One of the guidelines Mike will cover in his book is what he calls the “5 As of digital content.” He has kindly allowed us to reprint them below:

Appropriate, Attractive, Affordable, Adaptable, Assembled

For digital signage content to be successful it must be appropriate. Customers should see relevant content on the screens — based on the right time, day, place, and location.

Content must be attractive. The brands that are participating want the content to look good, to be pleasing to the eye and ear. Customers have enough visual clutter in their lives.

Digital content should be appealing, not a distraction. Most retailers do not have the resources to create a network with both appropriate AND attractive content. Therefore it must also be affordable.

Retailers are not media companies. They sell products. A digital signage network cannot be a negative drag on their resources. The pressures of the first three A’s compel signage networks to ensure that the creative is adaptable. The content must be flexible enough to be used in a variety of ways and approaches while still being relevant. The only way to do this is by assembling content using technology. Retailers should look for technical solutions that can produce a wealth of sharp-looking, relevant content at a low cost. This is the future of digital signage content.

Of the two lists, the “don’t” list seems the strongest, so here are the highlights:

• Don’t rely too much on cold data to know your customer. Get out and spend time talking to brand users.
• Don’t underestimate consumers, particularly their ability to make or break your brand via user-generated content on the Internet.
• Don’t focus on cultural details or try to make your brand look Hispanic. Instead, focus on being relevant.
• Don’t try to be pan-Hispanic. (Example: Tecate, which is clearly Mexican but has an authentic voice and therefore has broader appeal.)

Read Hispanic Shopper Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

• Agricultural lenders see opportunities in the local foods movement – Today’s boutique and specialty growers may be big business tomorrow.

• Apple’s cool matrix-style app wall – A great example of data visualization.

• It’s not who your customers are, but how they behave - Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path opens up his Harvard Business Publishing blog post with this killer statement: “Businesses cannot exist without customers, so it’s sadly ironic that many, if not most, businesses, actually understand so little about them.”

• Data as seductive material – A presentation by Matt Jones given at the Umeå Institute of Design Spring Summit 2009. Among the ideas Jones introduces is the idea that we are all generating personal “data shadows,” comprised of data that is generated by…our everyday behavior (see previous link) and sharing.

Bonnie McGeer delved into the matter in a 2005 article in American Banker. It turns out the answer is five.*

• Five minutes is the maximum acceptable wait time.
• Five minutes is the maximum acceptable transaction time.
• And five is the maximum acceptable number of people in a queue.

Technology, training and branch design can certainly help improve performance on these metrics. But what if you’ve done everything you can do and the queues, transactions and wait times are still too long?

Then it’s time to work on perception. Customers’ perception of wait times and queue lengths might be just as important as the actual wait.

In our work with an number of large U.S. and European banks, we’ve discovered that the proper placement of digital media helped reduce perceived wait time by as much as 62%.

The concept is simple enough: keep customers occupied and they’re more likely to forgive the long wait. If you can entertain them, you’re doing even better. The true win (a “home run,” as we like to say in the U.S.) is to turn the queue into an opportunity to engage and educate customers — and prompt inquiries — in an entertaining way.

*McGeer credits Brickstream as the source of this data.

+++

Update: I found this on Paul Flannigan’s Experiate blog, which seems to confirm our own observations:

“The role of Digital Signage in any environment impacts not only the shopping behaviors, but also the psychological effects of the time spent in the store. In a recent study, 45% of all customers interviewed had a perceived wait time of five minutes less than those interviewed in a store without a digital signage network. In the same study, 68% of all customers interviewed prefer to shop at a store with digital signage.”

Photo credit: upton

Have you heard about Starbucks’ new retail experiment? The coffee chain that spent the last decade stamping out carbon-copy store locations is “de-branding” a number of locations, starting with a Seattle location, now called “15th Ave Coffee & Tea.”

Gone is the familiar green and white mermaid logo. So, too, are the automated espresso machines. In their place is a “no-name” logo and an old fashioned La Marzocco espresso maker, a beer and wine list, and a whole lot more.

