Eclipse Digital Media were challenged by Theravada and Krispy Kreme to deliver a unique, one of a kind, doughnut shaped digital LED screen for their Bluewater store upgrade in 2022.
Undertaking this challenge was genuinely exciting and pushed us to think of various creative ways we could deliver such a solution. Calling upon our years of industry expertise and collaborating with key contacts in the LED field we were able to design, develop, supply and install this near 3m donut-shaped digital LED screen for Theravada and Krispy Kreme.
Not without it’s challenges, the Eclipse Digital Media team have worked painstakingly to ensure this custom LED was supplied, installed and maintained with great satifisfaction to the customer.
Mike Tinnion, Head of Creative at Krispy Kreme called this “another digital masterpeice” and we really do agree! It looks sensational but what REALLY makes this so special is the amazing content Krispy Kreme have designed for it… we could watch that all day!
Interested in using LED in your next project? We can offer a range of creative, curved, indoor, outdoor and transparent LED solutions for various industries. Get in touch with one of our experts today to discuss how we can help you on your next project.
⏱️ 10min read (10 minutes that could change your life)
Digital signage is considered the ideal replacement for traditional signage such as posters, banners, and standees. It is essentially any screen that can be used to communicate data and information.
There are many cool things that digital signage can do for your business but more importantly there are tangible benefits applicable to practically any business that uses this technology.
Here are 7 reasons why you must use digital signage for your business:
1. Helping people stay safe – now more than ever
Hand sanitisers. Public safety announcements. Weather related information.
Digital signage can play a critical role in public and staff safety which, in 2020’s COVID pandemic, is essential.
The pandemic has blind-sided most businesses but we’re all now very familiar with the impact of it and living our lives with various restrictions and the ever-changing guidelines and health messaging. With information that is changing so quickly, print just isn’t going to cut it.
Digital Signage is a key way to deliver this constantly changing messaging quickly. Be it new guidelines on upcoming lockdown restrictions, new measures around hygiene, providing the latest statistics on infections rates… digital signage provides a clear communication tool to deliver this message safely and rapidly to your staff and customers.
In the UK, it is mandatory for customers to wear face masks and for businesses to provide hand sanitising stations, so why not use hand sanitiser stations with built in digital displays so you can deliver customer health & safety notices at the point of sanitisation?
Why not use high bright window displays to display social distancing and ‘wear a face mask’ messages to customers before they reach the entrance to your stores?
As a business there is an obligation to ensure customers and staff are kept as safe – digital signage can truly help deliver valuable messaging and guidance towards maintaining a safe environment for all.
Away from COVID, digital signage can also be used in other ways to stay safe. It can be used to communicate safety precautions including while ongoing emergency procedures are taking place. An efficient emergency alert notification can be configured for screens within the building. A single alert can change the content to reflect the status of the emergency and then turned off by another. This is another great tool if you want to secure the safety and well-being of valuable staff.
2. Cost
Digital Signage can reduce business costs for internal comms as well as marketing because it dramatically reduces or completely replaces print.
It practically pays for itself through the ability to change messaging and content as much as desired without any need to print/reprint.
You’re also less likely to rely on additional staff (or yourself) to physically take down/change material and replace with the new… only to then realise there is a misspelling and you need to do it all again! (hands up if you’ve done that – yep, over here!)
This doesn’t even include the potential uplift in sales (if that’s your game) from using animated marketing material to promote products or services… which, by the way, can contribute to an increase of 33% additional sales.
Using digital signage and by changing content remotely requires much less manpower (your team can focus on other areas of the business), ultimately saves money and can improve your bottom line.
If you’re not already using digital signage – why not?!
For this one reason alone, as a business you’d be foolish not to be using digital signage.
3. Flexibility
In a world where being adaptive and flexible is critical for business, digital signage offers a lifeline.
Your business is unique and you need to make sure digital signage matches your needs.
Digital signage gives complete flexibility in terms of content, scheduling and hardware.
