Article

Monster Media campaigns rake in awards for interactive DOOH

ESPN and Oxygen projects get noticed by the industry, and help define the future of interactive digital signage.  

December 7, 2009 by Bill Yackey

It's hard to miss a campaign from Monster Media when you pass by it on the street. Just walking by a store window might trigger dance music, a football player challenging you to a game, or you may even have to wade through a curious, already-engaged crowd.

For the last seven years the company has been installing interactive and gesture-based screens in public spaces, always pushing the technology envelope a bit further with each campaign.

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For ESPN, Monster created an in-window digital signage system that allows anyone walking past the displays to engage in a one-on-one challenge with a selected quarterback. The goal of the game is to catch as many footballs as possible, and high scoring game players are able to submit their scores in real-time and see how they measure up to users in other cities. The quarterback selection capability is paired with real-time updates and shows a countdown to the next Monday's game.

"Monday Night Football was our most dynamic application to date," said John Payne, president of Monster Media. "We created an actual gaming experience that looks good, not cheesy, and that stops people in their tracks in major cities. It takes enhancement of a brand to physical level."

The campaign has been running all fall in New York, Boston and Chicago and was designed to promote the 40th anniversary of Monday Night Football.

The installation was granted the "Competition Winner: 2010 Interactive Annual" award from Communication Arts Magazine, which Payne said excited the Monster creative staff.

"This award is the best of the best as far as digital arts and visual advertising goes," he said.

Communication Arts' "Interactive Annual" award is a competition of the best work being done for the Web, DVD, interactive kiosk and handheld devices. Categories include advertising, entertainment, information design, self-promotion and experimental/virtual community.

Monster was also presented with a DIGI Award last month at The Digital Signage Show in New York for a storefront window campaign for Oxygen's Dance Your Ass Off reality show. The award was for Best Interactive Content.

The Oxygen campaign featured an array of LCD screens behind an empty store window. As people passed by or approached the window, their presence would trigger dance music, to which the dancing contestants grooved to on-screen.

Application-wise, Monster's installations have traditionally been one step ahead of an industry that is steadily adopting interactive technology. The company was formed seven years ago by Payne and several others, and focused mainly on gesture-based floor projection technology. But it didn't take long before the group realized that in order to be effective, this type of digital advertising needed to be on a wall.

"There were a lot of problems with using the floor as a screen," Payne said. "We could never keep it clean, and there were no sightlines."

The company went several years creating gesture-based projections, such as the industry-famous Shark Reef ad in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. But now Monster has gone even further, now almost exclusively using LCD video walls for its interactive applications.

"LCD gives us more capacity not only to do the big macro gestural stuff but to do more pinpoint touch applications with capacitive touchscreens. It's brighter, more vibrant, able to run 24/7," Payne said.

Regardless of the display medium, the core of Monster's business has always been interactivity, which is becoming an ever-increasing trend in the digital signage space.

"Five to seven years ago if people could make content on your sign move it was like a UFO landed. People freaked out about that," Payne said.

But nowadays, thanks to the iPhone and other mobile devices, interactivity has proliferated almost to the point where users expect to be able to touch a screen, particularly if it is on eye level.

People's attachment and familiarity with their mobile phones has been the catalyst for Monster's next big initiative, mobile interactivity with digital signage.

Payne said his company now encourages each of its clients to add a mobile aspect to their campaigns. At first, the mobile applications were as simple as texting shortcode and getting responses back. Now the systems support using mobile phones to control content on the screen, as well as allow multiple users to interact at once.

"That's what advertisers really want - You are controlling the screen, you're engaged, the advertiser gathers information, and when you leave you have something you can go download," Payne said.

With both touch and mobile interactivity poised for growth in the industry in 2010, the future is looking bright for Payne and Monster Media, however, new campaigns require new innovations.

"With each campaign, clients want to top what others have done," Payne said. "Every 90 days to six months we have to keep evolving everything we do."