DailyDOOH

We see that the Digital Screenmedia Association is offering a free membership to qualified deployers, so if you’ve been considering joining, this looks like the time to do so.

This will save you paying any initiation fees – up to $2,000 in savings!

The DSA is an independent non-profit association whose mission is to advance the growth and excellence of the global digital signage, interactive kiosk, and mobile community through advocacy, education and networking.

Its 700-member community includes buyers, deployers, manufacturers, integrators, consultants, agencies, and participants from every corner of the digital signage, mobile, and interactive technology universe.

By joining the DSA, you’ll have access to the industry’s largest community of experts, experience, knowledge, networking opportunities, publications, and much more.

Membership benefits include:

• Exclusive access to over 450 deployers;
• Sharing success stories directly with other members through email;
• New networking events;
• Access to DSA’s popular ROI Calculator, and new tools such as the DSA Map;
• More targeted leads from the DSA’s Project Help portal.

Paul Flanigan, DSA executive director says that the organization will be introducing more in the coming months, including a revamped website and participation councils, online tools to use for yourself or with your clients, and much more!

Deadline for this free offer is May 23.

And if you are a past member of DSA and are considering returning, you will receive a special discount fee of $495 regardless of your company size, and DSA will waive the initiation fee too!

To find out if you qualify for these offers, click here and choose the right membership level, and fill out the form.

If you have questions, contact Flanigan at paulf@digitalscreenmedia.org

With our North America editor Gail being at least 99 years old AND with dodgy knees, walking too far at events is always a problem…

However this year in Orlando, we are here this week for #2014SignExpo which kicks off Thursday (although there is an Almo event we are also looking forward to Wednesday) we have solved the transport problem (shown above) for good.

Scotland’s Premier ‘Out of Home’ operator Forrest Media are continuing to set a blistering pace in the North of the United Kingdom, today announcing three new major developments (one of which is digital) which are certain to make a big impression on the Scottish OOH Media landscape.

• Edinburgh City Gateway is the latest in Forrest Media’s CityScreen digital network and becomes their fifth giant screen. With a display area of 80 square metres, this massive new screen is the largest in Scotland, with huge impact on the Western Approach Road and goes ‘live’ on May 5th. It’s positioned on a major feeder route into the City Centre, overlooking the biggest Sainsbury’s store in Scotland and its proximity to Murrayfield Stadium (the home of Scottish rugby), means this truly is the way to gain impact and domination in Scotland’s Capital City
• XPRESSWAY GLASGOW sees the launch of Forrest’s spectacular new backlight tower on the Clydeside Expressway. Each static face displays 50 square metres of hi-resolution image, illuminated by state of the art LED technology (100% brighter than standard backlights). The perimeter mouldings will feature unique LED ‘HALO’ lighting, with exact colour matching to the advertisers specific pantone reference. The launch advertiser is FORD KUGA, out of Mindshare and Kinetic
• Last but by no means least is The BIG ONE – the largest banner ever offered overlooking a Motorway in Scotland. But not just any Motorway, the M8 at the Kingston Bridge in Glasgow (the busiest motorway bridge in Europe) and head-on to 5 lanes of non-stop traffic. The banner will be unmissable to drivers exiting the City Centre and heading for Glasgow Airport and the West. Measuring in at a massive 30m x 15m landscape (450sq.m) – equivalent to 25No. Backlit 48 Sheets combined. Research shows that 150,000 cars, buses and commercial vehicles will pass the site every day. Therefore using a conservative assumption of just two occupants per vehicle, the site will deliver 300,000 possible sightings per day – over four million per two weeks!

Marc Keenan, MD at Forrest told us “We are delighted to be bringing these new high impact roadside sites to the Scottish marketplace. Whoever said size didn’t matter really needs to get out more, to see for themselves what massive impact, large format Out of Home delivers for our clients”.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been asked to speak at a couple of events during London Digital Signage Week.

• On Wednesday May 14, 2014 I will be presenting ‘Branding Your Building, The Scala Way‘ at The International Scala Conference taking place at The Timber Lodge, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London
• On Thursday May 15, 2014 I will be presenting ‘How to Reinforce a Brand, The Minute you Walk Into A Building‘ at the Employee Communications Thought Leadership Summit taking place at The Velodrome, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London (I note that even with the organisers having released more tickets there are still only ten tickets left for this must attend event)

In both presentations I will be talking about my team’s work with corporate reception areas, atriums and entrance ways in general AND giving a sneak peak at RMGs brand new Executive Briefing Centre in Dallas that we have been involved with.

My take is that the opportunity to reinforce a brand has moved on significantly from traditional marketing and branding promotional routes. One of the ways businesses are harnessing these opportunities is through the use of large scale Video or Media Walls that employees, partners, customers and potential customers see as they walk into their building.

This new ‘communication channel’ has a wide variety of uses from an internal or external marcoms perspective and done correctly can be a high profile window on the DNA of a business.

There are of course, unique challenges when attempting to create a dialogue and conversation with a business’ audience in such a manner, which is something that I will discuss.

I will also be examining what the challenges are when creating content in this space and share some ideas on how a business might better leverage these opportunities to reinforce their brand to both their clients and employees alike.

The speaker line up has been announced for the next International Scala Conference 2014, taking place during London Digital Signage Week on May 14th-15th at the Timber Lodge in the London Olympic Park.

