Weather: It’s All Lazy, Pointless And Irrelevant!
A digital signage developer hard at work...
Adrian mentioned last week in a banking article (which I wrote) just how much he abhorred the use of weather on retail banking systems as “lazy, pointless & irrelevant“.
Well, I just received this greetings card and quite evidently that view is not necessarily shared, perhaps we could argue, by the guys and gals who – wait for it – may just be the creators of such weather pleasures on those very same screens 😉
For what its worth, living in London means that the weather often turns within minutes, so on occasion it may just have a purpose, less so perhaps where the weather is a bit more constant, like the UAE perhaps.
The card published by Paperlink and created by Chris Madden costs GBP 1.40 and is available from their web site.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:10 @548
It is interesting how people get somewhat emotional about weather, especially as content on a digital signage screen. I once heard the CEO of a large US-based network say, “Why should I pay for the weather, when they just got out of their #$%&$# cars?” To a certain extent, he was right: anyone can surmise present conditions by going (or looking) outside. However, “weather” is not limited to a recap of present conditions, and has proven to be engaging and “sticky” content in a DOOH environment. (Full disclosure: our company was the first in the industry to sign a deal with AccuWeather to offer their content to our customers.)
Weather may in fact be less relevant in the desert as you point out, but seasonal weather patterns in the US create enough interest that there is a successful, national cable channel devoted to weather 24/7 (The Weather Channel). For whatever reason, there are people who are obsessed with weather, and most others don’t ignore it as irrelevant. I can report that “present conditions” content is not nearly as popular as “five day forecasts” or regionally-focused video forecasts. Additionally, health related info, such as AccuWeather’s health indices, which track items such as local UV intensity and pollen, and forecast the impact of conditions on arthritis and asthma sufferers, has proven to be popular. I am not a weather “fan-boy” to the extent that I think it should be a dominant element, or even a required element of every programming wheel. But in many situations it has the desired impact of being timely, local and engaging. Presented in the right manner (please, not on a ticker!) and context, it has real value.