If you are a digital signage newbie, this quick-start guide will help you take beginning steps towards an effective communication strategy. Because digital signage is part art and part science, most communicators start small with just one or two digital signs, test ideas and measure what works with their audience and then build on that. This discovery process is useful for any communications effort that involves interrupting people’s routine, because, after all, your message is not the most important thing on the mind of your viewer, or is it?

The most important thing to recognize when you start communicating by a digital sign is to realize that viewers don’t care about your message just because it’s digital unless you give them a reason to care. Certainly this applies to any communication effort. Just presenting information on a digital sign does not nullify lazy thinking or uninspiring content or other communication snafus.

Fortunately for anyone using digital signage, it has proven to be a great platform for breaking out of boring routines by experimenting with content, having a bit of fun, maybe even jolting your audience with something unexpected, and then seeking to engage your audience beyond a casual glance. For example, if your content produces a smile instead of a glance, you might just be on to something.

Because of its ability to change messages on the fly, by schedule, by data, or by various environmental triggers, digital signage represents a new way of thinking about communicating. It empowers communicators to address the ways consumers, customers, and employees think and act at the point-of-sale, point-of-wait, and in the point-of-transit environments. Since digital signage is not print, and it’s not television, it requires a different approach.

Modern digital signage products and services provide tools to help make your in-house messages or advertising reliable, consistent, on time and of high quality. However, a tool is not a strategy in itself. No worries! These guidelines will equip you with some key facts to make your messages more engaging and appealing.

Digital Signage Content Basics

When people are on the move, you have only seconds to engage them. Here are some attention-grabbing strategies to incorporate into your messages:

1. Use bright colors.
2. Use motion in the narrative to help tell the story.
3. Keep your message cycle length appropriate to the amount of time your average customer will be in the viewing vicinity. Many successful retail message cycles are 3-10 seconds in overall length.
4. Refresh signage content often to reflect sales, special offerings--and sales goals.
5. Reinforce product and branding messages.
6. Know your customers. Speak to their interests. Content should be dynamic and reflective of what people are doing.
7. Make sure the digital media experience complements all marketing objectives, from merchandising to branding.
8. Keep the look and feel of your content consistent with your brand equity.
9. Avoid excessive text. Keep your messages as visual as possible.
10. Don’t try to deliver full advertising messages, as you would for television, print or long-form video. Show product glimpses that pique curiosity or provide information.
11. Create designs that can exist independent of sound; assume that it will not be heard. On the other hand...
12. Use sound when the signage location allows it.
13. Try to incorporate product tips and information.
14. Experiment. Have fun.

Digital Signage Deployment Strategies

1. Use larger displays when possible and practical. Bigger increases WOW factor!
2. Make sure your messages are relevant to the time, place and purchase opportunities at hand.
3. Incorporate touch screen technology when interactivity is appropriate and useful to the audience.
4. Utilize motion sensor technology when appropriate and useful to the audience.
5. Utilize custom data when appropriate and useful to the audience.
6. Keep the customer experience at the front of your mind as you choose content. Digital signage should enhance--rather than intruding upon--the shopping experience.
7. Use an editorial calendar to determine the best timing for content.
8. Incorporate frequent brand IDs for your company and its products.
9. Use your signage to create add-on sales: accessories with that dress, extra cheese for that burger, etc. This strategy has created double-digit sales increases for many companies.

A Few Thoughts About Digital Signage Placement

Don’t make this mistake: not giving much thought to sign placement, or even worse, wasting your efforts and budget on misplaced digital signs. People are not likely to look up to your ceiling for product announcements. Instead, place product-specific content where products are, preferably at eye-level or shelf level. The closer the advertising to the purchase opportunity, the more effective it will be.

Even more than just hanging a digital sign where it’s convenient to see, think a tad further about the bigger picture. For example, digital signage can influence the ambiance of a building by the way it is integrated into the environment. Have you considered that your digital sign may be way too small and unimpressive to make your point? Try a video wall instead! Get creative…think of your digital displays as canvases for creative expression.

Finally, by locating your signage in the optimal place and choosing the best size, the creative content can now fully stimulate the senses, arouse and influence behavior that complements the purpose of the building’s design, which reinforces and extends the core brand image. Empowered with great design, you can inspire your viewers with an aesthetic experience.

