LocaModa Place-Based Social Media Screens At FUJIFILM Imagetec Co. Ltd.

I’m delighted to announce LocaModa’s relationship with FUJIFILM Imagetec Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of FUJIFILM Corporation. The press release can be found here.

I went to Tokyo earlier in the year to understand the potential of the market. Screens in stations, public spaces, stadiums, retail stores and even Karaoke bars are starting to be networked in interesting and innovative ways. Companies that for decades have provided the leading traditional advertising solutions for those spaces are now moving into digital solutions.

The recent success of Twitter in Japan has opened the market up to the power of social media. I commented earlier in the year that Shubuya Station is Foursquare’s busiest location for checkins. When I posted about that here, it had 65k checkins, today, barely 4 weeks later, that number is over 78,000.

Japan has for many years led the world in mobile technology and I have to say, their phones are still way ahead of what we typically see in US. However, the innovative but proprietary iMode framwork for apps and services that was standardized and directed by DoCoMo, Japan’s dominant wireless carrier has been rocked by Apple. The iPhone has almost single-handedley moved many Japanese companies to move to web-based mobile apps as their previous iMode sites look like postage stamps on an iPhone or Android device.

These facts all point to the web re-establishing itself as the backbone for services and media.

Companies such as FUJIFILM Imagetec are adopting web strategies in order to establish themselves as responsive and innovative solutions in the DOOH space. It’s a very exciting time, and we look forward to helping our partners develop leading edge solutions.

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James Davies, Chief Strategy Officer of Posterscope and I have just released a white paper: “Sociable Media. Seven ways to connect online and offline social experiences to deliver engagement, advocacy and brand affinity.” You can download it free here.

Working with James on the white paper exposed me to some of his and his agency’s thinking about the role of OOH as a critical compliment to other channels. Prior to meeting James, I had been guilty of thinking of the digitization of OOH only in terms of digital billboards. But digital billboards are not the most significant movement of OOH towards all things D. In fact less than 1% of billboards are digital (according to the OAAA).

The more significant evolution in OOH is its ability to work in conjuction with other channels so well. OOH has been quietly pioneering cross-channel connectivity because it has to. It recognized (as all media should) that it has to be a complimentary channel because the customer today is not captive to any screen.

The familiar phone number on OOH billboards is today often replaced with easier to comprehend (or remember) Text short codes, QR codes, Twitter hashtags, Facebook fan pages and urls.

As the white paper’s introduction states, a unique new communications dynamic is being created by the convergence of four media opportunities: online social networks, social networks in the real world, mobile and Out-of-Home media, especially digital and experiential. The paper outlines how advertisers can leverage these channels in various combinations to turbo-charge the effects of both online and Out-of-Home activity and enable a more sociable approach to consumer engagement.

In addition to understanding the role of new media channels in isolation, advertisers need to be mindful of how they interact with each other and with traditional media.

The message time and time again is this simple: As media fragments, the ability to work across channels is one of THE most important features of any communications strategy. Traditional media is “getting digital” fast.

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LocaModa screen at GameOn, Boston

A potential advantage of DOOH is that it’s ideally placed to sell itself. It’s a medium that is in the faces of millions of people every month. That’s what we sell. So I was delighted to hear what happened last week with one of our applications.

Cue flashback effects……

The story starts 3 months ago at Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar, adjacent to Fenway, home of the RedSox (I have to mention that as not everyone is as familiar or fanatical about baseball as this town is).

Remy’s met with RocketFarm, a local iPhone developer to discuss applications that could help help engage customers. RocketFarm work with LocaModa (they developed an iPhone version of our Jumbli app) and showed Remy’s our applications. Remy’s wanted a LocaModa screen at their venue, so we helped get a social media loop running on their system. The Remy’s screen features real time tweets mentioning Remy’s, RedSox, and also displays FourSquare checkins and mayor info.

Less than a month later, GameOn, a bar actually in historic Fenway and just a few blocks from Remy’s, contacted LocaModa to get their own dedicated social media screen. Once again, we were happy to oblige.

The Remy’s screen today has over 1,700 check ins and Game On has over 2,500 check ins. Both bars get heavy Twitter and mobile engagement - especially when the Sox are playing.

Fast forward to last week…

A Best Buy manager walks into Game On and loves the LocaModa screen. He starts to think about how it can help engage his customers. He goes to Wiffiti.com and creates a free screen to experiment with and soon he has five screens running on three floors at Best Buy. Now the manager at the local Best Buy is talking about LocaModa applications to other regional stores and invites LocaModa to meet the larger group of managers.

To be conintued…

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