Last night JADN.TV held a really good networking event at Galerie Gora, an art gallery in Montreal.

It was well attended (50+) with some good speakers - the pictures above show left to right David Haynes (sales director, BroadSign) and Claude Sénéchal (vice-president sales and marketing, Intello Technologies) taking part in a Q&A panel, Lyle Bunn (consultant and ’strategy architect’ who made a great presentation) and some of the crowd enjoying pre-conference cocktail (you can see Denys Lavigne, event organiser on the far right of this picture standing in front of a picture).

The event was covered on our behalf by Gail, our Canadian correspondent who will write up something tomorrow on the presentations themselves but just briefly…

• The Wal-Mart stuff more or less just compared 1.0 with the improvements of 2.0. It was all in French and hard to follow, but nothing exciting.
• We had chats with quite a few interesting people, including all the speakers, plus Stephen Yaffe, head of Jezam Interactive, various others, plus the Arsenal Media people.
• We were amused, as a couple of different people (not David Haynes we must add) asked “what DailyDOOH has against BroadSign and why we pick on it?”

Oh and I was also described as ‘pompous’ !!!

Based on the definitions of pompous on the Web I will have to plead “guilty as charged your honour” which is probably what a certain Mr. Petters will be saying shortly as well before spending the next 20 years of his life in jail…

• Grandiloquent: puffed up with vanity; “a grandiloquent and boastful manner”; “overblown oratory”; “a pompous speech”;
• Characterized by pomp and ceremony and stately display
• Affectedly grand, solemn or self-important

UK publisher HarperCollins is promoting the children’s book ‘The Boy in the Dress’ on CBS Outdoor’s Digital Escalator Panels (DEPs) for two weeks. The campaign broke at the beginning of this week, 17th November.

David Walliams is a famous UK comedian and actor (best known perhaps for ‘Little Britain’ / ‘Little Britain USA’) has signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins, his first, this book ‘The Boy in the Dress’ was published in October and this campaign is obviously designed to capture the Christmas market.

The book was illustrated by Quentin Blake (famous for illustrating Roald Dahl books) and he has created a series of special illustrations for the campaign.

Grand Visual animated these sketches to produce a 10 second multi panel sequence for the DEP environment.

The creative spans 2 screens and shows a boy in a dress taking a running kick at a football. The football shoots across the screens and appears to smash through them towards commuters.

The words “boys will be boys, even in dresses!” then appears on screen followed by the author and comedian David Walliams and a product shot on alternating panels.

We guess it would have been pretty exciting for the folks at Grand Visual to work with such a famous illustrator as Quentin - we bet that doesn’t happen every day.

Quentin Blake, commented: “I am really pleased to have been involved in an innovative campaign that provides a visual evocation of the story and encourages people to think of The Boy in the Dress when they’re looking for a special Christmas present for a child.”

The campaign was booked by OMD and is supported by national PR activity and in-store promotions.

Don’t forget that as we did with the OVAB summit a few weeks back we will have contributors at TOMORROW’S ‘Building Your Digital Signage Business‘ Summit keeping up with events via Twitter.

Our technical team have automated the Twitter feed to create a dynamic, self-update blog post, so all you need to is sit back and watch the blog!

http://twitter.com/raffivartian

JCDecaux and UK broadcaster Sky launch have just announced a new ‘News Channel’ in London. We saw this ourselves being trialled last week on the Daktronics LED along the Cromwell Road and it has been in test pretty much across the whole PrimeTime digital network during parts of November.

Now though it’s officially live and follows somewhat of a trend at the moment for several of the big UK digital billboards to play catch up with Titan and Clear Channel - we wrote back in September ‘City Gateway Media Sign Deal With Sky News‘ - the Titan Transvision system has had a live news feed for ages of course and Clear Channel’s LG Piccadilly Spectacular screen has been running Sky News for almost 2 years as well.

John Ryley, Head of Sky News told us “This is a great opportunity for the Sky News brand to provide breaking news and top stories in a new environment on roadside Outdoor. We have worked closely with JCDecaux to make sure we deliver the right content, in the right format and always up to date.”

It’s running on JCDecaux’s network of 16 PrimeTime digital billboards and is aiming to be topical, up-to-date and relevant to the roadside audience.

Spencer Berwin, Managing Director of Sales, JCDecaux explained “Our research into digital Outdoor showed that consumers expect to see content on our screens and that the Sky News service would make the latest, breaking news, a daily part of their commute. With roadside being the dominant form of commuting in the capital, London PrimeTime will be a real alternative to The Evening Standard and the Metro.”

