Welcome to today’s episode, where we’re diving into the dynamic world of digital signage with Misty Chalk, Vice President of Sales, Americas at BrightSign. We’ll explore how digital signage is transforming brand strategies and customer experiences across various industries.
Resources
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom:
Greg Kihlstrom: Welcome to Season 6 of the Agile Brand, where we discuss marketing technology and customer experience trends, insights, and ideas with enterprise and technology platform leaders. We focus on the people, processes, data, and platforms that make brands successful, scalable, customer-focused, and sustainable. This is what makes an Agile Brand. I’m your host, Greg Kihlstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on Martech, Marketing Operations, and CX, bestselling author and speaker. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services, and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com. Now let’s get on to the show. Welcome to the episode where we’re going to dive into the world of digital signage with Misty Chalk, Vice President of Sales Americas at BrightSign. We’re going to explore how digital signage is transforming brand strategies and customer experiences across various industries. Misty, welcome to the show. Thank you.
Greg Kihlstrom: Thanks for having me.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this topic with you. Why don’t we get started with you giving a little background on yourself and your role at BrightSign.
Misty Chalk: So yeah, so I have spent my entire career in AV and digital signage. So audio visual and digital signage for the last 26 years actually. So most recently I’ve been at BrightSign for the last six years running the sales for the Americas, both North and South America. But yeah, I’ve devoted my entire career to basically this topic. So it’s something that I’m super excited about and yeah, I’m excited to be here. So thanks for having me.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, let’s, let’s get started by, uh, we’re going to talk about, how a few industries are adopting and benefiting from digital signage technologies. So, you know, why don’t we just get started by give us an overview. I’m sure most people listening have some kind of idea of what we mean by digital signage, but maybe give us a bigger picture of, you know, what is digital signage entail? And, you know, why has it become such a pivotal element in marketing strategies?
Misty Chalk: So you’d actually be surprised at how many people don’t know what digital signage is. So, when I actually travel, this is funny, through like TSA, I have to tell them what I do for a living, and I usually say I sell technology. And they say, ìWell, what do you sell?î And I say, ìDigital signage.î And they say, ìOh, like DocuSign?î No. So, itís actually, I feel like we need a better way to describe what we do, because if youíd asked me ten years ago, digital signage probably fit where you would have a digital screen that you could push content to and be informative. But it’s transformed so much over the last decade. And it really encompasses this entire ecosystem of systems and partners and platforms to really create these dynamic and targeted and engaging content that is done in real time. Right. So it’s this it’s become this indispensable tool for modern marketing strategies. And it aligns really well with kind of our consumer expectations right now. What we see is people really wanting those personalized experiences. And what that allows you to do is create that, deliver that, but also staying competitive in these increasingly digital marketplaces.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, so, and certainly digital signage is used across a lot of different industries. And, you know, certainly we can’t cover all of them. But, you know, I’m wondering if you could give us kind of a sense of, you know, what’s the breadth and diversity of different types of digital signage usage?
Misty Chalk: So digital signage is everywhere, which is the hardest thing for us to articulate to our customers. Right. Cause it is, it’s a very horizontal platform, right? It’s in every single industry. It’s in every single vertical. If you walk into the doctor’s office, you go to the hospital, you go to the grocery store, you go to the mall. I mean, it’s the airport, like it is absolutely everywhere. And what makes it so, I guess, kind of overwhelming for some people is that every one of those journeys are different. And even though, like, if you look at higher ed or retail, retail, as we would look at, you know, convenience stores and QSR and then actually like clothing shops and things like that, even those journeys are different. And so it is, it’s a really hard thing to articulate to people because it is, it’s, it’s digital signage is everywhere and it encompasses so many different things. And so you look at it from like an enterprise perspective where it’s really about Informing and engaging with employees and creating this consistency in a hybrid workplace right and then you go to the retail sector where it’s really about getting these consumers back into the brick and mortar stores and creating these experiences that make people want to go and then you look at the movie theaters since covid and. And people don’t go to the movies anymore because you can, for $20, I can download it and watch it digitally when it comes out in the movie theater. So you have to create these reasons and experiences for them to come back into the movie theater and watch these movies. And so the digital journey really is different based on every single vertical. that, that we do, which is what, you know, digital signage and what I love so much about it is it’s just absolutely brilliant because it’s so creative and it’s so different. And I, I tell you every single day I learned something new because everybody’s journey is slightly different.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and to that end, you know, certainly digital signage can have a very practical set of purposes as well, but could you maybe give an example of, you know, how digital signage can enhance the customer experience?
