DailyDOOH

We always figured that getting a thousand people to a City for a ‘Digital Signage Week’ was good but judging by the numbers we are seeing at the moment it looks like London Digital Signage Week is well over two thousand rather than one!

The NEC Showcase has had an unbelievable 2,317 registrations. The DailyDOOH Media Summit had 153, Scala’s Partner Conference 100, the Employee Communications Thought Leadership Summit 160 whilst various open houses, dinners and networking receptions have anywhere between 20 – 50 each!

There is some overlap in those numbers BUT not as much as you would imagine .. add that up ladies and gentlemen and you have somewhat of a successful week.

Steve Ridley who has worked for Kinetic (previously Poster Publicity) for the last 15 years, stepped down from his role as Global CEO of Kinetic, late last week.

We understand that Rupert Day, CEO tenthavenue will assume the role on an interim basis until a new CEO is appointed.

Steve took up the Global CEO role some 4 years ago.

NCR is equipping the KompetenzCenter Bauen & Wohnen at Volksbank eG Schwarzwald Baar Hegau, one of the largest cooperative banks in Germany, with a modern solution for interactive property research.

The solution draws consumer attention to the branch and creates a one-stop shopping experience for property transactions. The real estate search package consists of the NCR SelfServ 85 kiosk with touchscreen, software and services. It can be used like a smartphone or tablet PC. In the area reaching from the Black Forest to Hegau, customers can select properties in their desired region on a map, zoom in on images, scan QR codes and save object details on their mobile devices or leave their contact details for further information. Subsequently, they can directly set up a financial consultation at the branch.

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Samsung Investment Company turned to Daktronics Inc. , Brookings, South Dakota, to design, manufacture and install a LED display to cover the building façade on its first flagship store on Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street in Shanghai.

The display measures 18 meters high by 8 meters wide (59’ x 26’) and is created from Daktronics PSX-62 – freeform LED stick elements with 62 millimeter line spacing.

Rebecca Ding, retail management team leader of Samsung Greater China, says, “Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street’s charm was enhanced by the creative façade and dynamic lighting experience of Samsung’s Flagship Experience Store that opened on April 11. The façade lighting Daktronics provided to us has helped to quickly establish our Flagship Experience Store as an iconic retail destination on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road.”

The display retains the ability to be seen through the frosted curtain wall of the building and provides lighting accents to the creatively designed physical exterior of the building. It is capable of showing customized animations and dynamic lighting effects to bring the exterior of the building to life.

Daktronics Creative Services supported the installation for the grand opening, which coincided with the Galaxy S5 release, by providing multiple custom animations for the display.

The installation was equipped with a dedicated Daktronics control system to provide multiple pre-set lighting scenes that can be displayed based on Samsung’s needs including soft transitioning and fading effects between lighting scenes.

“The close cooperation of the designers, construction team and Daktronics really made this project a success,” says Jon Minor, Daktronics sales manager for the Asia Pacific region. “We went through several iterations of testing to ensure our PSX-62 product would coordinate perfectly with the curtain wall glass and the architectural aspects of the façade. We are incredibly pleased with the result and are very excited to be a part of this landmark project in Shanghai.”

Scala will offer various insights into digital communication and the latest industry developments at the International Scala Conference 2014, taking place May 14 and 15 in the Olympic Park in London – and, yes, we’ll be there!

Since its launch in 2000, the International Scala Conference has grown to become the largest event for Scala Partners. With its emphasis on successful Digital Communication Solutions, the conference has a very good reputation for bringing business together in this rapidly evolving market.

On Wednesday, May 14, Scala hosts an interesting conference program, where prominent industry guest speakers will share valuable industry and project insights with the audience. This year’s program features the following speakers and topics:

• Nikk Smith, Pixel Inspiration: Intelligent digital media at Argos;
• Steen Mertz, Jyske Bank: jyskebank.tv – from web TV to flow channel;
• Adrian Exton, BlueSight Systems: Using audience data to increase revenues;
• Alex Hughes, Amigo: Branding Your Building, The Scala Way;
• Peter Critchley, Beaver Group: EAT – Fresh Food and Fresh Menus;
• Christian Lie, DNB: Rebranding Norway’s largest financial institution with digital signage;
• James Fine, Telecine: The Art of Signage Seduction…or How to Score with Great Content;
• James Brenner, Esprit Digital: The Westfield Stratford City case.