Is the world’s largest coffee retailer experiencing a mid-life crisis? A case of branding remorse? Back in 2007, a memo from Starbucks founder Howard Schultz regarding the “commoditization of the Starbucks experience” was leaked to the press. Some changes were made right away across the Starbucks empire, but not on the scale of what the company is attempting at 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea.

John Moore at Brand Autopsy, a noted observer of the Starbucks saga, suggests that this is all part of the company’s effort to reclaim its soul:

This is clearly an experiment, a four-wall enclosed retail petri dish. It’s a way for Starbucks to RE-learn some of the personal touches it has lost due to making so many compromises in order to grow to over 16,000 locations in 40-plus countries around the world.

As part of its laboratory experiment, Starbucks is introducing some new ingredients to its retailing mix, including:

• serving alcohol
• roasting and brewing coffee in small batches
• conducting coffee cuppings
• hosting live entertainment.

This experiment brings up some vital questions that many retail chains ought to consider, especially as they find that their carefully-coiffed customer experience no longer brings the foot traffic it once did.

• Is there an inherent limit to the appeal of a globally consistent customer experience?
• Is it possible to “engineer” what we hope customers will perceive as an unscripted customer experience?
• Can large retail chains, which live and die by highly refined processes, large-scale supply-chain managment and thin margins, successfully incorporate non-scalable merchandising techniques?
• Or, to put it more directly, can a mega-chain create a mass-customized customer experience?

Perhaps Starbucks isn’t even asking these questions. Pilots are meant to be just that: experiments that help us understand what customers do or don’t respond to. Scaling up, rolling out is another artform altogether.

What do you think of Starbucks’ latest incarnation? Have you visited the new store?

Learn more:

• Starbucks Newsroom: Fact sheet: 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea
• Starbucks chairman warns of “the commoditization of the Starbucks experience”

If you are introverted, shy or self-conscious (or know someone who is), then you can probably relate to Rob Horning’s comments in a recent blog post:

“I just started to ride my old bike…and..realized that I need a few things for riding in New York City—mainly a helmet and new handle grips. Even though there is a local bike shop five blocks from my apartment, I find myself procrastinating about going over there. Maybe I spent too much time in record stores as a teenager, but I have this unshakable paranoia that the people in the bike shop will laugh at me. They will see that I am not a “real” biker; riding a bike around is not my lifestyle, it’s not my brand.”

I doubt that any large retailer ever set out to cater to the introvert demographic, but it makes clear that the anonymity provided by the big box (and big bank) retail experience suits some people just fine. But how many people? Enough to constitute a valid target market?

Perhaps there is a segment of the population that doesn’t want a personal relationship with you and your brand. For them, an impersonal relationship with your brand is right on the money.

Via Murketing

Photo by: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}

• En español

• English – A4 format
  

• English – Letter format

Slides

Below are the slides presented by Bob Steele, vice chairman of John Ryan, as well as a transcript of his presentation.

Transcript

[1] Thank you for attending “Digital Signage in Retail Financial Services.” I’m Don and I’ll be working behind the scenes to keep the webinar running smoothly. Please know that you can use the Webinar software to submit questions for our panelists. Now I’d like to introduce Bob Steele, Vice Chairman of John Ryan.

[2] Hi, I’m Bob Steele and I’d like to thank you for attending today’s webinar.  I’d also like to introduce our two special guests:

• Paco Underhill, Envirosell founder and CEO, and best-selling author of “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping”
• Mike Hiatt, Former Director of In-Store Media Networks at Wal-Mart

[3] Today we’ll begin by summarizing the results of John Ryan’s international survey, which highlights recent developments in the use of digital signage in banking. Then, after some intial thoughts from Paco and Mike, we hope to provide you with some valuable ideas to help you champion and implement digital signage in your bank.

[4] John Ryan recently conducted an in-depth survey of marketing and retail executives, asking them detailed questions on range of subjects, including:

• How are you using P.O.S. techniques today?
• What’s the role of digital marketing in your bank?
• What’s working for you?
• What’s not working?

[5] We cast a wide net, covering leading banks throughout Europe and South Africa. Together, these banks represent over 44,000 branches across 23 countries.

