I spent most of Monday at the DS Investors Conference and most of Wednesday at the DPAA 2011 Digital Media Summit.

What was notable at both events was that almost every speaker talked about leveraging the connection between DOOH screens and their mobile audience, multi-channel strategies and leveraging mobile and social media technologies.

What was different this week was that this buzz was not limited to the “interactive tent” - it was center stage. What used to be a lonely platform for way-too-early entrepreneurs and evangelists like me, is now well and truly an accepted part of our agenda.

I’m not convinced that every speaker at the conferences was “eating their own dog food” but I can’t gripe - obviously we still have some way to go, but at least the entire industry is talking about it.

There are various stages in the maturation of a digital market, and in my opinion, we’ve reached the end of the beginning.

Borrowed from an earlier Gartner paper, what I touched on in The DOOH Slope of Enlightenment suggests that digital markets move through various stages staring with a “Peak of Inflated Expectations” where the market experiences a fool’s gold rush and invariably early adopters pay the price for being early. The market then moves through a downward trend where it adjusts to a “Trough of Disillusionment” and finally it reaches a point where companies actually release products that exceed users’ expectations. At that point, the market can start to move up the “Slope of Enlightenment.”

As the web evolved from digital brochureware, so too are DOOH screens finally being forced to be more than slideware. Some are and many more will be more connected, more engaging and, as a result, more valuable.

Judging not only from the majority of speakers’ inclusion of all things mobile and social, but also the stream of Tweets from users at both events and even the inclusion of a Twitter screen at the DPAA event - I would say we are at the end of the beginning of DOOH. We are standing at the beginning of the Slope of Enlightenment.

Do you agree?

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The integration of place-based media with mobile and social technologies is consistently in the top five predictions for the future of our industry. Yet very few companies have wrestled with the realities of integrating these technologies at scale.

Even the simplest social media application can trip up inexperienced companies hoping to leverage user-generated content or streams publicly.

For example, a user might be delighted to check-in to a place using a location-based service such as Foursquare and receive “offers nearby” but the location owner will not be so happy!

Similarly, Tweets that can be displayed on a location’s screen should not have URLs that can’t be clicked on, multiple retweets of the same message or messages that are offensive.

Place-based versions of such apps have to benefit the location as well as the consumer - for example, only displaying appropriate offers for the specific location and displaying filtered and localized tweets.

Solving such problems for single locations is waaaay easier than solving the problem for 100’s or 1,000’s of venues, each with different engagement rules – but all expecting real time media and responsiveness.

At this years Digital Signage Expo, in Las Vegas, Feb 22-25th, LocaModa will be releasing LocaModa 4.0 which builds on our company’s experience delivering the world’s first place-based versions of Twitter, Facebook Places and Foursquare for global brands, place-based networks and advertising agencies. And as you might expect, it specifically addresses the above challenges for licensees with a few venues or a few thousand venues to manage.

LocaModa’s booth is 1032. We hope to see you there!

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Escaping multiple snow storms this week in Boston, I’ve joined James Davies, Chief Strategy Officer, Posterscope on a week long series of thought leadership talks in London with leading agencies about the opportunities and lessons around social media and OOH. James and I had jointly written a paper on the subject which you can download here.

I get pretty inspired when I meet clients and get insights about local issues/challenges/opportunities, and this trip is no exception. Happily, I’ve also been more than a little suprised by the fast pace, innovation, responsiveness and attitude that I have experienced here.

My big takeaway is that the DOOH market in USA is not just attracting global attention, it’s also encouraging global companies to participate and innovate in the market (LocaModa’s partnership with Fujifilm Imagetec is one example). Companies far and wide are inspired by what’s going on in USA and are doing something about it. In many cases, they can move faster - their markets have less baggage, less fragmentation and often (as is the case with Posterscope) already have excellent tools to simplify the DOOH media planning and buying process.

I’ve also seen some beautifully executed DOOH here - for example in major underground stations. My gut feel from just a week in my old stomping ground is that the UK DOOH market is primed and ready to move.

USA DOOH is leading by example - now we need to make sure we continue to innovate, execute and drive a global industry forward.

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Fig.1. Seven Stages Of Place-Based Social Media Engagement (Click to enlarge).

