As the way we interact with the world around us becomes increasingly digital, more opportunities for innovative and engaging digital experiences are emerging for brands and advertisers to reach customers. While online marketing strategies that leverage SEO or social media promotion have long been taking precedence over traditional methods such as print or radio, in-store advertising is also undergoing a significant digital transformation. As lockdown restrictions ease and retail spaces open up, there’s never been a better time to take another look at digital signage.
The benefits for business
Picture this: you’re walking through a mall and a flashing screen catches your eye. The advertisement is bright, colourful, and moving, and it informs you that a 20% sale has started today. If this ad had been on a printed poster, you probably wouldn’t have noticed it. It may also have been outdated, and you would have arrived at the store, only to be disappointed to find that the special was no longer running.
With digital signage, advertising campaigns are not only rolled out faster, more cost-effectively and on-demand, but this technology also allows for far greater flexibility when it comes to design elements and content variety. Having the wall space for a video format means that advertisers can realise their creative visions to tell stories about their brands through stunning, animated visuals rather than easily ignored, static images.
Being able to roll out these campaigns digitally rather than through print saves money on printing, transportation, and labour costs. Add cloud platforms into the mix, and you can instantly have advertisements go live across all your branches at the touch of a button. This is particularly useful to retailers launching ‘flash sales’ to get rid of unwanted or seasonal stock.
Innovations in display technology
With continued innovations in display technology, digital signage is also becoming more striking. The limitless contrast of LG’s OLED signage, for example, is like eye-candy for customers – especially at lifelike full HD resolution. The self-emissive diodes in OLED can turn on and off at an individual level, which creates the deepest blacks and a stunning range of colour. Because of their high response time, these OLED displays also produce clearer images without motion blurring.
Displays are not only becoming better looking, but also a lot slimmer at the same time. LG’s OLED signage displays have an incredibly thin and lightweight design and go up to an impressive display size of 55 inches. Other Ultra-HD LED screens by LG, on the other hand, go up to a colossal 86 inches and are a sure way to turn some heads.
The future of advertising
As the world heads increasingly towards digitalisation, it’s probably inevitable that traditional posters and banners will eventually become obsolete. A few years ago, it would have been hard to picture ourselves living in a futuristic city where advertisements on LED screens are everywhere. But that future is happening now, and digital signage is becoming more commonplace. Savvy business leaders need to realise that as more retailers make the move to digital signs, static, printed assets will become even easier to ignore.
* Grant Kruger is business lead for ID / IT at LG Electronics South Africa