By Sanjay Manandhar

The proliferation of increasingly sophisticated mobile handsets offers the opportunity for a variety of interactive campaigns. To succeed, mobile engagement requires an integrated marketing mindset and attention to scalability, reliability and security.

Digital signage and mobile handsets are made for each other, but outdoor displays and mobile interactivity are particularly well-matched. Working together the attention grabbing outdoor display becomes a dynamic call to action. With such a successful pairing it is critical that both mobile and outdoor displays be consistent parts of a marketing mix—“a holistic approach” according to Bill Donabedian, managing director of Fountain Square Management Group that manages a 28 foot x 42 foot outdoor LED display in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Integrated marketing or the “holistic approach” is easier said than done. For one thing, marketing groups as well as agencies historically have had different teams handle various marketing avenues with labels such as TV, Print, Radio, Outdoor, Internet, Mobile, etc. These demarcations have to be dissolved. The end users don’t see these distinctions and are expecting marketing messages to be more integrated. Brands and some innovative agencies are starting to integrate various marketing methods and busting the proverbial “silos.” Kodak, who is powering a digital LED at Times Square, New York, and clearly has marketing programs in all imaginable media, says they integrate the outdoor display in Times Square as part of their overall marketing mix, not a distinct, one-off display. Hence, it was easy for Kodak to introduce campaigns that integrated mobile and digital out-of-home (as most marketers call the outdoor display) to sharpen their marketing message and enhance their branding.

Figure 1. Kodak LED Display at Times Square, New York, using Picture-to-Screen application that uses email to submit images and SMS to call up the approved images up to the giant display. This “Smile Gallery” campaign by Kodak is free to the public—send pictures to kodak@aerva.com

Nobody leaves home without their mobile handset—it’s a very intimate device quite unlike any other. What’s more, these mobile handsets come so feature-rich that they are more than just tools for voice communications—they are typically packed with SMS, MMS, camera features and the smartphones also allow full browsing, email and many interesting apps. Mobile handsets by themselves can entertain, engage the users and help communicate with others, but allowing users to interact with an outdoor display adds a new dimension to entertainment, engagement and communication. Providing call-to-action on the giant outdoor screens for users to collect coupons or sign up for sweepstakes are some of the simpler applications. Multi-user games, Text-to-Screen, mobile voting, Picture-to-Screen and even Tweets to the giant screen add much more to enhance the user experience and create a “wow” for the brand and the venue.

When high-profile outdoor displays promote their campaigns using mobile engagement, high volume user participation is the goal. It is, therefore, paramount that backend issues like scalability (the application stands up even when many users connect simultaneously), reliability (the applications or campaign continue to perform under user stress) and security (that the application or outdoor display is not compromised) become critical. Users are quite ingenious in their attempts to test the limits of the system or to use the exposure of a giant outdoor display to advertise their own wares (e.g. sending a picture in Picture-to-Screen application wearing a T-shirt advertising their company). So the final must-have is the ability for a system and/or human-moderation capability, especially for user-generated content.

With the proliferation of outdoor displays and increasingly feature-rich mobile handsets, the only limit to the range of marketing campaigns is human creativity. Be prepared for many more interesting and memorable marketing messages and campaigns that connect users and their mobile devices with outdoor displays.

Figure 2. Users sent in a photo to an outdoor display in Fountain Square, Cincinnati, running Picture-to-Screen application—sponsorship message appears alongside.