Contains 1,500 photos of electric signs both in black and white on printed pages of a binder, and in full color on an enclosed CD. Intended as an idea generator for both sign designers and salespeople, ...
Can our sign industry capitalize on the Great Indoors?
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I hitched a ride with the staff of our sister magazine, VM+SD, to Chicago for the second "annual" Digital Retailing Expo (DRE), held May 18-19 at the Navy Pier Exhibition Center. VM was heavily involved. The first show, held seven months prior, included 45 exhibitors and 11,000 sq. ft. of space. This one attracted 83 exhibitors who took 24,000 sq. ft. of space.
VM, and its corresponding website, www.visualstore.com, joined with our other company venture, www.electronicdisplaycentral.com, as three of the event's four media sponsors. VM's editor, Steve Kaufman, coordinated the judging of DRE's first competition, plus he MC'd the resulting awards ceremony. VM's May issue included a special, 19-page supplement, entitled In-Store Digital Media, which included a 32-item products section.
Darek Johnson, ST's senior technology editor, accompanied me, armed with reprinted copies of Darek's third annual Electronic Digital Signage (EDS) survey (see ST, April 2005, page 60). I had one goal, to try to figure out how everything I'd see would relate to everything that you readers create. (Read Darek's take on the show, page 16.)
Where's the crossover (or at least the potential)? The sign industry is quite adept at creating retailers' exterior, main-identification signage. But what about the interior merchandising signage?
OK, first some terminology. When VM says "digital," it strictly means electronic, digital displays. It has nothing to do with the digital aspects of large-format printing. Secondly, at the DRE, the word "signage" rarely means what signshops currently fabricate.
Prior to the tradeshow each day, educational "conference sessions" were held. Seven of the 12 sessions included the word "signage" in their titles. I attended four of them. None involved the types of signs I'm accustomed to writing about.
When the on-premise sign industry thinks about electronic message centers (EMCs), hardware is 95% of the game. However, my notion that, in the DRE world, content superceded hardware, couldn't have been more correct. In fact, I underestimated its importance.
At the first session I attended, Todd Taylor, formerly with Walt Disney (which tends to study marketing effectiveness), said, "Content is the key, not the technology." I heard that same refrain frequently.
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