Being able to pick and mix content types such as images, movies, weather, social feeds etc allows businesses to be creative with their communications and to explore content types vs business objectives in a measurable way – test it, refine it, repeat it.
Scheduling content is so easy and flexible. It can be as easy as choosing a time and day for content to appear and that’s it. Then, let’s imagine just before the content is about change, your circumstances have changed… time to PANIC?! Not this time!
It’s a good job you’re using digital signage.
Now, all you have to do is change the content schedule and push the change live… you can breathe easily again knowing your message is in line with your current situation.
Touch tablets, high bright window displays, outdoor LED billboards, vibrant multi-screen menu boards, hand sanitiser displays and much, much more. You’ve got complete flexibility to choose the right hardware for your requirements at any stage.
4. Digital Signage makes people take action
Digital signage can be bright and dynamic and with the right content is proven to catch the attention of viewers.
These results speak for themselves – digital signage makes people take action.
It can also be used to excite viewers.
Think along the lines of presence sensors to detect someone in a certain area triggering content changes to deliver something more specific, amusing or delightful leaving the viewer transfixed and completely engaged in the experience.
How about a beautiful attraction screen with an item below it encouraging the viewer to pick it up? The person picks it up and the content changes to tell more of the product story.
Using digital signage to enhance the experience in this way can help you shape the customer journey to deliver specific measurable results, as well as reinforce + improve brand perception with the customer.
5. Operational efficiency
Let me ask you a question: You’ve got a promotional message to shout about. You’ve designed a beautiful poster to share the message, now you need to get it out to your 100 offices / stores.
Which option is more efficient?
Option A) Send the poster to a print firm, get 100 copies printed, post one to each store / office and ask that a member of staff to put the poster up and let you know once done.
Option B) Upload the poster to your digital signage CMS, publish the content to all screens in all stores / office locations then receive download confirmation each screen received the content, then view analytic proof of play reports to confirm the poster is playing xxxx number of times a day with a breakdown per device.
If you answered Option B – congratulations my friend, you’re a winner!
It’s clear option B is the most efficient way to distribute promotional material to physical stores / office locations and better yet, you can get proof the content is playing – you KNOW it’s up there running.
Further still, it was taken care of by you – you uploaded it, you published it, you’re viewing the analytics.
You didn’t rely on 100s of other staff members to interrupt their daily workloads to ensure the posters were put up, distracting them from other important tasks… and you didn’t then have to guess or chase for confirmation that they’ve put the posters up wasting even more precious time.
This scenario works even with small number of stores or locations… digital signage makes business operations more efficient.
6. Delivering real-time information
One of the beautiful benefits of digital signage is that you can keep it updated with real-time information automatically. Showing the current weather status or a forecast (people love looking at weather forecasts), then go a step further and customise messages that are linked to weather states, such as: if ‘Sunny’ show ‘sunshine video’ with a sunshine related message or if ‘raining’ show ‘rain video’ with a rain based message etc.
Further types of real-time data could include integration with third-party systems via XML, Excel, JSON or webpage sources. Data can be synced with the digital signage and then when the third-party system data updates, the digital signage does too. This could be for staff sales data, store menu pricing and stock levels, airports flight schedules – practically anything.
7. Aesthetics, ambience and WOW!
New, brings with it a sense of excitement, a sense of freshness, something modern.
Digital Signage allows you to keep changing content, keeping things fresh and keeping your audience engaged. It can also make installs look so much neater – for example getting rid of printed boards or posters taking up lots of space and condensing into a screen that allows you to rotate content and set schedules or rules for when specific content shows.
Using Digital Signage well gives you the power to create a desired ambience, help tell stories without a narrator, shape the mood, it can be in your face or subtle in the background, any which way you want. You have the power to can chop and change content to deliver a desired effect.
Digital Signage can be used as a key part of the interior design and can be used to make installs and experiences truly incredible.
