Photo by Shivaelektra
If content is still king, its crown is definitely losing it’s luster. The King’s reign is presiding over more interactive, engaging and measurable media. Content is being forced to be richer and in some cases, it’s evolving into applications.
Users are drawn to the most engaging screen - in the past that has been a TV or cinema screen. Today it’s more likely to be a PC or mobile screen. Even in a location where there’s less competition from other big screens, a captive audience is not enough to win attention. A boring screen (of any size) will simply inspire the user to seek a less boring screen, for example their ever present mobile screen.
As far as the digital out of home opportunity is concerned, the solution is not to throw commoditized weather icons or event listings on to a screen and claim the experience is hyper local. It’s also not good enough bolting Bluetooth downloads, mobile marketing short codes or 3D bar codes to passive media in a vain attempt to share some of mobile’s limelight. Disconnected, siloed content doesn’t allow the user to be part of the conversation and cannot therefore pretend to be king for much longer.
We’ve moved from impressions to expressions, so media has to be a more localized and connected experience. The user must be given the chance to feel included. That means that the location experience needs to be tuned to the context of the user - not simply re-purposed TV or web content.
Place based social media is a solution to this problem, but it cannot be treated in the same way as passive content. It needs to be part of a network’s strategy - not an afterthought. It’s closer to an application than pure content.
The king is dead. Long live the king.
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