Feeling overwhelmed or out of your comfort zone? Consider asking a full-service digital signage provider with a good reputation to help design your first campaign. This will reduce your learning time and increase your chances of success considerably. A provider of professional creative services will do their homework by performing a thorough discovery process. They will maintain your brand standard, and if you don’t have a brand standard, they will help establish one. From there they will research your audience to understand what they care about and create a call to action. Finally, a successful campaign will have various forms of measurement based on your return-on-objectives (ROO).

Given the time and willingness to learn from trial and error anyone, regardless of background, can be successful with digital signage; but, it’s important to shake off the common “a slide show is good enough” mentality—it’s not an effective strategy for digital signage. Sure, everyone is not a Picasso per se, but everyone is creative to some degree. A well-conceived strategy masters content that transforms digital signage from mere displays, computers, and cables into a dynamic communications medium with a limitless ability to inspire, inform and motivate.

David Little is a charter member of the Digital Screenmedia Association with over 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. For many more helpful digital signage tips, examples and solutions, keep in touch with Little at KeywestTechnology.com

When executed properly and in the right context, digital signage can leverage sticky content to inform, inspire and motivate. It provides a concrete reason for viewers to return their glances again and again.

What is sticky content? The term comes from Internet lingo. It refers to content added to a website that has the purpose of getting users to return to that particular website and hold their attention longer than just a glance. This is why we commonly see such things as Internet games, weather, news and horoscopes on personalized web portals.

There’s no question that the traits of sticky content can also be useful with many digital signage applications. As many longtime operators of digital signage systems and networks will tell you, advertising loops are not very “sticky” when removed from the context of point-of-sale locations (POS). After all, how many of us flop in front of the television and flip on the “advertising channel” for late night entertainment?

The question we explore today is how this principle of sticky content can be applied to digital signage, and because content matters, what is likely the best sticky content when using digital signage in point-of-wait (POW) and point-of-transit (POT) locations. It’s important to know and distinguish the psychological differences between viewers’ attention spans and perceptions in all three possible contexts of digital signage. If you need to brush up on content guidelines quickly, the Digital Sign Content Best Practices guide from the University of Michigan should help you.

Basically, sticky content is about piggybacking existing content onto another medium to yield a greater value. For example, NASA scientists are considering a plan to piggyback future astronauts on –or even inside- asteroids orbiting between Earth and Mars to shield them from cancer-causing space radiation during trips between the planets.

While the proposal has some disadvantages, it offers the space agency an appealing, elegant way to sidestep problems like building a rocket big enough to boost heavy, man-made shielding into space as part of the spacecraft.

The plan draws on an ancient concept: Piggyback on –or inside- a more powerful object to get to a desired destination. Whether it’s buckling up in our cars, riding an elephant into battle after traversing the Alps, or climbing into a hollow wooden horse and being rolled up to the gates of Troy, the concept of piggybacking has a track record for success.

In the world of digital signage, sticky content piggybacks to your message and plays an important role in yielding a greater viewer value because it delivers something people generally want—to be entertained. Nothing can really do this better than television.

Just as television can inform, motivate and inspire its audience to take action, so too can it enhance your digital signage message. Simply throwing a TV channel on a digital display doesn’t automatically leverage the public’s love affair with TV. However, when executed properly within the agenda of a communication strategy with measureable goals, digital signage content that embraces television can piggyback on its stature in our society to cut through the noise and deliver powerful messages to customers that otherwise might be ignored.

Of course there are both technical and legal challenges that make it imperative to work with professional providers who can properly setup systems, support installations, and create branded playlists with an appropriate mix of content—in other words, providers who are accountable for obtaining results. And fortunately, with today’s digital signage advances, this is much easier than traveling to Mars.

The digital signage industry borrows its favorite cliché from the media folks, which is: “Content is king.” Maybe we should ask at this point, if content is king, who is doing the coronation?

When I was a younger man, a college professor warned me against the use of clichés in my writing. The problem with clichés, he said, is that they are by definition “hackneyed” and “trite." Leave it to a professor to send me back to my dictionary to figure out what he was trying to say.

