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The Big Question!

October 3, 2010 by Steven Gurley

"What problem are you trying to solve?" That question has been the driving force behind my entire career since graduating from college.

My first job out of college was with an information technology and business process outsourcing company called Electronic Data Systems (“EDS,” as it was known by most people). A brilliant businessperson founded EDS by the name of Ross Perot. If you’re old enough to remember, Ross ran for president against George Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992.

When I joined EDS, the company had about 6,000 employees and a little over $400 million in revenues. When I left EDS 21 years later, the company was generating over $22 billion in revenue and had over 140 thousand employees. I attribute EDS’ success to the common sense principles and pragmatism that Ross Perot instilled in every facet of the company.

Common sense and pragmatism. Yes, that was the foundation behind that one simple question: “What problem are you trying to solve?” You see, Ross taught us that if you could clearly understand the problem — specifically the customer’s problem — then you’d be clearly focused on delivering a solution. Ross knew and repeatedly proved that customers would pay handsomely for solutions to their problems.

When I started working for Symon Communications, one of my job responsibilities was to participate in shaping the industry in which Symon was a major player. As I surveyed the industry, it was clear to me that there was no single answer to the question, “What problem are you trying to solve?” In fact, the more people I talked to around the industry the more it became clear that there was no common view of the problem.

Why no common view? It was simply because there was no common view or understanding of the customer. It seemed that the customer varied depending on whom a particular respondent was targeting within the digital signage value chain. For example, some felt the customer was advertisers or their agencies. Some felt the customer was the AV integrator. Some felt the customer was the venue owners. Some felt the customer was the digital signage software providers … and on and on it went.

In the end however, it does not matter who you are or who your company targets in the value chain. The customer is ultimately the viewer. After all, if people don’t watch what is put up on the screens, then everyone along the value chain loses.

If someone were to ask me: “What problem are you trying to solve?” I’d say it was to understand the viewers of our technology and content. To understand what they like to view, when they like to view it, why they view it and how they would prefer to view it.

As I have worked to understand viewer behaviors and patterns, it has become clear that there are many different viewers of our technology, many different motivations for viewing, many different times in which the viewing is done and so forth. The one thing, however, that has surfaced as being common to nearly every viewing experience is how viewers prefer to view the message being delivered.

As I have written and discussed on many occasions, viewers of digital content are increasingly turning to mobile technologies as their preferred viewing mechanism. Does this mean that there is no role for screens attached to walls, hanging from ceilings or fastened on shelving end-caps? Absolutely not, but it does mean that if the problem you are trying to solve is to get people to engage with your content, then one must understand that mobile is increasingly playing a larger role in the delivery of content.

I will be using this blog along with my personal blog and my industry blog at the Digital Screenmedia Association to help the industry understand how mobile technologies are fitting into the digital signage ecosystem and are being used to deliver digital content.

About Steven Gurley

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