All corporate buildings and retailers want to create a good atmosphere for visitors, either by delivering relaxing or engaging content that puts a visitor at ease and offers them key information about the company. Digital signage can help create these environments, and it can tap into a deeper level: the customer’s emotions.
Using the architecture
Kevin Bartanian, executive vice president of business development for StandardVision, believes that you can help create these experiences using architectural integration. In other words, you select digital signage that can seamlessly integrate with your building’s architecture.
Arden Fair Mall, a mall located in Sacramento, California, took advantage of this principle by integrating a combination of high and low resolution displays on three sides of its central court elevator, as seen below in this video.
“We have only explored the tip of the iceberg in relation to how the tower can impact the visitor experience,” Nathan Spradlin, senior manager, marketing for Arden Fair, said in an interview. “Visually it allows for a variety of artistic images that allow guests to Arden Fair to pause during their visit and enjoy something unexpected. Sometimes it’s children-centric entertainment, other times scenes from the other side of the world, but regardless of content, the LED tower is always a crowd pleaser.”
Tap into emotions
These type of deployments, however, are useless without the right content. You can have the most cleverly integrated displays in the world, but if the content doesn’t evoke some sort of response, it will just be an unwelcome distraction.
“Content designed to invoke emotion performs twice as well,” Bartanian said in an interview. “It should make you feel something, whether joy, disgust, anger.”
In the Arden mall’s case, it used a combination of colorful interesting imagery, such as a yellow ball falling into water or a well dressed couple dancing to evoke a sense of excitement and unexpected wonder, according to Spradlin.
One way for companies to tap into emotions is to use dynamic content depending on certain elements such as the audience or time of day.
Bartanian uses the example of a display in a corporate setting which showcases various artwork. Employees coming into work in the morning are likely going to be grumpy, whether from lack of sleep, traffic jams or other factors. The display could showcase a sunny, happy image, animation or video to help cheer the employee up. The company could also use relaxing images during lunchtime to help employees unwind.
Plan carefully
In order to tap into emotions, however, you need to have the content ready to go beforehand. Bartanian said one of the most common issues he hears from customers using digital signage is that they are, “unhappy with their current content.” This is why it is key to have a very clear idea of your content needs.
Bartanian also warns against jumping on the higher resolution bandwagon if you don’t have the content for it. He said StandardVision still sees “8K screens that are playing 4K content.”
Content may be king, but it only reigns by the will of the customer.
Image via StandardVision.
Post by Bradley Cooper
