DailyDOOH

Last week, Walmart officially opened its Intelligent Retail Lab inside a 50,000-square-foot Neighborhood Market grocery store on Long Island.

As you can see in the picture above, there are cameras suspended from the ceiling and sensors on shelves, which monitor the store in real time. These seem to be more for employees benefit though, rather than to enable Amazon Go-like cashierless shopping. The press release stated that they were there to spot spills, track when shelves need to be restocked and “determine how ripe bananas are from their color” – workers getting alerts on their phone if anything needs to be replaced, products replenished or other problems fixed.

We are told that Walmart hopes to start scaling some of the new technology at other stores in the next six months, with an eye toward lower costs and thus lower prices – no doubt as the shopping experience improves, the retailer expects to see higher sales.

Mike Hanrahan, CEO of Walmart’s Intelligent Retail Lab and co-founder of Jet.com, purchased by Walmart three years ago said “We really like to think of this store as an artificial intelligence factory, a place where we are building these products, experiences, where we are testing and learning”.

“The cameras are programmed to focus primarily on the products and shelves right now. Sensors embedded in shelves will give the store extra information because they know what’s at the back of the shelves that the cameras can’t see. Cameras do not recognize faces, determine the ethnicity of a person picking up a product or track the movement of shoppers.

This retail lab is the third project from Walmart’s new incubation arm, created after the Jet.com acquisition as a way for the discounter to shape the future of retail and the second in a Walmart physical store. In 2018 Walmart’s Sam’s Club opened a 32,000-square foot lab store, where it is testing new features surrounding the Scan & Go App, which lets customers scan items as they shop and then buy from their phones, skipping the checkout line.

AV Jobs provide a highly specialist Recruitment Service for Audio Visual manufacturers, distributors and resellers.

They also work within the broadcast, events and unified communications industries providing quality and experienced staff at all levels – from board members through management, field service and sales, as well as on-site technical and sales people.

Their Consultants have experience within the AV industry and fully understand all areas from sales through system design and installation, hire and events, operations and service.

Here are this week’s selection of #AVjobs from them…

• AV/IT ENGINEER
  Job Type Permanent Full Time
  Location Berks/M4 corridor
  Area Berkshire, England Avon, England
  Sector EngineerEngineer – Audio VisualEngineer – Installer Engineer – Video Conferencing Engineer – Commissioning
  Salary £28000 – £32000 Per Annum Extremely competitive salary incl. benefits
  Currency GBP
  Start Date ASAP
  Advertiser AV Jobs
  Job Ref AV29886
• AV DESIGN & PRODUCT MANAGER
  Job Type Permanent Full Time
  Location Manchester
  Area Greater Manchester, England
  Sector Engineer Engineer – Audio Visual Engineer – Design Engineer – Technical Support Marketing Marketing – Product
  Salary £30000 – £35000 Per Annum Salary negotiable + benefits
  Currency GBP
  Start Date ASAP
  Advertiser AV Jobs
  Job Ref AV29882
• CORPORATE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
  Job Type Permanent Full Time
  Location M4 Corridor
  Area Bucks, England Middlesex, England Surrey, England Avon, England Oxford, Oxford
  Sector SalesSales – Audio Visual Sales – Collaborative Technology Sales – Unified Communications Sales – Corporate Sales – Business Development Sales – Field Sales
  Salary £40000 – £60000 Per Annum Neg. circa £40k + comms plus car and benefits
  Currency GBP
  Start Date ASAP
  Advertiser AV Jobs
  Job Ref AV29874

Posterscope, the out-of-home and location marketing specialist, this week announced the appointment of Simon Woodward as Global Commercial Director. In this newly created role, we are told that Simon will provide trading and commercial support to Posterscope’s 35 offices around the world and that he will play a key role in the company’s M&A activity and in the further development of its broader, location marketing services.  

He will report to Stephen Whyte, Global President, and be based in the London office. Since 2015, Simon has been the Chief Operating Officer of DAN MENA but will returning to his native UK to take up the role from May 1, 2019.

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Clear Channel, one of the UK’s leading Out of Home media owners, has successfully won three major tender bids to work with councils in Southampton, Solihull, and Haringey to deliver new street furniture to the areas.

Included in the contracts is a sum of money from Clear Channel which will be used as a community investment fund to support environmental projects in the councils’ local areas.

Clear Channel CEO, Justin Cochrane, told us “We’re excited to be working with these three local councils in the coming months, helping bring real tangible changes to local areas. As well as installing free-standing advertising units, as a responsible media owner we are committed to limiting our environmental impact and continuing our successful track record of working with councils to improve local communities through our community investment funds.”

