DailyDOOH

Damon Crowhurst, Scala‘s senior director for EMEA, is taking on extra responsibilities as Scala’s senior director for Europe on an interim basis.

Tom Nix, Scala CEO, says that the company will take its time to fill the position on a permanent basis, but he does feel that the person who does fill the position should definitely be based in Maastricht – suggested as well by Frank Larsen, formerly senior director for Europe in our recent conversation. That office will move next year but only about seven miles from its present location to make it easy for the staff.

Monster Media has renewed its Interactive Digital Wall agreement and signed an additional contract with Clear Channel Airports to roll out a nationwide network of interactive charging stations, adding another layer of convenience to the evolving passenger travel experience.

The Interactive Charging Station network initially includes kiosks in three select airports: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Kiosks are ADA compliant and use embedded touch-enabled LED screens.

They also allow travelers to charge their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network will be used to deliver digital ads to the kiosks, including messages from Verizon.

“This network gives advertisers a powerful new option to deepen their audience exposure and consumer engagement with extended dwell time, and at the traveler’s leisure,” says Jon Sayer, president, Clear Channel Airports. “This work with Monster Media underscores our commitment to reinventing air travel experience for both maximum convenience and advertiser benefit while engaging with the connected consumer in meaningful ways.”

Clear Channel Airports’ management of advertising programs at the three airports offer ideal placement for Monster Media’s charging stations. The new kiosks feature built-in cameras that allow travelers to snap a quick selfie to share with their families, friends and colleagues via social sites. Campaigns can also reach across channels, prompting travelers to connect to the brand via social media and email when prompted by on-screen advertising content. The kiosks’ software captures usage metrics to provide insights on campaign effectiveness to brands.

Following on from Adrian’s #CurmudgeonFriday tweet on PR agencies NOT fact checking – and indeed manufacturers who should know better, Ed before announcing the world’s largest (LED) video screen, we see that the Wikipedia entry listing the largest screens has been updated.

In the main, they’re largely big LED installs in sports arenas but the list is topped by three huge street-long LED roof canopies. The most well-known of these is the Freemont Street experience in Las Vegas, now about 10 years old. Less well-known are the first and third entries which are more recent and higher resolution versions installed in Suzhou and Beijing, China.

There are some ad based (DOOH) screens in the list, the largest of which at number 11 is judges favourite Harmon Corner screen in Las Vegas.

This is closely followed by a recent install from earlier this year (shown below), which is curved around two sides of a building facing the traffic of the Third Ring Road in Moscow.

It’s not as high resolution as Harmon Corner, but enormous and impressive nonetheless.

You can see the complete list by clicking here.

Cheil UK has created a tongue-in-cheek outdoor campaign for Samsung to coincide with this week’s first birthday of Prince George.

The activity, which was advertised across the big screen in Piccadilly Circus on Tuesday July 22, 2014, featured images of baby George’s birthday party…

However, this isn’t Prince George’s birthday party, it’s actually that of George Jagger – part of a family from Matlock in Derbyshire, who are taking part in a new digital campaign from Samsung called ‘100 Days of Family’ which celebrates the diversity of modern British family life.

As part of the campaign, Rachel Jagger has captured her son George’s first birthday, which falls on the same day as the royal Prince himself the 22nd July. These images are being used and displayed on the big screen in Piccadilly alongside text which encourages passers-by to visit the ‘100 Days Of Family’ website to view the pictures of baby George’s birthday party.

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We received a press release yesterday (it’s gone into wide distribution today) that is titled ‘Delphi Display Systems Displaces Competitor at a Major California-based QSR Chain‘.

What’s the point of this if you can’t name names?

Sorry Delphi, but as much as we might like you, why bother telling people about it if you can’t tell us either the name of the QSR chain nor whom you are displacing?

Sure, we know it’s a way for you to talk about your product, but come on, you can do (and usually do) better than that!

We did chat with your marketing department yesterday and, while nice and polite, they still couldn’t name names. We did learn that it’s only 100 corporate stores involved and NOT franchisees.

Anyway, apparently Delphi will now be preferred supplier of drive-thru order confirmation technology for someone, and will replace some competitor’s technology. We believe it also means that they will replace the outside order boards.

Isn’t that just SO interesting?

But we’re not going to talk up your product line if you can’t give us more than that!

“Our sales are up almost 50% in the first half of 2014, compared to the same period last year,” Dave Levin, CEO of Four Winds interactive, Denver, Colorado, said during an exclusive interview with us on Monday, July 21/14.

“We’ve added a lot of new clients both in terms of digital signage software, players and content, as well as a lot of new licenses.

“We’ve also moved much more strongly into the international market. We have three people in Dubai handling sales and service, and we opened an office in Hong Kong. Here in the U.S. we have a new Customer Experience office in Las Vegas with a showroom and meeting rooms, and a 5,000 sq.ft. space in Miami. These are in addition to our headquarters in Denver which houses 200 of our total 292 full-time employees.”