When paired with great content and design, Digital Signage offers a way to WOW people – just take a look at some of these examples of installs that WOW:
Primark, Madrid:
Louis Vuitton, Istanbul:
Salesforce, San Francisco:
The Fashion Gallery, Vienna:
Conclusion
Almost every industry uses digital signage as a way to communicate and it’s easy to understand why. It is an efficient, flexible and effective tool for communication both to staff, customers and potential customers.
The benefits of using digital signage are undeniable and it’s a MUST HAVE business tool.
What’s more, IT IS EASY to get started and it can help transform your business.
So, what are you waiting for?
Take that next positive step.
Get in touch to see how we can help you with utilising digital signage.
Digital Signage in the Food Sector is quickly becoming, if not already the norm. With the ability to quickly update products, pricing and information with just a few clicks.
The aim of this post is to provide insight, and spark some interest into how Digital Signage could be used within the Food & Drink Sector. Showcase ways in which we have implemented Digital Signage solutions for some awesome establishments and how you could too. We’ll even provide a free basic Digital Menu Board Layout to get you started.
(Hover over image and use arrows)
DIGITAL MENU BOARDS…
HARDWARE
Comes in all shapes and sizes. Commonly, larger displays are used in both landscape and portrait for behind the counter, smaller displays are designed for current offers and impulse buys for placement in front of the till. Interactive solutions are needed to drive higher customer engagement and display larger, specific information such as allergy requirements.
With the internet of things becoming a reality. One thing that makes perfect sense is to be able to update your offers, menu boards and pricing information from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, with a few clicks or even automatically. With increasing numbers of software solutions on the market it can be a hard to find whats suitable.
Having worked with many software/hardware solutions, two that we can recommend are ONELAN and embed signage.
We hold certified reseller status for both.
Most commonly hung from the celing or wall mounted in sets of 3 or more. Using displays such as the Samsung Smart Signage Platform, there is no need for an additional media player, resulting in a quick and easy install with only power and either ethernet or WiFi connectivity. Not to forget the overall aesthetic advantages.
Less is most certainly more when it comes to digital menu boards. Make each item as legible as possible taking into account the number of items on the board, screen size, font size and viewing distance.
Great food photography can transform your signage substantially although can be a costly investment. Stock imagery sites such as the ‘Picture Pantry‘ and ‘Shutterstock‘ can offer high quality images at an affordable price.
Creating the content yourself? Some great content tips can be found here. Speak to us about our content services if you need some professional assistance.
A free Digital Menu Board layout to get you up and running can be found at the bottom of this post.
Updating your digital signage content regularly is key to keeping your audience engaged with your screens. Seasonal change is the perfect excuse to spice up your digital displays, whether it be holidays, national days or even time changes. Stay ‘current’. Leaving content unchanged for long periods only results in your the audience disengaging and as a brand you begin to loose the impact of a very powerful communication tool.
A little change, creativity and care can go a long way in the eyes of the audience.
Content changes do not have to be dramatic and they do not have to be done on the day of an event. Using digital signage software with scheduling functionality means you can pre-schedule certain content to play at relevant times, days or date(s). Below we’ve highlighted just some of the simple changes you can make to keep your content seasonally fresh.
Keep fresh with simple changes, such as:
Holiday greetings – these don’t have to affect the your normal content although content adaption generally seems seamless. Simply schedule the greeting to play every so often.
Seasonal sale offers or promotions are a great way to grab customer attention to seasonal or sale items. There is also a significant halo effect on the family of brands when advertising a product on digital signage. A sales increase of nearly 7x and an overall category increase of 11x that of the featured product has been recorded (Burke, 2009*).
Visual decoration to core design elements of your content can also help keep the signage up-to-date. This, in turn lets your customers and staff know the company is actively developing and delivering relevant content. Change stops content becoming stagnant and therefore draws more attention to the displays as consumers notice the new changes.