In Part 1 of 15 Seconds Or More, I covered the three different types of place-based social media. In this post, I cover the seven steps in the user engagement path that map across the three modes of place-based social media:

1. Recognize Ability to Participate
2. What’s In It For Me?
3. Start to Participate
4. Send Message
5. Receive Response
6. Screen Updates
7. Reaction

RECOGNIZE ABILITY TO PARTICIPATE
Content that indicates an ability to be influenced by its audience and/or invites a dialogue has a greater potential to stand out from content that is perceived as a one-way conversation between marketer and audience. Even if the audience doesn’t have the time to participate (which is the case in the short time availability of passive place-based social media), they can be more receptive if it is obvious that other people have participated in the messaging.

Passive place-based social media needs to promote aspects of its participatory nature very quickly. It can do this in a number of ways:

- By using user generated content from social streams such as Twitter , Foursquare, Facebook, mobile photos and text messages.
- By clearly indicating the sources of the content used for example, by using profile pictures, user comments, or displaying logos of content sources.
- Color can used to highlight keywords or tagged words to emphasize the fact that these messages have been user generated and how it was directed to that DOOH screen. (Also see the advice under SCREEN UPDATES, as many of the design considerations for attracting attention apply here.)

NOTE: Social network logos are becoming shorthand for a call to action. Just as www is a recognized acronym in advertising, Twitter or Facebook addresses, hashtags, or calls to “check-in” on Foursquare or Facebook Places are not only recognized by users of those services but are also becoming used in mainstream media including television and radio.

WHAT”S IN IT FOR ME?
According to a white paper on the Marketing at Retail Initiative (MARI) “Shoppers rely on a subconscious response to the displays and products that come into their vision. Once interest is engaged there is a direct and measurable visual response to the object in vision. At this point a rational cognitive decision making process is engaged during which the buy/don’t buy decision is made. (The report goes on to conclude that a shopper is exposed to 1.5 pieces of marketing at retail material every second, then looks at and engages with an individual display every 4.3 seconds.)

Having noticed the media and perceived an ability to participate, the user has to care about participating. I like to think there are three “Fs” that address the “what’s in it for me” question: Fun, Fame or Fortune.

- An example of “Fun” is the DOOH game Jumbli which people play in locations and on line. Several players have amassed over 1 million points, which is the equivalent of many days of play.
- Fame - If the act of participation get’s a user’s message, picture or vote on the screen, that too can give the user enough of a reward for their participation (Jumbi displays the players words on all DOOH screens, including a screen in Times Square).
- Finally, if there is some reward – for example, an offer, discount or two-for-one opportunity, that can also tip the user into engaging (again, in Jumbli, AT&T, one of the game’s sponsors, offered free phones for the highest scoring words of the day).

START TO PARTICIPATE
Participation, especially in a short dwell time requires the simplest call to action and ideally multiple opportunities/channels to engage. For example:

- Use a memorable call to action. A user will find it easier to remember a call to action such as “Find us at facebook.com/target” rather than having to remember a long telephone number.
- Display familiar interaction methods for example text messaging, Twitter, Mobile photos, Mobile downloads, Facebook etc.
- Offer multiple channels of connectivity e.g. “Find us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter.”

SEND MESSAGE
Depending on the application, context and the capability of the DOOH network, sending a message should result in some immediate feedback. This feedback can be to the user’s mobile phone (in Active and Interactive Place-Based Social Media) and/or on the DOOH screen (only in Interactive Place-Based Social Media).

RECEIVE REPLY
As mentioned above in the case Active and Interactive Place-Based Social Media the DOOH system should be able to send immediate feedback to the user’s phone. Such a reply is typically sent with 5 seconds of the user sending the message.
The reply should not only confirm the user’s interaction, for example, thanking them for engaging or responding to a specific command, instruction or question, but also contain the necessary statutory messages required by the mobile carriers.

SCREEN UPDATES
In the case of Interactive Place-Based Social media, the DOOH screen can display feedback of the user’s engagement. Feedback should occur within 5 seconds to be effective and keep the dialogue alive. There should be some obvious clues on the DOOH screen that some of what is happening on the screen is happening as a result of user (rather than brand) direction. For example, the famous Boston sport’s bar Game On in the Fenway, runs LocaModa screens that display Twitter messages containing the words Red Sox. Those messages highlight the keywords Red and Sox, and the audience is immediately aware that they too could send a message to Twitter containing those words and (subject to moderation/curation rules) have their message appear on the Game On screen. Displaying applications such as Twitter and Foursquare with specific local calls to action results in a 30-60% increase in interactions in the venue.

