Article
Q&A: Ten questions on Wachovia's digital signage network
Tracey Crowe talks about the company's screen installation before and after its purchase by Wells Fargo.
October 27, 2009
DigitalSignageToday.com caught up with Tracy Crowe, of Wells Fargo Creative Services, to discuss the company's digital signage network from a deployer point of view. It should be noted that Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia in 2008, although the company has maintained both brand names.
1. Describe Wells Fargo's involvement with digital signage — number of screens, locations, etc. Wachovia launched a digital signage network in April of 2007. The company had previously subscribed to a somewhat customized Bloomberg Financial News service for display in our branches. The decision was made to create a completely customized Wachovia channel of content for those branches, both for cost reasons and to have an increased ability to promote Wachovia products and messages. Because of the extensive capabilities of our in-house television production facility, we estimated we could create that completely customized channel for about half the cost of the Bloomberg channel. So far, we have been on target with those cost savings. We currently have screens in both waiting areas and teller lines in over 1,200 branches across the country receiving what we called Wachovia Financial Center TV (FCTV). The content is all created in-house.
Our system consists of one channel of content broadcast over a satellite network to all sites. We use a Scala system to create and order the playlist that is aired. In late 2008, Wachovia was purchased by Wells Fargo, and the combined company is currently creating a Wells Fargo-branded channel to launch as Wachovia branches are converted to Wells Fargo branches.
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Tracey Crowe |
3. How has the currently installed network differed from your original plan? Our digital signage network has gone primarily according to our original plans in terms of the type of content displayed, the quality and overall design of the content and the frequency of new content. We had hoped to progress to a digital signage network with customized content down to at least a regional level by this point. However, a pilot program that was about to launch when the purchase of Wachovia by Wells Fargo took place has since been put on hold because of the merger.
4. What have been your biggest challenges with the network? One of the biggest challenges with our network has simply been creating new content on a regular basis and making sure that content is relevant to our customers. When we made the decision to start the network and bring all production in-house, we made the commitment to produce new content on a weekly basis. So our playlist consists of approximately seven to eight minutes of new content each week. Continuously identifying relevant content and maintaining that level of production is an ongoing challenge.
Another challenge has been determining if and how to use audio. We realize that audio is an important element in drawing the viewer's attention, but we also recognize that even with changing our content on a weekly basis, our branch personnel can get annoyed at hearing the same thing for a week. So our content has audio but is also designed to work visually if that audio is turned down or off.
5. How has the digital signage network influenced or changed customer behavior?
We just recently completed some measurement around Wachovia FCTV using both quantitative revenue data as well as qualitative Gallup survey data. We were measuring around two primary questions: 1) Does FCTV provide valuable information and create a positive, engaging customer experience, and 2) Does FCTV increase revenue on promoted Wachovia products? We were extremely pleased with the results.
For the revenue test, we promoted one product — a gift card — extensively for a specific time period. Two control groups were created; branches without FCTV during this period and the same branches with FCTV during the period one year earlier when no gift card promotion was conducted via FCTV. The final results indicated FCTV branches outsold non-FCTV branches by five percent. That's a significant sales bump within the branch environment.
For the more qualitative measurement, results from the Gallup questions indicated that of those who noticed and watched our Wachovia channel, 29 percent felt the messaging and content "provided very valuable information," an additional 43 percent felt the content "provided something of value" and six to seven percent reported asking about additional products.
6. Describe the content. Is it more promotional for the bank or to improve the customer experience? The Wachovia FCTV content is a mix between promoting Wachovia products and services and providing what we term value-added information and service. Of our seven to eight minute loop of content, approximately 33 percent is Wachovia product promotion. Another 33 percent is news, service and community-involvement information specific to Wachovia. The final 33 percent is what we term value-added information that includes generic consumer, economic and financial tips. Our philosophy has focused on creating a positive customer experience, and we don't believe we can do that by bombarding our customers with just sales information. We want to provide information of value that will help them in their financial and day-to-day lives.
7. What is the feeling among employees about the network? Employees in the branches have generally been very supportive and view our digital signage network as additional support for the messaging that needs to take place in the branches. In particular, our employees in the branches have noted the positive customer feedback coming from seeing segments about Wachovia's contributions to the communities that we serve and in particular our employee involvement in those communities such as building Habitat houses, volunteering at food banks, providing free financial literacy seminars and so forth.
8. Who updates the content? Do branches have local control? Wachovia has an extensive in-house television-production facility, and we produce all content for Wachovia FCTV within that facility. We use our proprietary satellite network to broadcast that content to all branches. There is no local control within the branch environment. The goal has been to create a system where we can provide more region-specific content, but we don't foresee having individual branches control that content.
9. What is unique about communicating with financial-services customers? One unique aspect of communicating with our customers is simply the environment and the time we have that potential viewer. Whereas most other retail environments are creating segments of no more than 10 seconds to impact a customer as they walk by, we have a customer in line and, if not exactly a captured audience, at least (it is) a less mobile audience. So we have a longer timeframe to have impact. Our segments generally run 20 to 30 seconds and occasionally up to a minute.
We are also able to know specifics about the demographics of the customers who visit the branch, the times they visit, how frequent they visit and so forth. Having that data allows us to design our content (to be) more specific to those demographics.
10. What information do you wish the digital signage industry would provide for deployers? My wish has always been for more information around designing content for specific environments and also around measurement. There's a wealth of information around systems, equipment, deployment, etc. but very little around the creative aspect of design, how to determine the right mix of content, the timing of segments in different environments and the potential impact of various types of content. The digital signage industry covers such a wide range of users, designers, manufacturers, system integrators, etc. and they're all incredibly unique within their environment. Information written about outdoor digital signs may have very little relevance to designing content within a financial environment. Creating content for a large chain retail store is also very different from our world. So there has been a challenge in simply finding good, relevant information about designing content in general but more specifically around the financial-services environment.
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