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We’ve seen Eastman Kodak Company and Provision Interactive Technologies Inc. team up (back in June 2010) for Provision 3DEO Rewards Centers, a partnership with Premier Retail Networks Inc. (in October 2011) and a supposed multi-year partnership with Rite Aid Corporation to install 3D Reward Centers kiosks inside select Rite Aid stores (June 2013) so what exactly to make of their latest announcement that Provision Interactive Technologies Inc. has entered into an agreement with DB Dava LLC to launch a 3D network which will start off in a national pharmacy chain?

The newly-formed entity named ProDava 3D LLC will commercialize Provision’s 3D holographic based kiosks (the aforementioned ’3D Reward Centers’) in the U.S. retail market.

Via the agreement, the first 3D Kiosks will be placed in a national chain of retail pharmacies to display advertisements, promotions, sweepstakes, samples, coupons and other consumer-based retail programs (there was no mention of who the retail chain is).

DB’s capital contribution to the joint venture includes the promise of USD 50 million investment over time, with an initial investment of USD 2 million into the joint venture.

The joint venture is purchasing 3D Kiosks, manufactured by Provision with each 3D Reward Centers being placed in high traffic aisles of nationally recognized retail stores with advertisements of consumer packaged products, other consumer goods manufacturers along with local/regional advertisers.

Ad sales inventory will include marquee 3D hologram images, coupons, and other rewards and transactions of products sold in the stores.

We note that Sotos Mandalos who was pretty much Mr MagicInfo at Samsung in the UK until he was deemed surplus to requirements didn’t last very long at his next sinecure…

He lasted only four months with Mr Chris Fulton and co. at Future Software and has now returned to Epson UK Ltd. as Business Development Manager where he was before his 12 year stint at Samsung.

PATTISON Outdoor Advertising, Toronto-base Out-of-Home advertising company offering a multiplatform inventory of digital products, has completed the roll-out of its smartAD advertising engine to its exterior products, enhancing what has already been available for its interior digital networks.

Advertisers on PATTISON’s exterior digital platform now have the ability to quickly and efficiently update advertising campaigns across PATTISON’s Canada-wide multiplatform digital inventory.

“With just one click, advertisers or their agencies can instantly update their messages, creating a compelling value proposition to clients and a clear advantage against competitors,” says Joe Donaldson, Pattison Outdoor’s vice-president marketing.

“This is industry-leading technology,” claims Donaldson. “Noone else in the world has this.”

Already available on nearly 2,500 interior screens across Canada, PATTISON Outdoor has now completed the rollout of its smartAD platform to all of its 207 exterior digital posters and spectaculars coast-to-coast. The smartAD engine enables advertisers to easily and quickly update their advertising messages on PATTISON’s platform of digital products.

“PATTISON is committed to providing advertisers the innovative tools necessary to better communicate with consumers, and smartAD is our proprietary technology that will enhance our Digital Out-of-Home portfolio of products,” says Donaldson. “Our smartAD-powered engine will enable national brands and retailers of all sizes to create targeted, dynamic advertising messages that can be customized by the advertisers themselves. Creative can flow out to our interior and exterior digital products, including digital exterior products like Horizontal Posters and Superboards, and interior products like the transit, office and residential networks, and any of our other digital properties.”

The smartAD engine delivers value across the digital advertising ecosystem, enabling advertisers to easily create dynamic messages along a shopper’s path to purchase. Advertisers using smartAD are able to:

• Create relevant and dynamic advertisement based on external data sources like weather, date or time;
• Instantly update artwork, based on product supply and demand;
• Include directions and maps that guide the user to the closest location with the product available;
• Create a sense of urgency for events and/or time-sensitive promotions;
• Easily integrate social media feed from sites like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Many national and local businesses are already using smartAD as part of their campaigns, and adding exterior products to the mix will enhance their ability to successfully communicate with consumers and expand their brand’s voice.

andersDX, a user interface, embedded display technology design and integration specialist, has today launched a range of professional digital signage players running on the ARM-based #raspberrypi platform.

There are two main variants, a standalone small form factor unit, and interestingly an OPS (Intel’s Open Pluggable Specification) compliant device.

The OPS version is designed to slot directly into OPS capable display panels.

The players have been developed in partnership with Silver Curve, and use their graphics engine technology Aperture for maximum playback performance from the low-powered system.

They can be connected to content management systems from signagelive and Instoremedia, and OpenSplash player software is supported too.

A clever battery backup feature has been incorporated into the player, which lasts for 10 minutes, and is designed to cover any power supply hiccups on site without causing a complete restart.

Here’s an introduction to the player and the technology behind it featuring andersDX’s Paul Mullen and Silver Curve’s Bryan Crotaz.

The players are available through andersDX’s subsidary tinygreenpc.com, which supplies small low power computing devices, and has a starting price of GBP 280 (ex VAT).

For more details, specs and buying options, click here.