Misty Chalk: Yeah, so the easiest way, I guess, I think the most relatable way is to talk about it in a retail environment. So if you look at the digital journey for a retail environment from like beginning to end, and you have to look at it two ways. You can look at it from the retailer’s perspective, which is what do I actually want to accomplish? And then from the consumer’s perspective, which is what do I actually want to expect? What’s my experience? What’s my expectation, right? What’s going to get me to engage? And so one thing that digital signage does in a retail environment There’s so many different things that you can do with it about and again creating these experiences where it used to be just I would interact with the screen and then we would look at different things like data and analytics and say well how long do I engage with that screen how long did I you know dwell at that screen did I move on did I interact with anything. And it’s become so much more than that. So if you look at it from that perspective, from a retailer’s perspective, you can have, you know, cameras, for instance, that are throughout the entire store. And then you have different players that are playing different types of content on different screens. And now as I move through the store, like my pathway, what my dwell time is, my emotions when I’m interacting with something, even what I’m wearing is all brought together and stitched together at the end. So you can create this analytics and data so you know exactly what I’m thinking as I’m moving throughout the store so you can actually change what that advertisement looks like or how you actually lay out your store what’s going to be more engaging and you can actually sense my emotions as well based on the content that you’re showing me which allows these retailers to really just change at and be super agile so you can you can put new content on the screen as quickly as possible right you can you can get this this information down in real time and adjust And that is something that we’ve never seen before. Like all of the AI that’s been brought into this, which I know, you know, people get nervous when you talk about AI, but all the AI that’s brought into this really does benefit the retailer. And then if you look at it from a consumer perspective, if I’m going to go into the store, like especially since COVID, it’s hard to get people back into these brick and mortars because even though we all wanted to get out of our houses and do different things, there’s still this luxury and it’s so easy to just order online, right? So what’s going to get me to actually go to the mall? And for me personally, it would be like trying on clothes for instance. So if I’m going to go to a store, I still expect to have some type of a hybrid experience where if I go to a store and I want to go try on clothing, I’m going to have an experience within a, the dressing rooms for instance, right? Where I can order things online right from my dressing room. I can have other things brought to me by interacting and creating this entire experience. Then you have others that maybe don’t want that. And I know sometimes it depends on my mood. And so you have the ability then for the ones that actually just don’t want to go into a dressing room, where you could just look into a mirror and that mirror will actually allow you to see what a hat looks like, what a shirt looks like, what the sunglasses look like on you, right? And so it’s about creating these personal experiences and then bridging them together based on the consumers coming in. And what’s brilliant about it is that you don’t have to choose one or the other. They all coexist together. Right. And then and then you get all of that data and that analytics off of it so that you can post your trends and you can figure out how you can change and adjust and then your proof of playback for your advertisements and things like that. So you can just constantly change up what you’re doing to be more effective.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and you brought up a couple things there as well on the measurement side, you know, having analytics around this stuff and being able to see I mean, I would imagine that’s a, that’s a huge benefit to let’s just keep on the on the train of retailers. I would imagine that’s to see what hats people are trying on, you know, for instance, versus, you know, It’s kind of hard to track that in an offline world, right? So I would imagine there’s a wealth of data, in other words, that can be used, plus you’re improving an experience because people don’t necessarily want to ask someone for help for everything and go into a dressing room, so on and so forth. Would you say that’s correct?
Misty Chalk: Yes, the analytics portion of this is something that has been really trending over the last few years. You’re going to find lots of different ways that you can do it. It used to be just like I said, you would plug a camera in and I could go into the store and they would see that I had basic demographics and, and like I said, I, whether I interacted with the screen or I didn’t interact with the screen, but now it’s not even about interacting with the screen. It’s about what I do in that store, the movements that I make, like how long do I dwell here and there? How long do I pick up a product? What, what is my path when I’m moving from place to place? What does that path look like? So that you can properly place your ads, right? Properly place your content. So it’s going to be more engaging with me. Other than that, that content actually. invoked an emotion in me is really powerful because it’s going to tell you, and you can get that from some of the facial recognition software. I know that kind of probably freaks people out, but you can get that. You can see not only did I interact, but it invoked some kind of emotion in me. And what was that emotion? Was it happy? Was it sad? Was it conflicting? And so then you can adjust based on that. So the analytics portion of this is one of the things I’ve seen trend over the last, I would say, just few years. And now when you incorporate AI into that, it’s so incredibly powerful for a retailer. And again, the ability to just change on the fly, you get this data in real time, it analyzes everything, and you can even analyze the logos that I’m wearing. So when I’m walking through the store, you know what my average spend is when I walk through the store. I mean, just incredibly powerful data. that you can then go and manipulate and do what you need to do to change and make sure that you’re giving the best possible customer experience and of course increasing revenue.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and I think that’s where, you know, when there’s a benefit to the customer and the customer understands and realizes that benefit, then I think a lot of the stuff where, you know, people may be put off initially by it, you know, once they once they see how it’s benefiting them, it’s a lot easier to to understand and be be a lot more comfortable with and And so, you know, and as marketers, I think, you know, we’ve been, we’ve been used to tracking and analytics and stuff for, you know, for, for quite a while now. So, you know, certainly something that again, when we can offer a benefit to customers, there’s. there’s reason to look at it and find more continually innovative ways to do it. I wonder in this scenario, again, just to kind of keep on the topic of retail while we’re talking about it, what’s the role of the marketer in this? So there’s the physical retail store and the tracking. I think you touched on some of this already, but what’s the role of the marketer in here? What do they have to kind of play with in this scenario, knowing that they have access to all this data?