Get Creative. Changes don’t have to be huge. Subtle changes to the company logo or footer will not go unnoticed, such as a moustache for movember or a poppy for remembrance day. These small changes can help to show a caring and philanthropic company. Bigger changes such as font styles, colours and background images can create more of an impact when deployed with some careful thought.
Current affairs and events such as halloween, valentine’s, easter, remembrance sunday, world health day etc are some more examples of how to keep your signage fresh.
A four step strategy to keeping Digital Signage content fresh:
Create a schedule outlining the days / events you wish to make content changes for.
Create all necessary content in advance.
Schedule that content on your digital signage software in advance.
Repeat this process.
How do you keep content fresh? Share your tips and tricks by leaving a comment below.
On Tuesday 29th to Wednesday 30th September the Takeaway Innovation Expo comes to London’s ExCeL exhibition centre. The UK’s only exhibition for growing your takeaway or restaurant business that includes over 85 free seminars and 200 exhibiting suppliers.
Offering end-to-end digital signage solutions Eclipse Digital Media (Stand 130) will be returning this year to showcase solutions to improve and enhance businesses in the food and drink industry. Eclipse Digital will be demonstrating the latest developments in Digital Signage that include:
If you would like to see how your business can benefit from latest digital signage technology come and say hi to Eclipse Digital Media at the show or visit our site for more information.
Together with Samsung, we have launched a Digital Signage demo area at Samsung’s European Head Quarters in Chertsey, UK where digital signage content from embedsignage.com is being delivered directly to Samsung SSP SOC D Series displays.
This digital signage demo area is to showcase Samsung’s increasingly powerful Smart Signage Platform, which is directly integrated, via a System on Chip (SOC), to their D series commercial grade displays. The SSP displays are displaying content that is delivered using cloud based digital signage platform; embedsignage.com. The displays download the content via built in WiFi and store it locally for continued playback, even with network interruptions.
On show at the demo area is a pre-released 10.1″ all in one display, perfect for shelf edge retail signage, a 55″ landscape all in one display and two 32″ all in one displays (one in portrait and one in landscape). All of the Samsung SOC D series screens can have their content changed using the Samsung Android Tablet that is loaded with an interactive touch layout with various industry sector designs. Every piece of content and interaction between the Tablet and displays is done through the feature rich, cloud based digital signage software; embedsignage.com. This video shows a very brief demonstration of the demo suite:
If you would like to a demonstration of how using embedsignage.com and the Samsung SSP SOC D Series displays can deliver a suitable digital signage solution, please contact us. You can also sign up for a free 28 day trial of embedsignage.com and begin to explore how to deliver multi zone digital signage content to a range of devices including Android, iOS, Mac OS, Windows, ONELAN and of course the Samsung SSP SOC D Series displays.
The 13th December is fast approaching and that means the introduction of new EU Regulation changes on communicating food allergen information to consumers on all unpackaged food – is your business ready?
On Tuesday 30th September at 3pm we will be hosting a 20 minute webinar together with the Institute of Hospitality to cover the new law changes, what is expected from your business and how Digital Signage can be used to help your business comply.
What you’ll Learn
The 20 minute webinar will cover:
what is required from all businesses that serve unpackaged food and drink to the public
to understand what digital signage is
how digital signage can be used effectively to comply with the new information requirements
Q&A session at the end
Eclipse Digital Media recently provided a guest article that was featured in the Hospitality Magazine Autumn Edition. The article covered digital signage, menu boards and the food allergy law changes due. Read the article below and be sure to sign up for the webinar being held on Tuesday 30th September to learn more about this topic:
Eclipse Digital Media will be exhibiting at both the Takeaway Innovation Expo (Stand T642) and The Restaurant Show (Stand F109) in September and October respectively. Both exhibitions, being held in London, will provide visitors the opportunity to explore the wealth of solutions available to help improve their food and beverage business and Eclipse Digital will be exhibiting the latest developments in Digital Signage technology and demonstrate how they can be used effectively within the industry.
