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The importance of hyper-relevance: Seasonal messaging

Digital signage is the perfect venue for hyper-relevant, constantly updated messages — so, how do you pass the relevance test?

October 11, 2011 by Ben Stagg — CTO, Vital Media, Inc

The holiday season is quickly approaching — which means seasonal retail and brand messaging is already here. Digital signage is the perfect venue for these hyper-relevant, constantly updated messages. So, how do you pass the relevance test?

Technology now allows brands and retailers to personalize messaging using shopper insights for better targeted communication. Brands and retailers can then focus on shopper-specific criteria such as demographic intelligence driven by time of day or environmental conditions, including daily weather or seasonal sales windows. The ability to market products or features such as tire chains during a snowstorm or windshield wiper blades during a rainstorm is not just conceptually possible, but a reality based on current technology.

One of the major benefits of dynamic digital messaging is that it is able to receive various sources of information and tailor appropriate content, embodying hyper-relevance. It is then able to go a step further and demonstrate feature and benefit claims using images, animation and full-motion video. Because we are still in the central, primitive area of the brain in our attempt to prove relevance, anything we can do to inspire trust is valuable and engaging.

Relevance is more than just a way station on the road to influence — it allows for engagement. Engagement is sustained when shoppers feel "heard," and relevance must be sustained in order to maintain engagement and enable influence. The longer and deeper the relevance, the longer and deeper the engagement can be held.

Digital in-store technology allows for this level of relevance as it tailors messaging and offers a closer version of a one-to-one conversation. While it is unrealistic (for now!) to expect that we could have each shopper's name in bright shining lights when they walk in the door, that is not to say that we are not able to communicate something that appears to be just for them.

In this way, digital in-store technology shrinks the divide between the brand experience and life experience, and most innovative of all, makes it easy to do.

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