DailyDOOH

Last week at #ScreenmediaExpo we met James Thornton, formerly Head of Agency Sales at Amscreen who has just launched a new business called Hub Digital Networks.

James told us “Traditional and Digital Out of Home is dominated by a few large media owners. However, there are many other small and medium sized networks out there who deliver fantastic, targeted audiences but struggle to make their voices heard in such a competitive environment. Hub Digital Networks aims to bring together the best of these networks into one place so that they can benefit from being part of a large group of networks – both in terms of increased sales and exposure, and also marketing and insight.”

If that rings a bell then that’s because that is exactly what Digicom used to say when they launched!

Hub Digital Networks is already in discussion with a number of important networks that will deliver strong audiences and has so far secured the exclusive rights to represent TONI&GUY Salon Media and Acentic Media, an international provider of digital TV services for leading hotel chains predominantly in the four star market including InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriot and Sofitel.

The business is also working in a consultancy capacity with a number of others.

Without taking a stand themselves we noticed that the i DISPLAY or Outform (or whatever they call themselves these days) folks were busy at #ScreenmediaExpo last week placing their revolutionary Android based products in prominent places on other people’s stands. See our post back in January ‘#ISE2012 Early Hyperbole‘.

At Earls Court we also noticed ex-Scala CEO Gerard Bucashanging around with said bunch of freeloaders. Ahh! then the light went on above our heads and we got it, D’oh!

Earlier this year (in what, with hindsight, now appears as being in a rather disingenuous^† manner, Gerard reached out to us and said “I think you should take a look at i Display as they are doing some rather interesting stuff” – we declined as we had had enough shenanigans with Outform / i Display and Goldrock Capital to last us a lifetime.

If Gerard had been honest with us and actually asked our opinion, we might have told him that he was putting his good name to .. well we’d rather not say less our post is redacted by our lawyers.

Anyway, it appears that Gerard has quietly become chairman of i-Display.

In his LinkedIn profile he is now described as ‘Chairman of i-DISPLAY’ April 2012 – Present (2 months) Greater Philadelphia Area (USA) & Maastricht (NL).

The profile pitches i Display / i-Display / Outform as “Bringing innovative new Intelligent Display solutions to the Digital Signage and Retail Advertsing Display Markets by exploiting mass-market consumer technologies (like the Android OS and associated ARM CPU technology) and applying it to the commercial M2M and B2B programmable and interactive display markets and media player computers”.

This is a strange mix and we don’t think it will last long.

^†There’s a prize if you can tell us how many times we have used the word ‘disingenuous’ in the last seven days!

Park Outdoor Advertising of New York, Inc. (a New York Corporation with a service area covering fifteen thousand square miles of central New York State and upstate Pennsylvania) recently partnered with Daktronics, Inc. to install their first digital display in Utica, N.Y.

Doug Stearns, project manager for Park Outdoor at Daktronics told us “This is Park Outdoor’s first digital display, and they are looking to break into the digital out of home market with a bang. The Daktronics 16MT product will enable them to do just that. It provides high image quality, combined with an exceptionally solid product,”

In addition to providing an affordable and flexible medium to their clients, Park Outdoor will use their new digital display to perform several public service functions by facilitating Amber Alerts, weather alerts and alerts from the local authorities.

LinkedIn is a gold mine of information if you know how to use it (and of course it also helps if you are super connected like I am / super rude or just plain controversial).

We had to LOL at what we saw today when we did our daily check …

If we were playing poker we would only need one more for a FULL HOUSE!

MMD will be launching ten new interactive Philips touch displays in June 2012…

.. and they will be showcasing the new Philips touch line at #InfoComm12 along with a large Interactive Touch Video Wall and a Touch Table.

The Munich Digital Signage Conference 2012 put together by the folks over at invidis hasn’t got an agenda just yet but it does have a date – the 19th and 20th September 2012.

The event will once again take place at the Kempinski Hotel am Flughafen München (and for those of you interested Oktoberfest kicks off two days later, starting Saturday 22nd September through to the 7th October).