As Institute of Hospitality Business Partners, Eclipse Digital Media have carried out major market research to understand the core requirements of food and beverage businesses and have put together various solutions to help those businesses improve workflow, increase positive brand perception and raise sales. Visit us at the exhibitions to benefit from:
Live demonstrations of Cloud based, LAN and USB digital signage solutions
If you would like to visit Eclipse Digital Media and discover the latest digital signage technology available to help drive your business forward, sign up for FREE using the links below:
Eclipse Digital Media had the pleasure of attending ISE 2014 and joined digital signage hardware manufacturers ONELAN on their stand. Eclipse were invited to showcase their latest digital signage content and demonstrate the various ways they can integrate devices to create interactive digital signage solutions.
First up to showcase was a restaurant digital signage concept that integrates:
Android tablet touch order application
Ticket / receipt printer
Front of house, advertising display
Kitchen area, current order display
Back of house marketing / sales statistics
The process for the concept is: User places an order on the tablet, this order prints a receipt / ticket for them. The order is displayed on the kitchen monitor and also automatically updates the back office latest statistics table. The lowest selling item in the sales table automatically triggers an advert front of house to try and up-sell the item. This set up can be completely customised to the customer requirements but as a showcase of integration and interactivity, this piece shows how Eclipse Digital Media can bring together various devices and data to deliver solutions based on customer specific requirements. Take a look at ONELAN’s pre-sales engineer, Łukasz Górasiński, demonstrating this proof of concept on ONELAN’s stand at ISE 2014:
The second piece being showcased on the ONELAN stand was an interactive touch application that changes content on various displays based on IP commands to ONELAN digital signage media players. This solution can be used to create a variety of interactive discover points in many environments including museums, exhibitions and schools.
Digital Signage has thousands of uses and as it penetrates our daily lives, businesses need to embrace the ways in which it can help deliver both business and consumer needs – but what’s the right type of digital signage for you? Well, there are several types of digital signage but there are two core signage types that Eclipse Digital Media offer; These are USB updated, all in one digital signage and fully networked digital signage solutions.
Below we have outlined the core differences between the USB and Networked digital signage solutions and hope that this provides you with a guide to making the right decision for your business when choosing a digital signage solution.
USB Updated Digital Signage
The digital signage media player is built into the display device and content is updated via a USB stick. Take a look at the video below to see them in action:
Quick & simple set up – turn power on, upload content and content playback beginst
Cons:
Limited to single zone content
Limited to image, movie and audio content
Manual updating – not ideal if you have multiple screens
Networked Digital Signage
The digital signage media player is controlled via a computer network (internet or intranet) and connected to an AV display via HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort or VGA. There are various options of digital signage media player and we have many available on our online shop: www.eclipsedigitalmedia.co.uk/product-category/digital-signage-media-players.
Display multi media and multi zone content – more creative options
Publish content to a network of digital signage from one location – great for multi screen and multi location networks
Advanced scheduling features – schedule playback of content form entire layouts down to individual items in a zone
Fully scaleable – as your business grows simply add more players to your digital signage network
Cons:
Higher CAPEX cost – based on variable hardware options
More complex set up required – networking configuration and layout distribution needs to be configured
Not normally an all in one – hardware and screens sold separately
Digital Signage Winner
For small businesses that only need small quantities of screens for basic advertising requirements – USB Updated Digital Signage wins.
Why? Because of the cheaper cost, all in one solution, ease of set up and how simple they are to update.
For larger businesses with multiple locations requiring various content and creative options – Networked Digital Signage wins.
Why? Because of the flexibility and scalability of the system. Although some more advanced configuration is required at set up, having the ability to schedule content, create multi zone and multi media layouts and have different content displaying at different signage locations provides businesses with a comprehensive digital signage solution to match their needs and ambitions.
You’ll hear this notation time and time again in the Digital Signage world – content is king!