It’s sad but true that 55% of London’s commuters travel to work by car. (Source: Touchpoints 2)

Esprit Digital tell us that they had a good Electronica 2008 show in Munich last week. They were demonstrating their StreetBright product in the e-signage forum.

This was the first time that the show had this kind of forum - let’s hope they rename it next year (e-signage is frankly a ridiculous term)

Conrac were also there with a touch screen 46” and a 4 x 42” matrix of narrow bezel Panasonic screens. There was also a 108” Sharp panel and a touch screen system from a company called Elektrosil.

The forum itself was positioned between Sharp and Data Module, the two largest stands in the displays hall which was good and we are told that footfall and interest was high.

One of the panel discussions was particularly interesting we are told although they mainly spoke about panels, panels and err panels - Maximilian Huber (Head of Sharp), Peter Hektor (Head of Data Module), Andrew Murray from i-Suppli, and our new friend Christoph Koeller (he who is the driving force behind the ISE DOOH Business Conference in Amsterdam early next year).

Esprit tell us that it was a particularly good show for them with 20+ solid leads and some real business out of the event already.

The Out-of-home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) European chapter was announced today and although we have a couple of reservations and a few words of warning we are VERY excited about what this organisation might achieve going forward.

First of all, OVAB Europe is at the moment pretty **German centric. That’s not an issue nor surprising given the founder members…

• Neo Advertising
• Invidis Consulting
• ECE Flatmedia
• IBM Deutschland
• PHILIPS
• NEC Display Solutions
• Minicom Advanced Systems Ltd.

**Minicom and Neo will argue that they are in Switzerland but this is primarily being driven out of Neo in Hamburg and the rest of the founders are German based.

There are plans of course to have coverage in each European country and with the likes of Neo Advertising helping to drive this that probably won’t be too much of a problem - nor will it take that long for it to get sorted.

There are probably two main reasons why OVAB Europe has come about - the first and foremost is obviously that OVAB in the US has done such a fantastic job and secondly because POPAI, especially in Germany has not!

POPAI is as good as the local people in each country who run it (and the commercial organisations who support it) - in the the UK for example, not bad, in Germany absolutely AWFUL!

OVAB Europe will compete squarely with POPAI as it aims to be ‘the first European centric representative of the interests of providers and suppliers of audio visual media at POS and POI’ as well as the ‘central point of contact and information source … to the existing digital out-of-home industry’

The Board of OVAB Europe consists of Dirk Hülsermann (Chairman or President), Ronni Guggenheim (Vice Chairman) and Richard Malley (Treasurer).

Dirk of course is from Neo Advertising, Ronni from Minicom and Richard (probably the least known of the three) is from ECE Flatmedia (ECE are a shopping mall owner and previous Neo customer).

We spoke to Dirk this morning and he told us “Today marks an important date in the still short history of the digital out-of home industry in Europe. With OVAB Europe, an industry with such a tremendous future in front of it now receives the representation it deserves by the entire industry”

Have no doubt that this is an exciting announcement and just the first of many. At the moment OVAB Europe has no relevance to the media planners, buyers, ad agencies, retailers and the like AND that obviously needs to change.

Two of the founder members are ‘media owners’ which is a great start but there are other members whose interest is purely technical (and commercial) of course.

OVAB Europe now needs to quickly demonstrate what membership would mean to other media folks and get them on board.

About Richard Malley

Richard Malley was previously Managing Director of the YOC AG in Berlin. Since its founding, he was responsible for the strategic development of the company and for national and international distribution. Before that he worked at CIAO.COM AG in Munich in its International Business Development/Distribution group. After completing his studies for his BA in international business/marketing in New York and Brussels, he worked at Kynast AG in New York and subsequently at Emmerson Communications AG in Frankfurt/Main. Richard Malley is responsible at flatmedia for the distribution and strategic business development.

Late yesterday we wrote ‘Coolsign’s Gaming Portion Goes To Bally Technologies‘ and minutes before that ‘Coolsign SOLD - Well, Parts Of It Anyway!!!‘ and it’s worthwhile we feel taking another quick look at the deal.

First it’s important to stress that what has been sold is NOT the whole of Coolsign. The piece that has gone to Bally Technologies is the gaming part - undoubtedly the best bit of the business mind you!!

Planar we believe keeps the rights to sell CoolSign into markets other than gaming - so nice deals for them such as ‘Coolsign Wins Titan CTA Business‘ would stay in place.