[6] If your bank is still evaluating its digital signage options, you have an opportunity to learn from the early adopters in our survey, who provided insights regarding:

• Adoption rates
• Content creation, and
• Management tools

[7] The survey showed that digital signage is skyrocketing, with 90% of the banks interviewed having already deployed or planning to deploy soon. 80% of the respondents told us that they believe the use of digital signage will continue to grow rapidly over the next 3-5 years throughout the banking industry.

In fact, 50% described digital signage as a “utility” rather than a differentiator – a response that seems to indicate that digital signage is already considered a basic component of in-branch communications. No surprise then, that nearly 90% of the banks surveyed have already tested some form of digital signage. Of those, two-thirds expect to rollout a full digital signage program.

[8] The banks interviewed are using digital signage to fulfill many communications needs, with a third already taking advantage of its unique ability to “localize”—or show locally relevant messages in different branches. In addition, more than 10 percent of the banks are using digital signage for  “staff-directed communications.”

[9] Moreover, every indication is that even more banks would be using digital signage to fine-tune messaging if they could find an easy way to do so.  Almost two-thirds of our survey respondents told us that keeping content fresh with relevant and local messaging constituted their greatest management challenge.

[10] Why is localization so challenging?  In part, respondents blame lack of appropriate content management tools.  In other cases, respondents were frustrated by the fact that management systems were not web-accessible.

Other challenges include an inability to produce sufficient volumes of content affordably, a lack of internal work-flow systems, and a general lack of awareness about how to manage this new medium.

[11] In summary, early adopters are facing real challenges in creating, localizing, and managing content. Realizing the enormous promise of this new medium – which is the ability to target messages to specific branches and screens – has turned out to be far more laborious than anyone expected.

[12] So, what can a bank do to meet the digital signage challenge?

We suggest that you consider three factors, or as we call them, the Three Cs:

• Confidence
• Context, and
• Content

[13] First, confidence. We encourage you to have confidence.  After all, digital signage is simply a turbo-charged form of the P.O.S. marketing discipline you have already mastered.

Its value lies less in technology than in its power to vary messages by branch, time of day, or day of week….giving you the opportunity to put your marketing analytics to work in the branch for the first time.

[14] At Caja Mediterraneo, no two branches play the same content.

Messages are displayed in any one of 8 different languages, depending on branch location. A roster of neighborhood, provincial, regional and national sponsorships forms part of an “electronic” bulletin board. Real estate portfolio announcements show details about properties in the catchment area of each branch, and product-focused messaging is based on each individual branch’s sales results for the prior week.

Believe it or not, there are literally millions and millions of playlist permutations at work under the management of less than one fulltime employee. And most importantly, narrowcasting has its revenue rewards: At a press conference last month, the bank announced that the 500 branches with the digital signage system have experienced average sales increases of 14%.

[15] Context. As revolutionary as digital signage, is, it should be seen basically as another tool to implement your established strategy. Start with your core objectives, and then determine if the unique power of digital signage can help.

[16] This Malaysian Bank, for example, needed to address exceptionally long queue lengths in excess of 1 hour.  The solution: a combination of staff efficiency and incentives to migrate customers to self-service.

The result? On the left, a “queuing tree” is used as a user-friendly way to measure and show queue length for both the staff and customers.  As more customers take a queue number, the tree populates with leaves.  The longer the wait, the redder the leaf becomes. The branch manager and staff keep an eye on the tree, and “it’s all hands on deck” when queue lengths reaches a certain length.

Screens in other parts of the branch help, too, by shifting content to more entertainment-oriented messaging in deference to clients’ long wait.  To encourage migration, the bank pledges to give a percentage of its savings on transaction costs to charity when customers use self service. The digital thermometer shows the mounting contribution and an interactive kiosk at right lets customers vote for the charity they would like to see the proceeds go to.

[17] Content. Content is king…but only when it’s relevant That means putting in place the right tools to author, target, and assemble messages affordably.