Having a stable and reliable digital signage system in place provides a you with a solid foundation to deliver your digital signage, however the final piece of the puzzle is one of the most important parts… delivering the right content.
Gone are the days of ‘PowerPoint’ digital signage – it simply doesn’t cut it anymore. As digital signage becomes more prevalent in our day to day lives, users expect to be able to do more with it and viewers expect to be captivated by it. Digital signage platforms such as the ONELAN solution we offer, allows users to deliver multiple media types, in multi-zone layouts including HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, Images, Movies, RSS, Text and Audio. With these tools at your disposal it opens a whole world of creativity and allows you to experiment with new content ideas to see what works with your audience. Below we have outlined a few key areas that we feel contribute to generating exciting and interesting digital signage:
Graphically Layered Digital Signage
You’ve got all the right kit to deliver your engaging digital signage content but all you do is slap a few scrolling text fields on the screen with solid background colours. This is still going to deliver your message, however as with all design, it pays to spend a bit of time graphically designing your layouts. Using professional designers, either in house or from agencies such as ourselves, you can design elements of your digital signage (image / movie format) and layer them to bring your digital signage content to life.
By thinking about what information you want to display on your digital signage layout and sketching some ideas on to a piece of paper before you start, can really help refine your content before you even begin to build it. Once you have a sketched version of your layout, then you can start to think about the best way to graphically bring this to life and begin to layer content at the design stage to maximise the impact.
The CAE digital signage content example to the right, shows how you can bring simple information to life by incorporating different design elements into digital signage. The background is a movie file of clouds moving through the sky, the world clocks and simulator status table is designed in a digital flight board style, image borders are used to enclose the live TV and live traffic map data, a solid blue block to define the RSS feed and transparent backgrounds are used for the text fields so they sit on top of the animated background.
Integrate External Data to your Digital Signage
Being able to use HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery content on ONELAN digital signage means it is possible to use some of the latest web design techniques to display content. ONELAN also offer a software program known as Data Collection Engine (DCE), which allows external sources such as Excel, Outlook Calendars, XML and SQL to automatically send data to the digital signage media players. Using these tools it is possible to take external data sources such as latest sales data or pricing information and convert it into a glossy interactive piece of content for your digital signage.
Below are some examples of how Eclipse Digital Media have used these tools to extract external data through DCE and delivered to digital signage in a dynamic and professional way, using a graphically layered design, HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery:
Scheduled & Location based Digital Signage Content
Delivering your content to the right audience in the right location at the right time… an imperative part of digital signage communications. Scheduling content to appear on certain days and certain times of the day is nothing new but it is an essential part of delivering the right digital signage content. By using functions on your digital signage, you can segment you content and target messages effectively, which can help increase sales in retail environments and provide informative messages to your target audience when it will have maximum impact.
Taking scheduling of content a step further, by having the ability deliver messages per location allows you to segment your digital signage content even further. This can be very useful for digital signage networks where the core content & design remain the same however certain content is only applicable to certain locations. Using something called Player Local Information (PLI) on the ONELAN digital signage media players it is possible to ‘tag’ each media player and then specify content to only play if a relevant tag is recognised.
Going back to HTML and web techniques, it is also possible to deliver digital signage content based on location through things like the weather or indeed the temperature of a location. Below is an example Eclipse Digital Media have specifically developed to use on ONELAN digital signage. It allows users to input the postcode of a location and then set rules to activate different content based on the temperature for that location.
To conclude, we cannot stress enough how important it is to get your content right on your digital signage. Spend extra time on the design elements and think about what you can do to enhance your content to both captivated your audience, while still delivering your key objective.
If you would like any further information about any of the digital signage content design services Eclipse Digital Media offer, please do not hesitate to contact us.
This digital signage demo area is to showcase Samsung’s increasingly powerful Smart Signage Platform, which is directly integrated, via a System on Chip (SOC), to their D series commercial grade displays. The SSP displays are displaying content that is delivered using cloud based digital signage platform; 
