A wonderful world of screens (3)

The fifth presentation came from Media Librium, the out-of-home TV. This is the company that works together with MacDonalds. The hamburger chain is rapidly adapting to in-store screens and using them not just to narrowcast information about their own products, but also about products and services of third parties. As their target audience will be in MacDonalds, third parties might as well confront them with their advertisement. But the local management of a MacDonald restaurant can also use the screen to steer stream of visitors. When there are no salads any more, the manger will remove the advertisement for salads. When it is hot, the manger might recommend ice creams. And as there is wi-fi all over the place, you might as well offer it as a service to the visitor with the alienating spot of a well clad business man with tie and a computer! It is clear that screens are used here to steer the traffic.

The last presentation was given by Jerry Rustveld, a veteran in the interactive marketing field. His company, Medialandscape has done some in-store screen projects for the book chain Bruna and the bank ABN AMRO. Most prestigious, but also most complicated is their groceries store project for AH. He got the opportunity to start up a new concept in a new shop. It offers 13 channels on 8 different screens with 8 unique content streams, ranging from a screen on the freezer to the DVD in the children’s corner. All the screens offer the opportunity to use TV commercials and link them to the offer of the week. But it is also complicated. When the long necks are sold out, the store manger will have to go into the product database and produce another pack shot of for example beer in cans. But the advantage is that in real time prices can be lowered. No measurements had been done yet; so the influence of the screens was not measured yet. But they got complaints that the screens had been fixed too high; when shopping people like to look down and not communicate with heaven.

Tags: narrow-casting, big screens