Posters have been important to promoting magazines and newspapers since … forever. Publisher research shows that a good poster boosts sales. However, posters are becoming out of date. With the costs of plasma and LCD screens dropping so much it is only time before newsagents entirely replace printed posters with electronic versions.
I’m involved in a new newsagency where we have no provisions for printed posters and instead are locating four large plasma units at the entrance.
The photo above is from a restaurant in Hong Kong – the menu display draws attention. It changes, too, promoting the business across to the other side of the mall. These units will lure more people than printed posters could.
This is on my mind today because current ‘best practice’ in the newsagency channel is having a certain number of print poster units. Best practice, for the future, ought to be based on elimination of printed posters and their replacement with an integrated set of plasma or LCD displays.
The move from printed posters to digital signage is one that should happen sooner rather than later.
Unfortunatly it needs to be heavily supported by suppliers. Magazine and newspaper publishes do not currently support the non-print signage medium heavily. Without this input from suppliers digital signage can be a tedious and time consuming medium to maintain. And i would say that applies even more so to the majority of newsagents that aren’t fluent in the computer-based knowledge needed to implement digital signage properly.
We’re still weighing up whether or not to incorperate digital signage into our refurb. How are you planning to maintain the content of the digital signage at the entrance of the new newsagency?
Content is the problem, managing it at least. We are talking with publishers as part of our proposals to them. We are also working with one content company with a view to others possibly using the service.
I agree that the move to lcd type promotion of magazines is the way to go. In our store we have 3 screens advertising magazine titles, the only problem is getting up to date files sent to us from publishers. ACP has a downloadable powerpoint slideshow of the weekly magazines however it is not available until late on monday missing the monday morning rush, the other suppliers do not seem to be up to speed and rely on hard working newsagents to scan the covers and import them into a presentation. Surely all mag covers could be made available to newsagents in a downloadable form the day before release to give us time to put the screens into good use.
Times are a changing we should be able to rely on suppliers changing at the same speed.
Jarryd and Luke,
As well as the weekly ACP download there is also the NDD disc that will be sent to you. I know this is not optimum but I reckon if Pacific are smart they won’t be far behind.
It would be great if Newspaper Co’s also sent us a “poster” file.
Jarryd and Luke,
As well as the weekly ACP download there is also the NDD disc that will be sent to you. I know this is not optimum but I reckon if Pacific are smart they won’t be far behind.
It would be great if Newspaper Co’s also sent us a “poster” file.
Jarryd and Luke,
As well as the weekly ACP download there is also the NDD disc that will be sent to you. I know this is not optimum but I reckon if Pacific are smart they won’t be far behind.
It would be great if Newspaper Co’s also sent us a “poster” file.
There are a number of problems with the ACP download.
I believe it is only in landscape. This is obviously a problem when screens are portrait.
It is in powerpoint format. Powerpoint is not the best practice format to be using for digital signage. Flash is more widely used and is easier to work with from a content management point of view.
I would also like t note that personally i don’t like the ACP presentation. I think it sometimes looks a little tacky, a little cut and paste. But that could just be me.
Graeme, i believe one of the newspaper publishers are able to send out a poster file. I enquired with the Fairfax and News Ltd marketing depts last year and one of them was to send the files through by email. I have lost my notes so i am not sure which one.