Being worn out, however, seems to be a matter of opinion. After all, how many people drive cars with more than 100,000 miles, especially in today’s economy? How many patch the knees of their kids’ blue jeans? Who discards a dull knife?

To me, clichés become clichés because they succinctly bundle a truth into a few memorable words, which become used to the point of exhaustion because they so aptly describe something. To “reinvent the wheel” with an original phrase might leave you “looking for a needle in a haystack,” requiring you to become “busier than a one-armed paperhanger” when a simple cliché would have conveyed your point without the fuss.

The kingship of content is easy to understand. If you want someone to read your newspaper, listen to your radio show, watch your TV program or look at your digital sign, you’d better give them a reason. That “tried and true” reason is content. It better be fresh; it better be interesting; it better serve your audience’s needs; and it better look just as professional as the competition’s presentation. And just as important, quality content must be presented in the proper context or otherwise interesting content becomes irrelevant.

Those who are successful in the media understand these truths instinctively. However, the same can’t be said for the digital signage universe. Sure, there are digital signage ad networks being put in place by media groups. Professionals in these groups understand the importance of content, but there is another vast group of digital signage users who aren’t professional communicators. They run independent retail stores, car lots, local restaurants, bars, and any one of a thousand other small enterprises. These people “first and foremost” are business people concerned with all of the things that got them to the level of success they’ve achieved so far. Adding digital signage adds another responsibility, the implications of which may not be fully understood.

Obviously, these small business owners are adding digital signage because they understand the importance of promoting their goods or services. But they likely don’t have the time, understanding or expertise to develop the content that fully exploits the potential of the digital signage medium.

For small business owners, this raises a critical question: If digital signage is king, who’s doing the coronation? In other words, how does a small business owner with limited resources create –or afford to hire someone to create- digital signage content that attracts the attention of viewers, holds their attention and influence the process of making a purchasing decision? How do they make their content king?

While there’s no simple answer that meets the needs of all small business owners, there are some straightforward, logical steps to make clear, effective, professional digital signage content possible. I’ll review this summer some of those steps to help small business owners put together the messaging they envision for their digital signs. Till then, at the risk of using another cliché, “stay tuned.”

A recent survey reveals many retailers aren't exactly where they want to be with their IT technology, including digital signage. These five tips can help.

Retailers realize the important role IT technology, including digital signage, will play in their continued success, but many say they aren't using technology to its full potential.

Those are two important findings of a newly released survey from CompTIA, a non-profit association for the IT industry. The report "Retail Sector Technology Adoption Trends Study," finds that 72 percent of retailers surveyed see technology as important to their business -a level that is expected to grow to 83 percent by 2014. However, only 7 percent say they are exactly where they want to be with the use of technology. Twenty-nine percent say they are close to their ideal application of technology.

The study also reveals that digital signage is seen by retailers as an important part of their IT mix. The CompTIA study finds a third of retailers said they currently use digital signage, and 20 percent intend to begin doing so soon. Seventy-one percent of respondents said the most popular application of digital signage was for announcements of sales and other promotional offers.

Given the survey findings regarding satisfaction with how well technology is being used and the importance of digital signage to retailers, the need for some advice on how to make the most out of digital signage technology seems apparent. These five tips should help put retailers on the right track.

First, digital signage technology is irrelevant without great content. Obviously, it's not enough to hang flat panel monitors and install digital signage players. Care must be taken to engage customers with interesting, appealing content.

Second, digital signage content must remain fresh, especially in a retail store where many people will visit repeatedly over time. Remember to mix it up. Playing back the same content day after day soon grows stale and may actually drive customers away.

Third, digital signage requires someone to take responsibility for it, both in terms of content and technology. Granted, these probably won't be the same people, but that makes no difference. What is important is that digital signage isn't just another in a long line of responsibilities some IT person has on a checklist.

Fourth, digital signage should offer consistency of messaging across multiple locations but still allow for an element of local control. For large retail chains, centralized control over signs at individual locations from a corporate network operations center will help to ensure messages remain consistent at all locations or groups of locations. However, it also is important to provide some local control to meet fast-changing communications needs at individual store locations.

