LED videoscreens have evolved into not only an advertising venue, but also an outdoor “electronic bulletin board” for public-service announcements, weather reports and highway Amber Alerts. As electronic digital sign (EDS) boards become more of a public fixture, they’re redefining how they communicate to the public.
In its formative years (late 1990s), the “electronic billboard” transfixed viewers with its seemingly magical sign face, which continually changed its advertising message every few seconds. As EDS boards become a familiar sector of outdoor advertising, the boards’ advertising, branding and community-service messages have become a standard, worldwide phenomena — EDS boards are found in North America, South America, Asia, the United Kingdom and Europe.
Two companies that manage EDS assets talked about the ways in which EDS is transforming outdoor advertising. With offices in New York City and Los Angeles, the WOW Factor Inc. is a multimedia production company that produces, operates and manages outdoor EDS boards. WOW creates content and manages sign operation, scheduling and digital delivery for several clients, many of whose boards are located in Times Square and Las Vegas.
One of its most famous boards, the Discover Card sign, is located atop the One Times Square building. Another, the CNBC Panasonic Astrovision sign, is located at the bottom of the same building. WOW also creates content for and manages the Skechers video blade sign on 42nd St. in Times Square. Other well-known clients include Bally’s and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Discovering EDS’ potential
Electronic billboard operation is defined by the board’s form and opportunities to optimize display capacity. “The sales and entertainment potential of EDS boards is very powerful and impactful,” said Don Blanton, WOW’s president.
“Most clients underuse and underestimate the potential of their billboard, because they typically rely on ad agencies for content in this medium.” Content designed for television ads, movie trailers and print ads doesn’t read well on EDS systems. Such specialty companies as the WOW Factor create advertisements and messages that communicate a client’s brand or message in a few seconds.
Blanton explained, “With EDS boards, you need to display the message in three to five seconds to communicate effectively to a passing public, either on foot or automobile. Certainly it’s less time than people look at a magazine ad or listen to an advertisement on radio or television.”
Blanton said television ads, which are visually and audio-driven, reach a captive audience. Contrastingly, EDS messages are visually and text-driven. The 20 to 30 seconds for a TV commercial is far more time than you have to post an electronic billboard advertising spot.
“Consequently, EDS boards must create the most impactful, eye-catching message possible,” Blanton noted.
Different rules govern EDS advertisements than those for television. EDS boards must display not only striking graphic images, but also appropriate text fonts, sizes and colors. The sparse text must be bold, large and commanding. Also, the sales or branding message should be consistent throughout the message, so the viewer always understands who’s selling what.
According to Blanton, the Discover Card sign, viewed by a huge, onsite, international demographic, proves that EDS signs can be informational and entertaining. Because the display competes with nearby signs, the board’s content must always be compelling.
“The client wanted everyone in the Times Square community to count on its sign for daily information,” Blanton explained. WOW responded by delivering daily New York City weather reports (using AccuWeather data) and five-day forecasts, along with weather information from 20 other cities around the world. It also displays a calendar that highlights events and happenings in Times Square and the rest of New York City. Plus, it provides information for a wide variety of interests, including the arts, theater, museums, concerts, new openings and restaurants.
Essentially, the electronic billboard has been transformed from high tech to “high touch” by providing information and entertainment to viewers to reinforce advertised brands.
Blanton said, “Through Discover Card, we’re creating a dependable billboard standard of providing cultural public-service announcements for tourists and locals as they pass through Times Square. People get in the habit of checking out the sign’s community announcements while they’re seeing the Discover Card logo and tag lines. From this standard, you can see that in-your-face advertising is out, while low-key and subtle is in.”
Eye candy
Another company with similar, electronic-advertising goals is Eye Candy Media Ltd. (London), a giant-screen media company founded by Angelos Angeli and Ravin Bhavnani in January 2001. The company, whose mission is “to bring the latest state-of-the-art media technologies to outdoor advertising worldwide,” creates advertising programs that are produced and displayed via EDS boards located in city squares and shopping malls, as well as at sporting events, film festivals and other special event situations. With locations throughout Europe, Asia and North America, the company is “creating revolutionary multimedia advertising platforms that will change the way consumers view brands in the 21st Century.”
Because of improvements in LED brightness, resolution and screen size, Eye Candy estimates that an active EDS billboard can create up to 75 times more impact than conventional television.
Eye Candy’s head of business development, Romel Ahmed, said that many companies, as well as major international event organizers, are just beginning to work with EDS billboards, which are becoming multi-purpose displays that somewhat parallel cell phones as a communications medium. Cell phones now offer text messaging, Internet access and image exchange.
EDS boards have also become a multipurpose platform, which displays advertising, public-service announcements, local news and weather reports. Thus, EDS boards have evolved into outdoor “electronic community bulletin boards,” as much as they are advertising displays.