This deal is either indicative of Planar’s need for cash or it was just too good an opportunity to miss (it may in fact be a bit of both).

Our belief however is that having sold off the gaming rights it is going to be much more difficult to sell the bigger division (i.e. what is left of Coolsign) - at least for a decent price anyway AND that is if it is still for sale?

Overall though it’s probably a very good purchase for Bally Technologies and a nice fit with their existing technology and core customers. Bally will be strengthened by the acquisition.

We have known about this for some time but were VERY SURPRISED today on the manner of the announcement - an email from Minicom before the agreed press embargo deadline.

Anyway, caught unawares so to speak, see www.ovab.eu

Today, consumers are spending more and more time away from their homes. Subsequently, advertisers are spending more and more of their media budgets to reach consumers “on the go.” The Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau Europe can assist advertisers in making informed decisions regarding out-of-home media. The OVAB Europe is the official resource for information on out-of-home video advertising, marketing, and media metrics.

More later.

On Wednesday 3rd December 2008 POPAIdigital are holding one of their regular networking events in London. This will be held at the IPA, Belgravia.

There’s no particular theme to the evening but there are a number of interesting speakers including us (interesting that is) wrapping up the evening…

5:30pm – Drinks and registration
6:00pm – Intro from POPAIdigital
6:05pm – Imagesound: “Bringing your environment to life in-store with music!”
6:35pm – Retec Interface – Case study on Sainsbury’s entertainment aisle
7:05pm – Networking Break
7:35pm – DailyDOOH.com – A review of DMiR in 2008 and predictions for 2009
8:00pm – Drinks & Networking.

Here’s the press release from, literally a few minutes ago on Bally Technologies acquisition of Planar’s gaming portion of Coolsign…

BALLY TECHNOLOGIES ACQUIRES PLANAR’S COOLSIGN® DIGITAL SIGNAGE SOLUTIONS BUSINESS FOR THE GAMING INDUSTRY

Company integrates CoolSign media-management system into Networked Floor of the Future™ technology suite

LAS VEGAS, November 17, 2008 – Bally Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BYI), a leader in slots, video machines, casino management systems, and networked solutions for the global gaming industry, today announced that it has acquired Planar Systems, Inc.’s CoolSign digital signage business for the gaming industry, including software, networked digital displays, and content services.

CoolSign is a strategic addition to Bally’s Networked Floor of the Future technology systems. The acquisition extends Bally’s technology offerings to include marketing and media communications to the player in the form of CoolSign networked or standalone digital displays, available in a multitude of sizes, that allow casinos to quickly and effectively communicate gaming and non-gaming messages to customers.

In particular, CoolSign networked displays will integrate with Bally’s iVIEW™ Display Manager™, an intelligent controller that allows casinos to present system content or marketing messages on the main game screen, the top game display, and overhead displays with picture-in-picture capability. iVIEW Display Manager recently won first place in the “Best Consumer Technology” category of the 2009 Gaming & Technology awards.

Planar’s CoolSign digital signage software and display solutions have been chosen by more than 160 casinos around the world. Based in Beaverton, Ore., Planar has over two decades of experience providing scalable, robust specialty display solutions for every size customer. Under this agreement, Planar retains the ownership of the Coolsign business and products for all fields of use other than the gaming industry.

“The addition of CoolSign to our portfolio of games, systems, and networked gaming solutions advances Bally’s strategy to offer an array of high-performing products for the entire casino floor,” said Richard M. Haddrill, Bally’s Chief Executive Officer. “We have worked with CoolSign for over five years as a customer and manufacturing partner. CoolSign’s proven solutions and well-respected brand complement our business and extend our ability to deliver cutting-edge marketing solutions to our customers.”

“Our customers have consistently asked to have one tool for creating media that can be displayed anywhere in their businesses,” said Bruce Rowe, Bally’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. “This product has an elegant user interface and content creation tool that will allow media to quickly and efficiently be displayed on a large variety of traditional displays and most important, via Bally’s iVIEW Display Manager at the point of play. This product will create the capability to link customized marketing and promotional messages throughout the casino enterprise in a way envisioned, but never done before.”

“The CoolSign product portfolio and gaming capabilities are a natural fit for Bally’s strategic direction,” said Brad Gleeson, Vice President of Business Development for Planar. “With CoolSign’s long-standing success in the gaming vertical market, Bally and Planar have numerous customers in common, so Bally’s acquisition of the gaming portion of Planar’s Coolsign business is of tremendous strategic benefit to both companies, our mutual customers, and the gaming industry.”