Naturally, we expect Scala CEO Tom Nix and CTO Peter Cherna will update the audience on the roadmap and strategy of the company. And Stefan Menger, vice-president advanced analytics, and Amy Wilson, product manager, will give a presentation titled ‘The Data Connection – Connecting and Optimizing Customer Experiences’. (We thoroughly enjoyed meeting Wilson at the Scala Americas conference in Austin last month and know she’s a great speaker.)

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London Digital Signage Week got off to a great start Monday night with an opening reception sponsored by Limited Space Media Group.

Tim Henderson, Stephanie Knight, David Da Costa, Robert Lomnitz, all of Limited Space

Held at Hix in Soho, it gave us a chance to meet old and new friends – and to pick up bits of news here and there.

While most of the guests were from the UK and Contental Europe, we met up with Daniel Parisien from BroadSign, Montreal, and Dave Etherington from Titan, New York.

Big congratulations must to go to Dave Etherington who has just been named executive vice-president and chief strategy officer, giving him a whole new set of responsibilities along with his old ones. Yes, he still heads marketing, too!

Etherngton was chatting with Paolo Guida, CFO, of Taggalo, Milan, and was seemingly quite impressed with Taggalo’s offering. We won’t be at all surprised if Titan decides to do a pilot project with the Italian firm in the near future.

We had a chance to talk with a varied mix including, (and this is just a sample): Paul Grundy of MOOH Group, Stuart Liddle of Visual technology, Dave Kelshaw of LivePoster, Roger Moss of Limited Space Media Group, Dieter Kemp of Benihana Japanese Steakhouse, Harry Horn of Scala and dozens of others.

Many thanks to those who came along to get the week off to a great start, and the many others who have confirmed their presence at the various events taking place this week, we’re already predicting that London Digital Signage Week will be a great success.

What’s this? JCDecaux featured in this month’s issue of MONOCLE magazine (issue 74, volume 8, JUNE 2014). Nice article pp 155-161.

We believe that the only other outdoor media owner to EVER feature in their pages was a certain WALL AG (issue 05 JULY / AUGUST 2007) – a company of course that JCDecaux went on to acquire.

Play Taxi Media has further bolstered its taxi network offering to include high profile taxi wraps, providing Play’s clients with the opportunity to integrate Mobile, Out-of-Home and Digital campaign offerings within their national taxi network space.

The addition of wraps positions Play as Canada’s only one-stop-shop for all taxi media branding options.

Play’s product portfolio now includes wraps, taxi tops, mobile space within its newly launched taxi app as well as TV and branded app space / options within its national touch screen network.

“Taxi wraps were a logical progression for Play,” says Zac Killam, Play Taxi Media’s founder & CEO. “Play started by offering a highly engaging touch screen solution inside the cab, giving advertisers a captive audience for a full 15 minutes, and now we are able to extend brand messaging outside of the cab to incorporate this mass reach, high-profile branding option as well.”

In partnership with Interac Association/Acxsys Corporation, the first wrapped cabs are currently on Toronto streets and will run through June, providing over 300,000 downtown viewers per month, per taxi.

Due to strong growth and market strength in the industry, Vantage LED, US-based manufacturer of LED signs which we met at #2014SignExpo, has moved into its recently purchased new 150,000 square foot facility located on a beautiful 8.66 acre campus in Ontario, California, just south of Ontario International Airport on Vineyard Ave.

Chris Ma, founder and CEO, says that the new expansion shows the company’s continued commitment to faster production, more innovation, and overall dedication to excellent customer experience.

“We started looking to purchase a larger location last year to match our growth projections for 2014 and beyond.” says Ma. “We want to grow smart, and make sure we continue to provide the service our partners expect and deserve. This new location will support that and more, with plenty of room for long term expansion.”

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Whilst The DailyDOOH Media Summit is a conference aimed squarely at digital media owners, both large and small, in the UK and continental Europe AND the speakers are predominantly all media people, we have squeezed into an already packed agenda an early afternoon session entitled ‘Six Elevator Pitches from Technology Innovators‘.

In one 30 minute session; amBX, Blippar, LivePoster, OpenSplash, Proxama and Taggalo will individually be doing their own five minute elevator pitch in front of our assembled audience of 150+.

Whilst the bigger media owners would usually invite these types of vendors in to see them, many of the small to medium sized business may not have (yet) had the chance to see what the solution could do for them.

The DailyDOOH Media Summit will take place in London on Tuesday 13th May, 2014 in The David Lean Room at BAFTA. There are now only a handful of tickets available.