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Treating change as opportunity fuels innovation, growth, profit
Digital Signage Today joined David Levin, CEO and co-founder of Poppulo, and Sam Bufton, president and chief operations officer at Poppulo, to hear more about how embracing an ethos of change as opportunity (not a threat) brings success in business, ESG goals and more.
February 14, 2023 by Daniel Brown — Editor, Networld Media Group
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Sam Bufton, president and chief operations officer at Poppulo. Image provided. |
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David Levin, CEO and co-founder of Poppulo. Image provided. |
How do you survive in a time of unprecedented change, both in your industry and the global economy? The answer is, you don't. More specifically, instead of white-knuckling it through change to survive, you lean into change as the door to unforeseen growth and opportunities.
The answer involves viewing every change as a source of opportunity instead of as a threat, along with keeping people at the center and using a holistic approach to connect humans with each other, according to our conversation with David Levin and Sam Bufton at Poppulo, a digital signage firm that recently completed a merger including FourWinds and SmartSpace.
Sam Bufton, president and chief operations officer, joined Poppulo in the fall of 2022 and brings a fresh perspective to the digital signage industry. Learning the value of a holistic perspective and of novel solutions aiming to connect human beings amid intense isolation during the pandemic and lockdown period, Bufton retains a passion for keeping the end goal in mind: connecting customers to each other on a human level, regardless of the use case and industry, with consistent messaging across platforms and devices, particularly as hybrid work environments grow and evolve.
"This is a rapidly expanding area, and as organizations are continuing to work through bringing people back to the office, everything that's going on from an economic or an environmental or health and safety situation, this is a massive growth area, and one that I'm excited to jump into and drive and deliver those outcomes, making sure that we have timely, relevant information that's being presented to people wherever they are, and that organizations have the opportunity to do it all in a very seamless and integrated way," Bufton said.
Change is the door of opportunity
The rapid evolution of digital signage and communications in the post-COVID world is rooted not in cynicism and dismay, but in leveraging new opportunities to grow and meet needs — a mindset that has served well since the birth of the company in 2005, according to David Levin, co-founder and CEO at Poppulo. "I think overall, it's more on the opportunity side than the challenge side," Levin said. His strategy has been driven by the big picture realization that digital signage offers so many advantages over analog, including sustainability, and he has felt from the beginning that digital signage will inevitably come to be the dominant signage form — at least in terms of analog signs.
"The only thing that's going to change that is what happens to the personal display. Do we end up with these augmented reality headsets, where information is coming at us on our own device in a way that does start to take away the need for public displays?" Levin asked. He thinks this could be true many years from now, but not any time soon. "I think it's years out there," he said.
In terms of the digital signage industry rebounding and adapting after the lockdown years, however, things get complex, and the industry will likely see impact in terms of specific categories. "To me, there's way more opportunity than there is challenge," Levin said. "If there is a challenge for this upcoming year, I think it's more related to macro-impact on different verticals. For example, retail is probably going to get hurt a bit. Financial services is still very strong."
Oversaturation, screen fatigue? Another opportunity!
Leveraging a similar mindset, Bufton believes digital signage succeeds when it treats each challenge as an opportunity to grow and develop (redolent of the famous Michael Caine quote, "use the obstacle"). A key example is leaning into so-called "screen fatigue," where people are overwhelmed with too many messages in too many channels — and using this as a chance to develop new, more streamlined ways to engage users, whether in B2B, B2C or even internal organization communications.
"I think that historically, companies have tended to look at this communication as sort of like a lower level, service kind of capability, with each individual team or department publishing their own information," Bufton explained. "You start to get that internal competition for awareness and roles and engagement. And so I do think that the opportunity here is for organizations to really up-level and to recognize this is truly a strategic capability, and that this is something that they need to steer into from a holistic messaging perspective — truly engaging people and getting the right message through to the right people at the right time and minimizing that internal competition.
"You see a lot of organizations starting to spin up something like the chief employee experience officer or something like this. This messaging component really needs to be bested at that level within the organization so that you're getting this holistic, consistent, focused messaging to the entire team. I think that's really the big opportunity."
Other challenges that can be reframed as opportunities, in Bufton's view, include using technology and innovation to solve labor shortages and budget pressures, particularly in verticals facing challenges in the coming year. Also, data continues to grow in its importance, so moving away from information silos into a sharing-focused ecosystem is vital for the forward-thinking company. "I think there's going to be increased importance on systems that are deeply connected with all of the sources of information, as opposed to having information silos," Bufton said. "We need more connectivity, more integration between all the technology within that company. And then you really need that strategic view of kind of like, how do you unleash all of that information and make it shareable across the whole company?"
ESG goals
As ESG grows in importance in the industry, how can the digital signage industry target issues like accessibility?
"It starts with having a diverse team inside of the building, so that you're bringing the diverse perspectives and ideation and creativity from that population," Bufton said. Once again, instead of being a negative challenge, changes like mergers and international hybrid workforces can actually help this very goal, bringing a wealth of perspectives to companies and teams.
"We have a design team who are focused on making sure that design standards actually build in accessibility from scratch," Bufton added, explaining that progress happens when accessibility is made a conscious strategy goal by the stakeholders. "So it's a huge area of focus for us, because it is a huge area of focus for all customers, right? They need all of this."
And, instead of viewing the many available channels and media (and the many categories of accessibility optimization) as a negative challenge to be overcome, instead viewing it as a cornucopia of opportunities for novel ways to reach people, adds a layer of possibility, creativity, and joy to the effort. "It opens up a very broad palette of accessible communication mechanisms to the organization," she added.
Similarly, making sustainability one of the major goals and metrics of success is the first step to making big strides. Even though the business is about 90% software, Levin explained that the company made a goal to reduce carbon impact by 50% by 2030, and has made strides with a variety of creative strategies, including buying carbon offsets and encouraging the EV revolution.
"The biggest thing for our industry, in my mind, is to get the transportation industry to move to electric and other sorts of sustainable energy," Levin added. "And that's gonna benefit everybody in our industry because getting these screens moved around because they're big and they're heavy, actually has a significant carbon impact and right now we're paying to offset that."
It's about people
Bufton tied together the lessons and strategies with a singular focus on the user experience, a statement eminently applicable across digital signage and marketing categories. "Our success is really tied to our customer success in terms of engaging the people that they're trying to communicate with," she said.
The key to engagement? She said: "Figuring out: how do you make it accessible, digitally, impactful, meaningful, relevant, timely — so that you're actually landing the message at the right time with the right person in the form that it's best for them to consume?"
About Daniel Brown
Daniel Brown is the editor of Digital Signage Today, a contributing editor for Automation & Self-Service, and an accomplished writer and multimedia content producer with extensive experience covering technology and business. His work has appeared in a range of business and technology publications, including interviews with eminent business leaders, inventors and technologists. He has written extensively on AI and the integration of technology and business strategy with empathy and the human touch. Brown is the author of two novels and a podcaster. His previous experience includes IT work at an Ivy League research institution, education and business consulting, and retail sales and management.
Included In This Story
Poppulo (formerly FWI)
Poppulo (formerly FWI) is the leading enterprise software company transforming customer and employee experiences with digital signage applications and omnichannel corporate communications. Find out why 4,500+ customers rely on Poppulo to power a variety of digital signage applications across multiple industries.
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