subject: Digital Signage: Dynamic Versus Static Messaging [print this page] Digital signage is greatDigital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great.
That paragraph gets an A for consistency, but an F when it comes to building reader interest and holding reader attention. You dont need a Ph.D. in English or communications to understand why. Its repetitive, dull and boring.
How about the signs hanging in your establishment? Week after week, month after month, customers and prospects see the same printed message on those signs. Do you see the similarity between the opening paragraph of this column and those signs?
Sure, your customers and prospects might have read those printed signs the first -and even the second- time they walked into your establishment. But what about now? Have they given them a second glance for months?
The tendency to not want to change printed signs is understandable. Printing is expense, both in terms of money and time. Think about the process for a moment. You or someone in your organization must conceive the message, create the design, assemble the pieces and depending upon the complexity of the project and the quality desired- hand off the project to a printer, who puts it in his queue of jobs, or drive to a quick-print service and wait for the job to be completed.
Once printed and displayed, the new sign has a brief life as a fresh communications tool. Soon, its been seen by customers and prospects numerous times and it fades into the background somewhere between the pictures on the wall and the paint. At that point, the cycle begins again.
Contrast the effort, time and expense of creating static printed signs with the dynamic, easily changed messaging thats possible with digital signage. Scrolling text, animated clips, motion graphics, video and sound are all effective components on a well integrated digital signage message. Each is easily added. Doing so is made even easier by digital signage templates that are about as difficult to use as a Microsoft PowerPoint template.
Many digital signage users report being able to playback their initial messaging within a few hours of loading digital signage software and templates onto their computers. Updating those messages also is simple, requiring as little as a few minutes to a couple of hours per week, depending on how extensive that messaging maintenance is.
The dynamic messaging offered by digital signs also exploits the human response to motion. A printed sign is static; it does not move, nor does it change. Digital signs offer dynamic communications. Text can scroll across the bottom of the screen. Weather graphics can be automatically modified in response to changing conditions. Animated logos and graphics can fly through view, and video obviously is filled with motion.
Incorporating some or all of these elements into a digital sign message adds movement. That taps into the natural human tendency to direct ones eyes and attention to something in motion, which is a tremendous advantage for anyone with a message to convey.
Thus, leveraging the power of digital signage versus using static print delivers two important advantages: the flexibility to change messaging quickly and easily and the ability to attract the attention and interest of patrons. With benefits like that, its easy to see why I say digital signage is great.