Fifth, digital signage messaging should complement the overall communications strategy of the retailer. Sending disparate or contradictory messages to potential customers via TV advertising and on-location digital signs can be perplexing to customers at best and actually discourage them from visiting the store again worst.

To be sure, retailers who say they are not getting what they want from the IT technology they've implemented are concerned with far more than just digital signage technology. But to the degree that they use or plan to use digital signage in the future, the five tips offered here should improve their satisfaction with how this powerful communications medium is performing.

Keeping digital signage content interesting and up-to-date has never been easier thanks to an explosion in the availability of RSS feeds.

Turn on your favorite cable news channel, and what do you see at the bottom of the screen? How about over on the business channel you like to watch? What's being shown at the bottom of the screen of many sports and weather channels? See any similarities?

Did you conjure up in your mind the ticker that crawls across the bottom of the screen, displaying everything from top news headlines to stock movements, sports scores to even weather conditions? Firsthand experience as a TV viewer with these sorts of tickers should make clear how up-to-the-moment information can motivate viewers to focus their attention on the screen.

If these sorts of crawls are successful in grabbing and holding the public's attention on television, have you ever asked yourself why they shouldn't be equally as effective on a digital sign? There's little reason to think otherwise. But many digital signage content creators don't even consider such news tickers because they assume the expense of the data required to feed the onscreen info crawls will be prohibitively expensive.

To be sure data subscriptions exist, and they vary in price. But data subscriptions aren't the only way to feed fresh news headlines, stock quotes and other changing information to a digital signage screen. There are sources of free content that can feed digital signs a stream of fresh, up-to-the-minute content that will grab and hold the attention of an audience. These sources are available online in the form of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds that offer something for just about everyone.

The diversity of the info available via RSS feeds is critical because there are so many uses for digital signs. What might attract the attention of a digital signage viewer in a car dealership service department waiting area could be entirely different from what grabs the attention of those waiting in the reception area of an investment advisor or dentist. Fortunately, with enough online investigation it's possible to find RSS feed sources on topics that make sense for both people with shared, yet highly defined interests as well as mass audiences.

For those who are a little uncertain about what an RSS feed is, think of it as a stream of headlines, info bits, data or conditions that is regularly updated and syndicated by online publishers. RSS source feeds literally are as diverse as the Internet, and it would be impossible to list them all. But to illustrate the diversity of content available via RSS feeds, consider such feeds are available from the NASDAQ stock exchange, Rotten Tomatoes movie review site, the BBC, the New York Times and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Topics range widely from science and culture, to financial and gardening.

For digital signage content producers looking to tap into this rich source of freshly updated information all that's needed is a digital signage system with RSS reader functionality that can take incoming RSS feeds and present them on the screen as a text crawl.

Finding RSS feeds to consider is as easy as doing a Google search for "most popular RSS feeds" and spending sometime honing in on those that make the most sense for your audience. To get you started, I've included a few URLs with lists of RSS sites: The Free Dictionary, Feeds for All and RSS Feed Folder. Good luck with your search.

Whether working with an in-house art department or an outside agency, here's a handy checklist to make sure your digital signage content achieves what you want.

Digital signage is going mainstream as a medium. Simply look around in retail stores, shopping malls, arenas, gas stations, hotel lobbies, restaurants, and just about any other place you can image, and you're bound to see one or more digital signs.

However, even though digital signs are growing in popularity, they are likely to be a rather new medium for the majority of graphic artists and other media creators, like graphic designers and animators, which you may turn to to create compelling content to achieve your communications goals.

Perhaps, you will be working with in-house graphic artists whose expertise is the design of brochures, reports and other printed collateral. Or, you may find yourself working with a creative agency that specializes in television commercials. Both are creative, talented and have an abundance of knowledge and experience to bring to the table. Your challenge will be communicating the unique demands of digital signage to them and directing them so they deliver the content you need.

Following some or all of the recommendations on this handy checklist should help you focus your creative team's talent regardless of their prior experience, or lack of experience, in creating digital signage content.

• Clearly state what you wish to accomplish. Explain precisely how the signs are to be used. Will they be informational in nature? Do you want to sell a product or service with the signs? Is the communication mission straightforward like that of a menu board or more nuanced?

