An Interview w/ Manolo Almagro, Digital + Retail Technologies, TPN
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
I know that the readers of DailyDOOH are largely involved in one way or another in technology – many of them very involved – but if I had to give the title of the Ultimate Techie to any one person, it would likely be Manolo Almagro, the senior vice-president, managing director of Digital + Retail Technologies, leading the connected experiences discipline for TPN, an Omnicom agency in Chicago.
I almost hate to even place Almagro in one city, because, although his home and family are in Chicago, he’s also the ultimate flying machine, zipping back and forth between the company’s Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Dallas offices.
Add to that, he’ll also now be visiting a London, UK, suburb where the company is opening an office.
“I try to be home weekends, and about one week a month,” he says.
Ah, yes, the Utimate Techie title I’d bestow: he’s been in the technology business for 18 years, at the beginning of today’s technological development, starting out in the technology sector of an ad agency, Frankel & Co. (now Arc). Today, he’s the guy you see at the airport sporting Google Glasses, with half-a-dozen technology wearables on his arms, and carrying the very latest in tech gadgets he can get his hands on – as well as a constant smile on his face.
To give a little bit of his background: He’s worked for global brands across the US and South East Asia. (His parents came from the Philippines so he feels quite at home there although he was born in the US.) Highlights of his many accomplishments include creation of digital solutions for such companies as: ABC television Networks, Disney, McDonald’s, M&Ms, AT&T, Oracle, HP. T-Mobile, Verizon, United Airlines, ASDA/Walmart, France Telecom, Orange Telecom, Samsung, Jollibee Foods, Globe Telecom, Sears Holding Company, Bank of America, 7-Eleven, and Hershey.
In addition, he was the lead architect for United Airlines Easy Info Flight Information Displays. In Paris, he engineered the first subway-based digital signage network, and helped design Cemusa’s digital out-of-home street furniture solutions. He also owns US Patent #6038545 for a digital signage software solution he developed for menu boards.
Does he licence out the latter?
“No,” he says. “If I did, I’d be rich. But I don’t. I’m not interested in hindering industry growth or ever being a troll. That type of thing only holds the industry back with litigation. But having a patent of my own looks good on my resume.”
What Almagro does do is provide thought leadership on emerging trends and digital retail strategies. Key areas of focus are digital signage solutions, in-store messaging, content strategies, mobile commerce, mobile integration and e-commerce.
These days, working with a multi-disciplinary team, his main focus is the building of an Innovation Lab which will open in 2015 – likely in late Spring – in an as-yet-undisclosed location.
“It will be a sandbox for retail marketing and technology,” he says. “It will be a physical space, about 1,000 sq. ft. or so, where client, technology and creative will mix to find the newest and greatest way to give the upcoming generation what they want. You see that young generation now, with the eyes glued to their smart phones. What we are facing is a generation that says, ‘I want it my way and I want it right now’. The shopping experience has to meet these new expectations, so we as an industry must fit these. We must adapt and personalize for them.
“The lab will bring in partners, tech incubators, start-ups. We are developing an environment where we can bring them in and say, eg. ‘You have 12 hours to solve this problem, or to build this scenario’.”
Almagro, who is, we noticed, one of the nominees for a place on the Board of the Digital Signage Federation during the DSF’s upcoming elections, believes that the digital signage industry will evolve at least one more time , with “a big evolvement.”
He says, “To be relevant, it must adapt to the mobile phone. There must be a system where it integrates the phone to its DNA, where it will call to you on a personal level.
“Today the big screen in the master and the phone adapts. In the future, it should be the other way around. We’re not talking about New Field Communications or something like that. Tapping a phone for NFC is a lot of work. I think it will be more like the store will recognize your phone and will adapt its digital signage and its offers to you personally.
“That’s the type of thing I think we’ll see in the future. But before it becomes mainstream, we have to learn about it and how to use it. That is where the Innovation Lab can help.”
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