Last week as we sat in the comfort of our own blogger lounge and watched the comings and goings on the Intel stand^† at #ScreenmediaExpo we started to think about how much Intel must spend on marketing itself in the digital signage space and what it gets out of it.

It didn’t take long and we soon worked it out – the salaries of all those involved, all those economy flights and cheap hotels, the exhibition stands that they tend to have at various events – oh and not forgetting those wine tasting evenings complete with expensive TV celebrity moderators!

By our reckoning Intel must spend in a year, something like USD 40 to 50 million globally on Digital Signage.

But what exactly do Intel get for that money? Very little we feel (apart from Jose’s air miles) and by the end of the month we are going to tell AMD and all the non-Intel CPU device manufacturers how they can compete with Intel’s marketing dollars AND more importantly how they can actually help advance the industry.

Note to ‘selves .. Jose could probably put a reasoned argument together to rebut this, that’s if he weren’t out on vacation sabbatical for the next four months.

Watch this space as they say!

^†The Intel stand seemed really small but it must simply have appeared that way because they had nothing of note on it. This year their stand was the same size as their stand in 2010 (10x10m), and only 2 metres short of the one in 2011 (10x12m).

We really were quite entranced with Vueinti’s new product – so new that it doesn’t really have a name yet.

A variation on the company’s Chrystal Box, the new product seems perfect for, eg. a perfume company with several brands. A shelf holds the products and, as one is picked up, a sensor triggers the screen behind to describe that particular product or give whatever information a client wants.

I can see it used to acquaint me with other products offered by the same company as well as for introducing a new product. While it would have been nice to see it demonstrated with Givenchy’s Organza (my current favourite) along with a couple of other Givenchy brands, the product is so new that it was demonstrated with a spray, an empty soft drink can, and some cards. Quite funny!

However, it will be priced more in line for high end retail products. While I pictured it more for perfumes and expensive cosmetics, I expect that it could be used for high fashion shoes, leather goods and the like.

Vueinti, headed by Geof Jones, president and owner, offers a wide range products, Its virtual mannequin is very popular in the health care sector where it is often used to remind people to wash their hands or to use the health centre’s antibacterial product.

“We’re bringing out a children’s mannequin to do the same thing,” says Jones. It could be used not only at health centres but daycares, schools and other locations.

For most of its products, Vueinti designs and builds its hardware, using partners for its software and preferred suppliers for support and installation.

“We also partner rather than using resellers or dealers,” says Jones. “However, we have recently developed reseller relationships for both Canada and the U.S. markets.”

Photos by Maddie Cotterill

#ScreenmediaExpo was almost over when this little guy popped into our view, and while he isn’t digital signage per se, we expect we’ll be seeing him around a lot of trade shows and events in the future.

His name is Poken and he was born in Switzerland.

If you are having an event, you can load the business card information of each delegate into a Poken.

Then, as one delegate meets another, their individual Pokens high four each other – you can’t high five when you only have four fingers we were told, Ed, thereby exchanging business cards without the need of paper.

Further, speeches, brochures and other material can also be exchanged in the same way, eliminating the need for a lot of paper brochures and the like.

It also gives exhibitors an easy way of knowing how many of their brochures have actually been picked up.

Poken – who comes in a range of colours – also has an office in Palo Alto, California.

Photo by Maddie Cotterill

At #ScreenmediaExpo last week we had to go back to the eyevis display no less than three times to finally meet up with Peter Mytton-Bayley, southern regional sales and services at Eyevis UK.

”It’s been absolutely manic here,” said Mytton-Bayley – which reminded us of how busy the eyevis stand was when the Germany-based company introduced its multi-sided tiles at #InfoComm11 in Orlando last year and shown again at #ISE2012 in February.

The company has partnered with PSCo in the U.K. as its sole distributor.

“We’ve been used by RTL in The Netherlands, and by a TV station in Germany, and have two installations for a communications company here in the UK,” said Mytton-Bayley. “And we now have a U.S. office.”

omniSHAPES (as shown below) looked really good…

Seems like the company is growing just the way we expected it would!

Top photo by Maddie Cotterill, bottom photo by Andrew Neale.