By Sanjay Manandhar

When entertaining key clients, companies want to make sure it is a memorable event. This is exactly what a major company was faced with when they were entertaining their top clients the day before the industry’s pre-eminent tradeshow/conference.

The audience was set: 250 of the most important clients. The location was set: a very high end sports bar with 40 or more LCD screens and state-of-the-art AV control room. The date was set: 3 weeks away. And the goal was set: To ensure the clients came away thinking the company throwing the party was innovative and cutting-edge.

At first the company was hesitant. They liked everything “buttoned-down” and any planning 3 weeks before was risky. Within an hour’s discussion, the company came away with ideas to de-risk the process and realized that they were in capable hands with Aerva Team. After hearing what was possible, the alternative seemed truly bland: they had planned to put the company’s logo on most of the screens and ESPN or similar sports channel on some of them.

We proposed creating a very long unique loop that involved the participants themselves with UGC (user-generated content). And here were the steps:

1. Get a Twitter hashtag just for the party event and start talking about it on their website, blogsite.
2. Create a Digital Signage program that uses user-generated content interspersed with company videos and logos.
3. The UGC were: Twitter, Text-to-Screen, Picture-to-Screen and mobile voting.
4. Mobile voting consisted of four fun quizzes. Participants voted using their mobile handsets. Every entrant got a sponsorship message back to their phone (along with  the correct answer to the quiz).
5. Text-to-Screen consisted of free-form text sent from mobile handsets, which showed up on all the screens after system and human moderation (the human was remote and monitored both text and images using a web browser). People sending in expletives and bad pictures probably realized after a few attempts that there was some kind of moderation going on.
6. Picture-to-screen consisted of simply emailing any picture from a mobile handset. They instantly showed up on the screens after successful moderation.
7. The set-up for the “Programs” was easily managed using the Aerva platform. The entire layout and design was kept simple, yet attractive. The designers from Aerva and from the company only had to meet  on the web several times to check for design, content and end-to-end operation.
8. Deployment was a breeze. One media player pre-loaded with all the content and widgets was connected to the internet and also to the sports bar’s AV station. All the screens on the top floor where the private party was being held were driven by the single media player which got Internet access via a Verizon wireless card.
9. The party was a success. Guests arrived and had a good time sharing pictures, texts, tweets, and trivia comments. “Wow” was heard many times and the company appreciated the compliments.
10. At the company’s booth the next day, people congratulated them on how tastefully user-generated content was integrated with digital signage.

Digital signage by itself is interesting. When user-generated content is designed in with business objectives in mind, the audience is fully engaged and the burden of creating unique content is shared by the viewing public.

Tags: Aerva, digital sigange, mobile interactivity, picture-to-screen, text-to-screen, Twitter