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JCDecaux S.A. (Euronext Paris: DEC), the number one outdoor advertising company worldwide, has appointed Alan Sullivan to the position of Co-CEO of JCDecaux North America.

Alan Sullivan has been the Managing Director of JCDecaux Airport UK for the last five years and was previously the Sales Director. Responsible for London Heathrow Airport and Edinburgh Airport, he oversaw significant market-beating revenue growth and the digitisation of the airport offer with the opening of the award-winning London Heathrow Terminal 5 and Terminal 2. He will work alongside Co-CEO Jean-Luc Decaux.

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Excitement is building as the first wave of commercial 5G deployments start to take hold. But it’s also a very confusing landscape, with varied and sometimes conflicting interpretations of what 5G is and what to expect from it.

We are told that this confusion is impacting not just consumers, but also complicating the industry’s ability to measure itself against a standard set of 5G expectations and requirements. We are told that in order to optimise short-term and long-term 5G adoption, it’s imperative that clarity regarding 5G rollouts and benefits is established for both consumers and the ecosystem.

IHS Markit have therefore put together a very good whitepaper that provides an overview of what 5G is, what challenges remain, and why there’s so much excitement about the future of 5G networks.

You can download it here.

Last month, Talon announced its expansion in the U.S. with the purchase of Grandesign’s traditional out-of-home vertical. In light of the acquisition, Grandesign’s experiential vertical is working as a standalone under the name “Grandesign Experiential”.

Founder of Grandesign, Aaron Gaeir told us “When Grandesign got its start, experiential was a luxury for brands if the budget permitted. Now it’s the engine to all marketing plans. Grandesign Experiential can now work closely with companies like Talon to have a bigger voice and continue to create out of this world activations that brands are craving. No one has the resume, the history, the people – and now the out-of-home connections – that Grandesign Experiential has.”

The experiential marketing firm is continuing to manifest and execute one-of-a-kind campaigns for large brands out of its headquarters in the old Wonder Bread factory in San Diego’s East Village, where it will continue to share offices with the Talon team. Grandesign Experiential also has offices in New York City and Sacramento.

The Emerging Trends Day takes place on Tuesday June 11, 2019 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL as part of #InfoComm19.

The day’s lineup of analysts, integrators, end users, and technologists will examine the forces impacting pro AV, from internet protocol, to disruptive audio and video, to unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and its impact on how companies work.

Rachel Bradshaw, Director of Program Design, AVIXA told us “The Emerging Trends Day speakers have seen firsthand how new technology is playing out in the real world and can tell InfoComm attendees about the change that’s coming, the challenges, and the possibilities this technology unlocks. This event arms attendees with the informed questions they need to ask on the InfoComm show floor.”

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ZetaDisplay AB (publ) has announced that the company has concluded a five-year global framework agreement for Digital Signage solutions with the Norwegian furniture group Ekornes AS.

The agreement refers to shop-in-shop solutions for Ekornes global retail network of approximately 3,500 outlets in 43 countries. In 2019 that will see a rollout of approximately 450 outlets. The press release stated that “the ambition (is) to keep an increasing rate in the coming years”. ZetaDisplay estimates a sales value of MSEK 15 for the 2019 rollout. This year’s installations and all subsequent years lead to contracted Services revenues in form of license and service income.

Ekornes AS is an international Norwegian furniture producer with the promise to create the world’s most comfortable furniture. The company’s best-known brands are the Armchair ‘Stressless’ and the bed brand ‘Svane’. The company was founded 1934 and is owned since last year by the Chinese Qumei Home Furnishing Group. Ekornes has an annual turnover of MNOK 3.1 billion and operations in 43 countries. Ekornes AS sees Digital Signage as an excellent instrument to streamline its customer communication and to create a better shopping experience for the consumer in the store.

ZetaDisplay AB (publ) (Nasdaq Stockholm: ZETA) announced today that the annual report for 2018 has been published and is available on the group’s website here.

CEO Leif Liljebrunn told us “2018 has been a very eventful year for ZetaDisplay. After several years where multiple acquisitions have been in focus, the past year has meant that we have consolidated the business, added a new company, grew revenues heavily within contracted services and increased profitability in general. For the full year, we can report a turnover of SEK 404.1 million and a growth in contracted services of 80% to MSEK 101.9 “

ZetaDisplay provides visual communication solutions to influence behavior in a physical store or office environment. The company is built on a profound understanding of human behavior in decision-making situations. The total offering includes concept development software programming, deployment as well as technical contracted services. ZetaDisplay is based in Malmö, Sweden. The company has annual net sales 400 MSEK and employs 140 employees at eight offices in six European countries. The company controls and services today more than 50,000 installations at customers on 50 markets. The share is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm Stock Exchange [ZETA].