At the same time as the DOOH screen updates, the DOOH system should be able to update other screens that are connected to the same application, for example, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds etc. Wherever possible, these screens should also update within immediately.

NOTE: The ability of a screen to update in real-time is limited by rules and/or the APIs (application programming interfaces) of social networks or messaging systems used. It will also be limited by the capability of the website to update from push/dynamic messages.
Here are a few other tips to help simplify messaging and aid interactivity:

- Use capitals or color to differentiate action words. For example, the Call To Action (CTA) “text Vote to 87884” is easier to comprehend when it is displayed as Text VOTE to 87884 or TEXT VOTE TO 87884
- Use existing paradigms wherever possible, especially if the engagement time is short.
- Sometimes it is better to simplify engagement at the expense of gaining more granular location-based data. For example, some systems can generate very localized data, but require the user to enter a longer keyword, hashtag or screen ID. The marketer needs to decide if the campaign’s goals are based on user engagement or granularity of the data (or other criteria). With good design, engagement and granularity of data can be maximized.

REACTION
We can only hope that having motivated the user to participate, that we have started a process that can continue beyond a single interaction. However, this will not only depend on the system, but also on how compelling the experience actually is. For example, once a user has checked in to venue, they might not be motivated to post a tip or do anything else to win

More details about how to maximize the effectiveness of DOOH displays and campaigns to encourage/support the appropriate user behavior will be covered in Part 3 and in my white paper which will be coming soon.

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Fig.1. Place-Based Social Media Modes (Click to enlarge).

I’ve just returned from a road trip where I’ve been explaining the different types of place-based social media to brands, agencies and networks. I’m committing my talks to a white paper, but in the meantime, I thought it would be useful to post parts of it here.

This first post describes three types of place-based social media engagement; Passive, Active and Interactive.

Place-based social media does not have to be real-time, interactive or require a specific lean-forward mode of engagement. Understanding how to optimize out of home engagement requires an awareness of the end user’s availability (to consume content) and ability to participate as well as an appreciation of the environment for their engagement, the Digital Out of Home network’s capabilities and the stakeholder’s objectives. Those considerations map to three modes of out-of-home engagement; Passive, Active and Interactive (See Fig.1), each of which maps to distinct applications that can optimize the engagement strategy for locations (retail, hospitality, fitness, health care etc) and brands.

PASSIVE PLACE-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA
Passive place-based social media is best used where the dwell time and or the available time on the DOOH content loop is under 30 seconds. The key attributes of passive place-based social media are:
- It displays contextual, targeted, curated, social media on DOOH screens without a call to action.
- It cannot be influenced by the DOOH audience.
- It can be operated by DOOH networks of any capability.
- As its name implies, passive place-based social media, without a call to action or enough time to engage, does not support any DOOH user interactions.

ACTIVE PLACE-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA
Active place-based social media is best used where the dwell time and or the available time on the DOOH content loop is at least 30 seconds. The key attributes of active place –based social media are:
- It displays contextual, targeted, curated, social media on DOOH screens with a call to action.
- It can be influenced by the DOOH audience but not in real time – either due to limitations of infrastructure or time required by brands/venues to ensure content is adequately filtered, moderated and/or curated.
- It can be operated by DOOH networks with minimum Internet connectivity.
- Active place-based social media, with a call to action and up to 15 seconds to engage, typically has enough time for only one DOOH user interaction.

INTERACTIVE PLACE-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA
Interactive place-based social media is best used where the dwell time and or the available time on the DOOH content loop is at least 60 seconds. The key attributes of interactive place-based social media are:
Displays real-time contextual, targeted, curated, social media on DOOH screens.
- Can be influenced by the DOOH audience in real time.
- Can be operated by DOOH networks of with real-time Internet connectivity.
- Interactive place-based social media, with a call to action and at least 60 seconds to engage, typically has enough time for more than one DOOH user interaction and supports more complex interaction models.

In 15 Seconds Or More (Part 2) I’ll cover the seven steps in the user engagement path.

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