• Define your target audience. Layout as much demographic information, i.e. age, sex, ethnic background, and psychographic information, including interests, attitudes and opinions, of your intended viewers as possible.

• Identify where the sign or signs will be located. Giving your creative team this information will inform decisions they make later about the appearance, placement and dwell time of content they will create.

• Explain desired quality. In today's world, it is hard to imagine that the display or displays to be used won't be HDTVs. But even if that's the case, will they be 720p, 1080i or even 1080p displays? That information will be helpful when content is created and may reduce the need for up, down or cross conversion of video, graphics and animation content.

• Visual SPAM. Because digital signage is becoming more common, the level of "visual noise" is also increasing. This should be considered along with the sensibilities of the target demographic. Work with your designers in creating a pleasing visual environment that will be more readily received by a discerning audience. Avoid excessive in-your-face content that may wax against the shopping experience by overloading the senses. Too much eye candy is not a good thing -it can give eye pain.

• Define duration. On a macro level, your messaging will be used for a finite period before it must be updated or changed entirely. On a micro level, individual pieces of content will dwell on the screen before being updated by the next item in the list. Information about both will help your team in creating content that can accomplish its communications task in the allotted time on screen as well as give the team a way to begin building a workable content production schedule.

• Discuss the number of onscreen zones desired. Start out by giving your team an idea of how many discrete areas of onscreen real estate you envision to communicate your message and what you believe should be communicated in each. Don't consider this the last word on the topic. Rather use your list as a point of departure to discuss and ultimately define how many zones actually will be used.

• Identify existing content resources. While you will want your content to be fresh, engaging and designed to meet your communications goals, there is no sense reinventing the wheel when existing resources can be used or repurposed. For example, if you intend to communicate to owners of high performance cars as they wait in a car dealer's service area, an existing RSS feed of Formula One, Indy Car and NASCAR race results and news might be available already for an onscreen crawl.

Whether or not your designers are experienced with digital signage, they will appreciate the guidance you give by discussing the items in the checklist. More importantly, reviewing the points in the checklist will help ensure you receive the content you need to achieve your communications goals.

There's no need to fear the cost of developing effective digital signage content if you rely on a few simple strategies.

Often companies adding digital signage -particularly smaller companies with limited media experience- don't give adequate consideration to feeding the insatiable appetite for content that's part of using digital signage to communicate with the public.

Many are surprised to learn just how much content may be needed on a monthly basis to keep their communications fresh and appealing, as well as the effort required to maintain consistency with their company's larger branding goals.

In fact, some may actually be scared off from adding digital signage not because of the capital expense of the technology but because of anxiety over adding personnel to create the content to deliver their desired messaging.

Whatever the case, however, there are strategies that can be used to develop well-conceived communications without hiring a full-time graphic artist or designer. Here are a few ideas about how to accomplish just that.

The first thing to do is to plan ahead. Both time and money can be saved when a solid marketing or promotional strategy is developed with clear goals and objectives. In other words, before there is ever the need for content, understand precisely what is trying to be achieved with the communications. That way, any creative person needed to create content has a clear direction to guide his work.

Next, be willing to use and maximize all available resources. One great foundation is investing in digital signage software to manage content effectively and efficiently. Another is to take an inventory of existing content resources, such as logos, photography, video, animations, and other media resources that the company has already paid for and can excerpted, repurposed, or at the very least, guide the creative efforts of a designer tasked with developing creative for digital signage display. And don't forget that there are royalty-free resources, such as photos, video and clipart libraries online that can be an economical way to supplement the effort.

Then think outside your box. In other words, think about getting estimates from freelance designers for work they can do in the future as budgets allow. Consider the power of hiring a part-time freelancer to create digital signage content templates that can be used over and over again. By shopping around for estimates, you will get a feel for the average costs of custom content creation and templates. Remember it is possible that a large percent -80 percent or more- may be able to be handled by populating such templates.

Don't forget when getting estimates from freelance designers to ask about the cost of entering into a monthly content agreement or contract. You might be surprised at the discount you can negotiate with a designer in exchange for offering a steady amount of work on continuing basis.

Finally, try tapping into creative co-workers, friends and family members around you. As one designer suggested, "Who knows? The best creative solution may be sitting right behind you."