Misty Chalk: So they do have access to all of the data and they have access to the entire ecosystem. That’s one thing that’s just great about the digital signage industry is that although we are competitive with each other, we all also understand the greater good, right? So there’s no solution that’s going to provide you end to end exactly what you need. So we all play really, really well together. And so it’s about understanding the tools that are available to you. Like everything that I’ve spoken about, this is not futuristic stuff, right? This is things you can do today. And so I feel like the role of the marketer is really to have, you have to have a good understanding and at least a liaison or a consultant that you can work with to talk about different different trends, different things that are available to you to see and put all of this together. The content has to be relevant, right? The content has to be relevant and it has to be… There’s no… And people are guilty of this all the time when they put content out there and they never change it. And if somebody’s just walking past your screen and not engaging with it, there’s no point in that, right? And so it’s keeping up on what’s trending and what’s popular. And to touch on something that you said about what’s in it for the consumer and the fact that You know, we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’ve been doing the targeted marketing, the personalized marketing, and I know it freaks people out. I hear it all the time, but it’s also an expectation that there’s an expectation. And so even if, I know we’re sticking with retail, but if you look at higher ed for instance, and we talk about their digital journey, when I go to a college and I actually have a son that’s, that is a senior in high school next year. So this is fresh on my mind. But when he goes to look at schools and colleges, he wants this personalized experience, right? Like we’re used to it being all about us because that’s what it has been. That’s what the marketing has turned into. So even though we may say we don’t like it, it is an absolute expectation that most people have that we’re going to have these personalized experiences and that we are going to have some type of emotion that’s triggered by, by that experience. That, that is an expectation.
Greg Kihlstrom: We did talk quite a bit about retail. I wonder if we could talk about, you know, whether it’s education or healthcare or, you know, another industry, if you could talk a little bit about, you know, the role of digital signage there and, you know, how it, how it kind of re-imagines the customer experience in some of these other industries.
Misty Chalk: Yeah, so we talk about the experience a lot because it’s fun, right? It’s like it’s fun to talk about content, different things that we can do with these triggers and these ways to automate and adding the sensory technology and all these things that create this really cool experience. But if you look at it across all the other verticals, it comes down to really information. We crave information. We want information. It makes us feel better about whatever’s happening. And if you look at what happened last Friday, and I hate to go down this path because I don’t want to be an ambulance chaser, but if you look at what happened last Friday with Microsoft and you walk into an airport and all of your screens are blue or they’re rebooting or whatever, it creates a sense of panic. It has this emotion of something’s happening and you don’t know what it is, even though you don’t know if it’s bad or not, right? It’s the lack of information and the availability of that information that causes us to have this strong emotional reaction to it. And so for a lot of other industries, like when you’re talking about enterprise and healthcare, it really is about getting the information at your fingertips and it’s consistent across this hybrid space. So whether or not I’m an online student or I’m on campus or I’m doing a telemedicine or I’m on the campus at the hospital, right, the information is consistent and I have it at my fingertips. And when you don’t have that, it does create this panic in people of they don’t know what’s going on. So just the information side of it, which is not as fun as the experience side of it, is an extremely powerful part of what we do in digital signage.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And yeah, I mean, people are used to getting directions from their phones when they’re in their car or wherever. So, you know, they would expect as much, whether they’re in an airport or a hospital or whatever the case may be. For those organizations that are, you know, let’s say they’re starting out, they’re not, they’re not quite, they’re well down the path that you’re describing but that are starting out, what are some of the questions they should be asking as they up their game here?
