Digital Signage Masters Series: Lessons in Retail – Toronto Post Event Wrap Up
The second event in Lyle Bunn’s Master Series, focused on ad-based retail implementations, drew a crowd of approximately 80-90 attendees.
Unlike other Digital Signage Events, it was great to see a high number of end-users in the audience. Canadian Tire, LCBO, Scotia Bank and a few others were most notable, considering they all have some sort of RFP or RFI floating around the digital signage circles.
Cathy Stauffer, Executive Vice President, Market Development, PRN, delivered a strong presentation, well received by the audience. The interest and attention of the audience was evident by the high volume of questions at times almost de-railing the presentation. However, as always, Lyle Bunn managed to bring the conversation back on track to push forward the day’s agenda.
It was interesting to note the audience’s fixation on network-level content delivery preferences (Wireless, DSL, 3G or Satellite) and dynamics of ad-funded digital signage (pricing, CPM, ownership) – two topics that dominated the question periods. Looks like the next event may need to focus on more technical aspects of Digital Signage to satisfy the increasing amount of propeller heads in the audience.
Overall, the event delivered a great forum for bringing together end-users closer to the realities of our industry and exposing firsthand accounts of implementing Digital Signage. Let’s hope this series will continue past the third scheduled event in Vancouver and help reduce confiscation inhibiting progress of our industry.
About the organizer:
Lyle Bunn is an independent consultant, author and educator in advancing Digital Signage and Dynamic Place-based Media projects and supply.
In closing remarks Lyle wanted to ensure that the Canadian Digital Signage resellers, end-users and interested parties were aware of the following upcoming events:
- The AdOlympics happening evening Aug 19 (Polson Pier, Toronto).
- The Sept 8 Digital Signage supplement to appear in the National Post.
- The Ad Clubs Sept 23 Out-of-Home Day (Toronto) (http://www.adclub.ca/).
- The Sept 28 InfoComm Roundtable (Vancouver).
- CONNEX 2010 by Ingram Micro happening in Toronto Sept 23 (http://www.connex-im.com/ or http://www.imdigitalsignage.ca/).
August 20th, 2010 at 14:18 @637
An informative and well run event Lyle. On the subject of those who consistently raise the issue of “the advertising industry doesn’t understand our business..we must educate them more”,,i believe our industry should consider that “we don’t understand their business..they must educate us more”….
Trust me..once you understand the number of planners calling you and putting you on plans will increase.
August 20th, 2010 at 14:38 @651
The star of the Masters Series event was Cathy Stauffer, EVP of PRN who covered a lot of ground on network planning, design and operational considerations. The ability for Q&A, discussion around key points and input from attendees that she had designed into the session, made it valuable and refreshing.. Few providers have the expereince and depth in every aspect of digital place-based media that PRN has earned. Being able to include all of the pieces in the puzzle makes for an ultimately more understandable picture.
August 20th, 2010 at 14:38 @651
The network delivery question was asked innocently by a potential end user and the topic was taken over by vendors with a bias towards one method or another. That discussion was out of context with the presentation and a question better deferred to another venue. This is a basic education issue that would be better suited to a larger conference and will likely be on the agenda for the Digital Signage Show in Las Vegas in February.
August 24th, 2010 at 13:29 @604
Ian has a great point, but our industry tends to be entirely too self-centered to realize that yet.
Thankfully Adcentricity and the like are relentlessly doing the icebreaking on our behalf. Keep up the good work guys!