards and 250 gigabytes of storage per computer – which gives many of their clients more than 1 terabyte of content storage.

He said TAP TV had almost completed a user-friendly GUI toolkit which would enable clients to develop their own in-store television advertising on-site.

"We already have the toolkit built," Malec said. "We just don't have the ‘user-friendly.' That will be rolled out in two to four weeks."

The very technical behind-the-scenes technology couldn't look simpler from the front end. Throughout the store, logos and commercials in bright, friendly McDonald's colors continually bounce around. Early on a recent Thursday morning, customers stared at the flashing images while they ate breakfast. Robin Basilitis said it was her first visit back to the location since the store was rebuilt.

"The old one didn't have monitors," she said. "They look nice. Nice coloring."

Maria Escoto ate her breakfast sandwich in Playland, with her 2-year-old daughter, and had picked up a birthday party info card. They watched the plasma TV together.

"I'm watching Scooby Doo," Escoto said.

Adamczyk is pleased with his new method of reaching customers, and the only question he still harbors about the system after seeing his customer's reactions was how to expand it. His answer: An $80,000 outdoor digital sign hung under the store's traditional golden arches. The Optec sign, which is actually two 6' x 12' digital signs hung back-to-back on the sign post (where the old clear-plastic-letter signs are usually placed) would play the same TAP TV content visible in-store.

"You're going to see the same thing out here that you can in there," Adamczyk said. "(His digital signs are) a work-in-progress. They're baby steps."