[18] In this unique example at Toyota Financial Services’ flagship in Japan, targeted female shoppers are encouraged to use the red “listening posts” to provide their views on family finances.  Results of surveys are dynamically posted on the large 12-screen media wall behind.  Thus, the site’s content is automatically generated by users.

[19] Other ways to automatically generate content:

• Link to the web so that updates to the web automatically update screens, as in the picture shown here
• Develop a “hopper” of product campaigns and use weekly sales results to automatically determine which appear at specific slots in the messaging in each branch location
• Provide portals for segment managers to use to populate templates related to their segments.  Let centrally determined business rules establish which segment messages can be played at which branches—and when.
• Use external news sources, such as market information and weather—but be sure to visually render these in your brand format.

[20] I’d now like to turn to Mike Hiatt for some of his thoughts on the survey.

[Please see webinar highlights]

[21] Thank you, Mike. Let’s now turn to Paco.

[Please see webinar highlights]

[22] I’d like to thank you for attending today’s webinar.

[23] That concludes our webinar. I’d like to thank everyone again for attending and want to note that we’ll be providing everyone with a link to a recording of the webinar in the near future.

If you have additional questions or comments about today’s webinar, please feel free to contact us directly…or to leave us a comment at www.johnryanblog.com.

Yesterday, we hosted the webinar, “Digital Signage in Retail Financial Services: What John Ryan’s European Survey Means for Your Bank.” Hosted by Bob Steele, John Ryan’s Vice Chariman, the webinar featured retail luminary Paco Underhill and Mike Hiatt, the former director of WalMart’s “smart” digital signage network.

So, all in all, we had some serious firepower in the house, which drew attendees from across Europe, North America and South America.

Bob kicked off the event with a 15-minute recap of John Ryan’s survey of European and South African banks on their plans and aspirations for digital signage. Bob, Mike and Paco then each offered their thoughts on the implications of the survey and how bank marketers should approach the task of planning for and implementing a digital signage network.

The remainder of the event was a panel discussion, in which our “gurus” fielded questions from the audience, including:

• What lessons did Wal-Mart learn from setting up their digital signage network?
• How will digital signage integrate with mobile?
• Who’s doing digital signage well?
• How did Wal-Mart measure the success of their “Smart Network?”
• What are your thoughts on cameras, eye-tracking and other viewership measurement technology?
• How do you get employees on the floor engaged in supporting digital signage?
• Is digital signage cheaper in the long run over paper-based signage?

The questions kicked off a rich conversation and provided attendees with great information and advice — informed by decades of international experience in retail and financial services. In our internal post-webinar debrief, Bob Steele quipped, “That had to be one of the most sophisticated conversations about digital signage I have ever heard.”

Of course, we couldn’t get to every question. So, we’ll be following up with Paco, Mike and Bob to get answers to the outstanding questions, which we’ll make available here.

A document with highlights from the webinar will be available in the next day or two. If you were registered for the webinar (even if you couldn’t attend), we’ll send you a link to download the report. If you’d like to be notified when the report become available, please let us know and we’ll be happy to do so.

Thank you to everyone who took time out of their schedules to attend. Apologies to those who told who were victims of time-zone confusion. Next time, we’ll be sure to communicate the start time more clearly!

A big thanks to Paco Underhill and Mike Hiatt for letting us tap their high-caliber expertise.

And finally a special thanks to sandsss for livetweeting the event.

You might be tempted to think: “Hey, I work for a bank, not a a fast food chain, so what’s the worst that could happen?”

Then consider the case of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based Metro Bank, whose recent name change (from Commerce Bank) sparked a chain reaction of failures and public complaints. The mishaps allegedly included mistaken overdrafts, ATM cards canceled without notice, a Web site that crashed due to high traffic and call-center wait times in excess of 45 minutes.

The incident prompted the blogger floor9.com to post a scathing rant about his experience. In the days that followed dozens of disgruntled customers posted comments.

The highlight, however, is the comment posted by “Shannon,” who claimed to be a Metro Bank employee. After offering a tepid defense of the bank, which drew angry replies from other commenters, Shannon lost her cool:

“Everyone ”F” off!!! I am sure they still have all of their GOOD customers!!!”