“The success of managing an electronic billboard is more than just programming it,” Ahmed continued. “It’s also how you package its content to your advertisers, and how you value and promote it within its region of draw.”
Eye Candy’s EDS boards fall into two categories: temporary installations for such special events as film festivals and international sporting competitions, or permanent installations that may be located at a city’s busiest intersection or within a popular town square. Because temporary EDS boards are driven by one-time special events, the boards’ content tends to focus on programming and advertising to underwrite the screen’s cost.
Programming can include event-promotion trailers, upcoming activities and exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage about an event’s personalities or activities. Eye Candy believes EDS boards are best implemented through a team effort involving an audiovisual company (which provides the LED screen), various advertisers who buy screen time and local event organizers.
Eye Candy has found that international film festivals illustrate how well LED screens promote an event. These outdoor promotions have been shown to dramatically increase public awareness and consequently increases event ticket sales from 10% to 50%.
Eye Candy’s efforts have developed several, long-term partnerships with the largest and most glamorous film festivals, including the Cannes International Film Festival in France (through its partner Spotvision in Montreal), the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland and the Chicago International Film festival in the United States, as well as other similar festivals in Helsinki, Warsaw, Philadelphia and Hong Kong.
Permanent locations, on the other hand, call for a varied content format — a balance of local advertising, regional news and local weather reports, peppered with seasonal or event-related messages to continually draw attention. Eye Candy’s content typically comprises 20% advertising and 80% community messages.
A client’s advertisement is electronically transmitted to Eye Candy, where graphics are quality checked and transformed into the appropriate EDS format. The advertisement is then placed into a database and assigned, via a server, to a particular board, where it’s scheduled to play as required. The server manages an advertising schedule based on certain “show time” rules. Depending on the time of day, season or demographics, the server will then present the message’s order and frequency.
On an annual basis, Eye Candy delivers content to at least 35, worldwide EDS installations, including locations in Europe (Belgium, Spain, Germany, Austria, Sweden, France, Finland, Poland and the Czech Republic) and the United States (Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, Miami and New Orleans).
Although Eye Candy’s EDS boards are located throughout Europe, its operation is centered in London; South America, the United States, Canada and the Far East are administered from the Montreal division, which is headed by a third partner, Mimo Kabbara.
At this time, the company claims it’s the largest, giant-screen, media marketer in the world. Its giant screen and billboard media projects reach more than 100 million viewers a year. To date, the company has worked with at least 1,400 customers, many on a continuing basis.
Convergence
Eye Candy believes that much of the world has become a global village through international travel and the Internet. This has spawned cross-country product branding. The company believes that, because people commute easily between major international cities, a universal advertising language, which works from screen to screen no matter where it’s placed, must be created. Clearly, EDS boards are becoming another international media format within global advertising markets.
In Barcelona, Eye Candy markets a full-color, LED board in a permanent location in Port Vell, a marina located just outside the city. Mounted on a building, the EDS board began operating in the summer of 2003. Between the marina and passing vehicular and pedestrian traffic, approximately 115,000 people a day view the sign. The screen, which operates 18 hours a day, provides a mixture of local news, weather coverage, relevant global news and advertising.
Another Eye Candy permanent location is Kurfurstendam, one of Berlin’s busiest and liveliest streets. To make the street more colorful, the company mounted — to the side of a building — one of the largest LED outdoor displays in Europe. Built by Lighthouse Technologies Inc. (Cary, NC), the 100-sq.-meter EDS display incorporates Lighthouse’s LVP 502 screen-module series. Eye Candy has been marketing the screen since 2001 and operates it as an EDS board that “portrays” video animations and computer-graphics imagery for its varying advertising programs. According to recent surveys, the sign averages 340,000 passers-by a day.
An evolving visual reality
EDS is now in its Kitty-Hawk stage. Its continual use offers many possibilities yet to be discovered.
“As for the future of EDS boards,” Blanton said, “the LED video component is an evolving visual reality that has yet to reach its full potential. All it takes is a client willing to take some creative risks, and to push the envelope higher and higher.”
Blanton predicts that LED signs will be incorporated into architectural elements in building facades. He pointed to the NASDAQ, Lehman Brothers and Reuters buildings in Times Square as ground-floor examples of where LED signage is heading.
Presently, EDS boards “are a medium that works,” Ahmed said. “They bring a gain for everyone involved with them, and more advertisers and billboard operators are looking at this medium as the next step in outdoor, public-communications systems.” That’s a future that many sign companies eagerly anticipate.
Louis M. Brill is a journalist and consultant for high-tech entertainment and media communications. He can be reached at (415) 664-0694 or lmbrill@earthlink.net.