The bottom line is companies that can benefit from digital signage shouldn't be intimidated by the cost of adding a full time designer to create the content that will be necessary. With a bit of resourcefulness there are a variety of ways to hold costs in check and still develop effective digital signage communications.

Here are five simple tips you should consider before ever building digital signage content.

Content makes or breaks digital signage. Without it, a digital sign is a blank slate. With well-conceived content, digital signage is transformed from mere displays, computers and cables into a dynamic communications medium with an ability to inspire, inform and motivate that is unsurpassed.

Given the importance of digital signage content to succeed, I sought out some advice from an expert in content to find out if it was possible to develop a short list of tips to help guide content development, regardless of the specific message to be delivered. I turned to Brian Bibler, director of creative services for Keywest Technology, for help.

Brian, who has years of experience prior to joining us with helping clients to build successful creative for all types of marketing campaigns, provided me with these five tips on how to make digital signage content that's successful. They include:

1. Lead any and all content considerations with the brand. Follow the goals, initiatives, and objectives. Only then can an effective creative content strategy to deliver the brand promise be developed within any content campaign.

2. Think outside of the box. Technology has redefined the way we communicate, and signage is no different. Each campaign literally begins with a blank digital canvas, and the methods used to execute the vision for the campaign is only limited by what the imagination can conceive.

3. Know your audience. Getting "lost in translation" is a very real pitfall and can derail a well-executed campaign.

4. Remember, less is more. A good campaign delivers a targeted message through an innovative, clean and easy-to-read approach. Strategically guiding the audience through the campaign/promotion will guarantee the brand message will be received and retained. Images should be captivating, text should be concise and dwell times should give audiences enough time to absorb without losing interest.

5. Do your homework. It's no secret we've become an instant gratification society. Take the time to research styles, designs and trends. Find out what is currently getting attention and the methods that are being used to do it. For digital signage, a great place to start is Times Square in New York City.

Digital signage technology can be highly effective in communicating a message, but without properly conceived and executed content not only will it fail to reach its full potential, but it will actually diminish the public's perception of the business, organization or institution using the technology. Brian's first tip -- leading all content considerations with brand -- speaks to this.

Without making all content decisions guided by the brand, digital signage messaging will likely be confusing to consumers and counterproductive in achieving the underlying goal of the communications effort, namely, delivering on the promise of the brand. Leading all decisions about digital signage content with the brand will avoid those pitfalls.

Similarly, keeping all five of Brian's tips in mind before developing content for digital signage will go a long way to ensuring that the messaging delivered communicates what is intended in a way that's fresh and engaging as well as consistent with the larger promise of the brand.

All of the hardware and software technology in the world won't make digital signage successful without the most important ingredient: effective content.

"Content is king!" How often have you heard that phrase? Perhaps, too often. You might be thinking to yourself that phrase is trite, hackneyed or just a cliche?

While I wouldn't argue the point that it's well worn, I would take issue with the notion that it has lost its meaning from overuse. When it comes to digital signage, content is king -or more accurately, the single most important ingredient to making sure your use of digital signage is successful.

Without the right content, properly presented and thoughtfully executed, digital signage software, players and monitors might as well not even be taken out of the box. That's a pretty bold statement for someone whose livelihood depends on the sale of the digital signage technology, but it's the truth.

At its fundamental level, digital signage is a communications medium -just like television, newspapers, radio and magazines. For it to fulfill its reason for being, it needs to communicate something -news, information, marketing messages, ads, directions, greetings or whatever else you can imagine. If it doesn't, it is a failure. The same thing is true for the other media mentioned. How long could a publisher of a newspaper or magazine or the owner of a radio or television station afford to stay in business if their given medium failed to communicate? Who would buy their product or tune in? The answer is obvious.

In the next several articles, I will dive into some useful specifics about digital signage content, such as: how to go about creating effective digital signage content; developing a communications strategy for your digital signage messaging; ideas to measure the effectiveness of that strategy and when to make tweaks to meet your goals; key design concepts for static and interactive digital signage content; and how to develop winning digital signage content without breaking the bank.

However, before I launch into those specifics, I'd like to share a simple story about something that happened to me to illustrate how important content is to communications when it comes to signage.