The popular Consumerist blog soon picked up on the story, which, as PR professionals know, virtually guarantees that the story will persist and be amplified by other blogs and larger media outlets.

As of this writing, the Consumerist story shows up in the #7 slot on a Google search for “Metro Bank.” A search of “Metro Bank”+Harrisburg fares worse, with the floor9.com blog posting coming up in the #1 position.

If it is indeed true, the comment left by an anonymous poster on the floor9 blog is probably the most enlightening, as it describes an organization that is in the throes of chaos:

“Well everyone, I am another one of those Metro Bank employees. I will tell (you) right now. We have no clue what is going on with our own bank.

I can’t even explain how much it hurts going into work. We all want to leave. I know..you dont want to hear this from an employee..but seriously back office has no damn clue.

Don’t worry…if you cant see your balance…neither can I. I have no idea how much money I have…as well as all the other employees of the bank. …neither does one of the Regional Presidents of the bank it turns out.

the poor tellers..I cant even feel their pain. they are getting literally yelled at by everyone…and they make NOTHING!..literally, I hired many.”

While we can’t verify any of the above information, it should serve as an object lesson for bankers who are contemplating transitions of any kind, whether it’s a brand-name change or the switchover of a back-end system.

In the end, it’s impossible for any bank to avoid the kinds of errors or system glitches that might cause the website or other back-end systems to fail. Mistakes happen. But what can be avoided is the kind of total information blackout that appears to have consumed Metro Bank employees as they tried to help customers cope with a difficult situation.

Employee communications has always been the linchpin of successful retail marketing. The best marketers work very hard to make sure that employees are aware of, understand and enthusiastically carry out campaigns at the local level.

Clearly, employee communications are also critical as a means of averting or at least mitigating disaster. What if Metro Bank’s tellers and customer-service reps had known ahead of time about the coming transitions and system changes? Or, what if Metro Bank had a communications channel that ensured the fast dissemination of accurate information to employees as the problems unfolded?

To be fair, even well-informed employees might not have been able to solve Metro Bank’s underlying problems any more quickly. But with good information — including plans for how to handle transition issues — they might have been able to help customers cope better and keep customers like floor9 from creating a PR nightmare.

Update:
Here is a list of top customer service/consumer advocacy blogs. Note that the Consumerist ranks at the top. Definitely not a site where you want to discover an expose about your brand!

Rob Walker, in his recent Consumed column in the New York Times Magazine takes on this question. (In fact, the entire issue, titled “Infrastructure!” is worth makes for a great read especially if you’re an armchair sociologist or civic planner.)

Quoting from a recent book, Retrofitting Suburbia, Walker points out that the U.S. is saddled with a shocking quantity of retail square footage, compared to other countries. Behold the numbers:

Retail square footage per person

According to the theory of evolution, when there is an overabundance of a resource, some organisms will adapt in order to take advantage of that resource. Will we see this happen in the suburbs of the U.S. and Canada? Or is there just too much square footage to go around?

Author Julia Christensen documents various attempts to recycle big-box retail locations into schools, libraries, fitness centers, churches, etc. at her web site and in her book Big Box Reuse.

In an interview with the Infrastructurist blog, Christensen comments on the local, even idiosyncratic nature of many of these rebuilds.

Q: Part of the book’s innate appeal seems to come from this flip of sensibilities–a symbol of formulaic sprawl being transformed into something unique and local.
A: Well, I think it comes back to the pragmatic. There are so many hundreds communities that are looking at at least one big empty big box and wondering how to deal with the problem. That practicality is, in part, what is appealing about the book.

If indeed America’s retail landscape shifts toward a more localized focus (and who would argue that a change in the nature and use of big-box retail locations doesn’t amount to a major shift?), then retail marketers best take notice. Might this contribute to the hyperlocalism trend we wrote about earlier?

To be sure, these big-box rebuilds are anything but pretty. They’re practical, as most structures in suburban and rural U.S. are. Hormel’s Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota — a former K-Mart — may be the most eye-pleasing project to date.

Photo credit: Clav