On day one they have: -

• Steen Mertz
  Director Communications and Technology at Jyske Bank
• Christian Lie
  Senior Advisor Digital Signage, Design Express at DNB
• Alex Hughes
  Director, Amigo
• James Fine
  President, Telecine
• Nikk Smith
  Technical Director, Pixel Inspiration
• Adrian Exton
  Director, Blue Sight Sytems Ltd.
• Peter Critchley
  Managing Director, Beaver Group
• Tom Nix, Peter Cherna, Stefan Menger, Amy Wilson 
  Scala

After the last speaker has left the stage, attendees will be heading to the Westfield Stratford City Mall for a tour of all the large scale and inspiring Scala installations found within the mall.

Following the tour by foot, attendees will be picked up by authentic London double-decker busses and take everyone on a further guided tour past several Scala installations before the evening is concluded with a dinner party at a down-town restaurant.

Day two sees Scala partners and their guests taken on a guided tour through the NEC Showcase.

Scottsdale, Arizona-based Digital Caddies Inc., which provides on-course delivery of technology services and content to golfers, announced the final closing of the previously announced equity funding with Paulson Investment Company Inc., a boutique investment bank specializing in small- to mid-cap technology investments, for a total of approximately $4.1M USD.

Digital Caddies has installed its system on approximately 5,000 golf cars across the U.S. The company was founded in 2003 and established a solid reputation and loyal customer base by providing a low-cost, user-friendly GPS service to golf courses. The company transitioned to a new business model, which provides courses and golfers with a tablet-based navigation system and advertisers with a content platform that is wirelessly connected to the Internet and installed on golf cars.

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M&T Bank Stadium, home of the Baltimore Ravens, has again called on Daktronics Inc. to install new LED video displays.

This year, four new displays featuring the latest in Daktronics SMD LED technology – 8 millimeter SMD displays – will be added to the upper concourse of the stadium, above the Miller Flight Deck, as the facility wants to set a standard in sports venues of keeping fans up-to-date on the game’s excitement while away from their seats.

“We remain committed to enhancing the game-day experience at M&T Bank Stadium,” says Dick Cass, Ravens president. “This is the second-consecutive year we’ve made significant upgrades to our digital video displays. The addition of these new screens will be great for our fans. They will provide even more entertainment and football information for people to enjoy.”

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It’s unclear to us how the news ‘Mood Media Signs Major Franchise Group to New Digital Signage Solution Designed For Quick Service Restaurants’ reported in Monday’s WSJ, without (a) mention of a name AND (b) when it is in all likelihood an existing customer is actually ‘news’ at all.

Based on the rest of the opening paragraph in the Mood Media Corporation (TSX:MM/ LSE AIM:MM) press release, we quote “the new agreement also extends its services for music and drive-thru maintenance for more than 150 locations” – implies to us a franchisee with 150 stores that ALREADY was a (Mood Media) music and service customer.

Choosing the so-called Mood product for a QSR rollout is about as ‘stupid is as stupid does’ you can get.

There are only a handful of QSR solutions that you ought to consider; Real Digital Media, Scala, Signagelive, STRATACACHE and perhaps one or two others.

Last week, Enplug, a Los Angeles startup who we have covered on these pages a few times (January, 2012 here and August 2012 here) announced that they had raised USD 2.5 Million in seed funding.

Founded in 2012 by Nanxi Liu (CEO), Alex Ross (CTO), Zach Spitulski (Head Designer), David Zhu (COO), and Navdeep Reddy (CIO), Enplug has grown from a team of 5 to 30 full-time people so it will no doubt be needing the money.

Enplug claim a network of displays in 40 cities across the US and in hundreds of businesses ranging from bars and restaurants to corporate offices and hotels but despite Enplug’s pleas, we haven’t seen any evidence of them, we quote “disrupting the digital signage industry with the company’s technology and business model”. Obviously little due diligence was done by any of the investors cos’ all we see is an out of touch LA startup that thinks its hip, blindly re-inventing more than one wheel, pretending to themselves and others that they are pioneering whilst believing that the better mouse-trap that they think they have ‘invented’ will bring in customers galore!

Investors included Oaktree Capital Co-Founder Larry Keele, Juniper Networks Founding Member Rasoul Oskouy, Idealab Founder Bill Gross, Former AT&T President and CTO Hossein Eslambolchi, Interscope Executive Vice President David Cohen, Lightspeed Venture Partners Managing Director Justin Caldbeck, Atom Factory CEO Troy Carter, Activision Co-Founder Howard Marks, DominateFund and zPark Venture which means most likely that each individual / institution wrote a cheque for something like USD 250,000.

That won’t last them long and won’t get them very far.

ISA Sign Expo 2014 kicks off in just a couple of days.

Here are a few reminders from the organisers to make the trip a little easier:

• Location. ISA Sign Expo 2014 will take place in the South Building of the Orange County Convention Center
• Badges All badges will be available for pick up in Orlando. Visit the registration counter in S220, Level 2 to pick up your badge when you arrive. Don’t be late on Thursday – famed 6-minute painter Dave Santia will be creating a portrait right in front of our eyes before the opening of the show!
• Transportation. Get around Orlando with ease. ISA Sign Expo will provide free shuttle service for attendees and exhibitors staying in the official room block
• Hashtag. The official hashtag for the show is #2014SignExpo
• ISA Sign Expo Mobile App. Schedule meetings, navigate the show floor, and connect with exhibitors and attendees with the new ISA Sign Expo Mobile App. USD 3,000 will be given out in prizes to reward the top five people who use the app the most