After concluding business in New York City a few years ago, I arrived at Newark Airport for my return flight to the Midwest. Being a veteran traveler, I know the drill well. Arrive two hours early to allow sufficient time for check-in and to clear security. I actually got to the airport more than three hours early.
I arrived at my gate long before my flight was schedule to depart.

Unfortunately, I was greeted with a message on the sign behind the gate agent that said "Delayed." It took a few minutes, but when I finally got my turn in line to talk to the agent about the situation, I learned that the plane due in for my flight hadn't even left where it was coming from and wasn't expected to do so for some time. I was told, however, to check back and look at the sign for the new departure time, which would be posted just as soon as more information was available.

Deciding to find a restaurant to pass the time, I did the quick scan of the location and found one near the gate, but not within sight of the gate. Not long after, the sign at the game displayed a new departure time of 9:30 p.m., so I headed out to the restaurant.

At 9 p.m., I left the restaurant and leisurely walked over to my gate, only to find that there was no longer any mention of my flight on the sign and the seats around the gate were strangely empty. When I approached the gate agent and inquired about my flight, I learned that somehow the delayed plane made up time in the air, arrived, passengers deplaned, my fellow travelers boarded and the plane took off for home -without me. I was out of luck, had to spend the night in a hotel and return the next morning.

The moral of the story for me is simple: Don't wait for a flight anywhere outside of a clear view of the gate. The moral of the story for anyone interested in communicating with signage: Be clear and accurate with your messages. They are important and can impact the lives of those who are viewing them.

I wish whoever was responsible for posting that information on the sign would have realized that content is king. Unfortunately for me that evening, the king seemed to have abdicated his throne.

Digital signs offer the dual advantages of keeping messages fresh and making them visually appealing thanks to their dynamic nature.

Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great. Digital signage is great.”

That paragraph gets an “A” for consistency, but an “F” when it comes to building reader interest and holding reader attention. You don’t need a Ph.D. in English or communications to understand why. It’s repetitive, dull and boring.

How about the signs hanging in your establishment? Week after week, month after month, customers and prospects see the same printed message on those signs. Do you see the similarity between the opening paragraph of this column and those signs?

Sure, your customers and prospects might have read those printed signs the first -and even the second- time they walked into your establishment. But what about now? Have they given them a second glance for months?

The tendency to not want to change printed signs is understandable. Printing is expense, both in terms of money and time. Think about the process for a moment. You or someone in your organization must conceive the message, create the design, assemble the pieces and –depending upon the complexity of the project and the quality desired- hand off the project to a printer, who puts it in his queue of jobs, or drive to a quick-print service and wait for the job to be completed.

Once printed and displayed, the new sign has a brief life as a fresh communications tool. Soon, it’s been seen by customers and prospects numerous times and it fades into the background somewhere between the pictures on the wall and the paint. At that point, the cycle begins again.

Contrast the effort, time and expense of creating static printed signs with the dynamic, easily changed messaging that’s possible with digital signage. Scrolling text, animated clips, motion graphics, video and sound are all effective components on a well integrated digital signage message. Each is easily added. Doing so is made even easier by digital signage templates that are about as difficult to use as a Microsoft PowerPoint template.

Many digital signage users report being able to playback their initial messaging within a few hours of loading digital signage software and templates onto their computers. Updating those messages also is simple, requiring as little as a few minutes to a couple of hours per week, depending on how extensive that messaging maintenance is.

The dynamic messaging offered by digital signs also exploits the human response to motion. A printed sign is static; it does not move, nor does it change. Digital signs offer dynamic communications. Text can scroll across the bottom of the screen. Weather graphics can be automatically modified in response to changing conditions. Animated logos and graphics can fly through view, and video obviously is filled with motion.

Incorporating some or all of these elements into a digital sign message adds movement. That taps into the natural human tendency to direct one’s eyes and attention to something in motion, which is a tremendous advantage for anyone with a message to convey.

Thus, leveraging the power of digital signage versus using static print delivers two important advantages: the flexibility to change messaging quickly and easily and the ability to attract the attention and interest of patrons. With benefits like that, it’s easy to see why I say digital signage is great.

David Little is a charter member of the Digital Signage Association with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to effectively communicate their unique marketing messages.