In the world of hospitality there is an acute balance of personal service for your customers and the customer’s personal space. Nobody wants to be badgered, being offered loyalty cards, trial days at the gym and free lunches...well maybe free lunches, this is where the right use of digital signage comes into its own. A passive yet dynamic form of advertising that gives your clients or guests the latest information whether these are offers from within your organisation or paid for advertising by partners there really is no better way to gain awareness in a public space, hotel or conference centre environment.
During the early days, digital signage was deployed with little thought into the positioning, administration, maintenance and future marketing potential; this is where the concept can begin to gain a poor reputation. We have all seen a slightly crooked LCD television bought only weeks before from a high street chain, too large or small for the space and displaying illegible content which is quickly forgotten, this is definitely not the best route to deploy digital signage.
There are many manufacturers that produce various types of digital signage hardware and software and we will come to these shortly, firstly I would like to talk about the administration, which is key to a successful digital signage project. The content for your displays needs to be updated regularly with a simple interface; a comprehensive scheduling tool allowing your administrator to make fast efficient updates or completely change the campaign for all screens with the minimum of fuss, any more complicated than this and the content won’t be changed at all.
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“the whole pro display range from Samsung is built to last”
‘Samsung’ have taken a very different approach, rather than producing a PC in a box with expensive digital signage software they have built a series of professional display products ranging from 32” to 85” with built in ultra efficient PC’s running Microsoft Windows and offering their Magic Info Pro software for free! The PC’s have no moving parts; the Windows operating system is located in a solid-state memory chip giving an increased lifespan over a standard PC. The whole professional display range from Samsung is built to last and are manufactured in a very different way from your consumer TV at home; designed for the demanding commercial environment giving a lifespan of up to 100k hours which is just over 10 years. Their range of display types is large enough to suit most environments, standard indoor, hi-bright indoor, hi-bright outdoor and frameless which can be fitted into custom enclosures such as stainless steel or wood for a custom finish.
The Magic Info Pro software is simple to use and one administrator can control up to 100 screens placing a variety of content from HDMI sources, free to air TV, Flash, MPEG’s, JPEG’s, GIF’s and many other formats. The screens are set up using a drop and drag technique which is a fast task to master, the only bit of advice here is to invest in some graphic design, a few hundred pounds extra on some smart looking templates your staff can amend will always look better than a home grown ‘power point esque’ concoction.
Duncan Savage, Services Director
ITSL Group 020 3051 9810