Misty Chalk: So, I think that the number one thing is you have to understand what it is you’re trying to accomplish, right? You have to have a goal in mind and you have to think past day one because the digital signage solution should grow with you, right? You should have a pathway. If you’re successful at day one, what does the next day look like and the year after that and the year after that? How do you keep evolving this? And you really have to understand and have an idea of what that journey looks like for you. And once you do that, and there’s lots of ways that you can consult with people to kind of help you understand what that journey is, but you have to understand what are your goals. What are you trying to achieve? And then if you’re like a retailer, what are the goals of your consumer, right? How do you want your consumer to feel at the end of the day and what action do you want them to take? And then you can kind of work backwards from there. I think one mistake that most people make is that they go straight to marketing and they go straight to content. And that’s a huge mistake because there’s so many other elements that you have to look at when you’re deploying a digital signage strategy. And, you know, going back to what happened last week with every screen, you know, going down. That that is a huge thing. Nobody cares about your content if your screens are black or if they’re blue. Right. And so and security, although it’s not as fun to talk about, is incredibly important. It’s incredibly important. So you have to make sure that you have a strategy for maintaining the platform that it’s going to be reliable and it’s going to show content regardless of what’s going on in the world, right? And then content comes in and that’s where the fun part comes in where you can start getting creative and you engage with marketing. And so it’s understanding what your journey is and who your stakeholders are. Who are the stakeholders in this journey? You’ve got IT, you have InfoSec, you have graphic design, you have marketing, and at the very end, you have your consumer or your audience. And all of those have to be taken into consideration. And if you get those people at the table, usually you can come out with a pretty compelling journey and a pathway forward.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, so I mean, in some ways that goes back to, I like that you mentioned that marketing shouldn’t be the sole, I mean, certainly marketing sits at that table, you know, it sounds like in your scenario, but it’s, it’s about thinking holistically about the customer experience. And from my experience, I have less experience in the digital signage world. But, you know, when you’re looking at, at anything, it’s, it’s the context, right? So there’s a marketing component to it. But, but to your other point, it’s, there’s also people need to get where they’re going and feel comfortable that they’re going to get where they need to go, and so on and so forth. So it’s, would you say it’s, it’s the balance of things that’s important?
Misty Chalk: Yeah, it definitely is. I think that we we spend a lot of time looking at what success looks like, right? And again, what that content looks like. And we get super excited about it. So do I. It’s fun to talk about. But what we don’t do a good enough job of is talking about what does failure look like? Because what we should be looking at and what we should be doing is mitigating that failure, right? Mitigating that risk. So what does failure look like for you if you were to deploy a digital signage? And if if you look at. For instance, BrightSign, and for those of you that don’t know who BrightSign is, BrightSign is the leading manufacturer of digital signage hardware. So we make purpose-built hardware for this specific reason. And if you look at what our business is built on and why we do what we do and why we are successful, It is not based always on content. When somebody pulls out something, another competitive product, and they put in a BrightSign player, it’s usually for maintenance and management. And so when you look at what does failure look like, what you’re going to start seeing people jotting down are going to be, well, we get hacked, right? Somebody hacks our screens and they put some nefarious content on there. or all of our screens go down, or it’s the IT guy saying, I can’t maintain these. It’s too much to maintain them in real trucks. So if you start looking what failure looks like, it’ll start shifting and you’ll start being able to kind of identify what it is that’s important to you, finding that platform that’s going to be rock solid, that’s going to move through you through the future into the different trends that you want to get into. And knowing that the answer to content is always yes. I mean, you truly are only limited by your imagination in this industry. There is a platform out there that will do whatever you want to do. That is the truth of it. So when you start looking at it that way, then you start building more of a futuristic approach to your digital signage. But I think we don’t do a good enough job of looking at what failure looks like. We focus on what success looks like.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, to talk a little bit about, you know, most of what we’ve been talking about is, are things that are doable today and able to be implemented today. Looking ahead, what do you see as some of the, you know, things in the future for the digital signage industry? Are there any trends, technologies that are kind of shaping the next phase?
Misty Chalk: Yeah, I think we’re going to see more and more sensory technologies, for instance. We do already have so many different ways that you can trigger content that is based on gesturing or touch. But I think you’re going to start seeing more. Again, we’re emotional beings, and so you have to tie the emotion to the experience. And in order to do that, you then have to start bringing in the senses, the smell and the the audio and so that you start tying these back into the experience that you had. And you’re going to see that you see already theme parks. You’re going to start seeing that move more into retail. You’re going to start seeing that move more into even with like some of the stuff that we’ve been doing within movie theaters on their premieres. And just you have to kind of tie this back to the emotion in order to do that. It’s going to be census. And so you’re going to start seeing more and more sensory technology come out. I think we’re going to see more and more AI. Which I think AI, you know, I know it’s very controversial right now and people have very strong feelings about it, but when it comes to digital signage, the brilliance of AI is going to allow people that don’t necessarily have the resources to do some of these really fantastic and brilliant things. where normally it would cost you a lot of money and you have to have all these resources brought in to do it. AI is going to allow you to do that. You’re going to see more and more of that. You’re going to see more of advertising, right? So when you talk about why do big box retailers and big retailers want to get into digital signage, number one thing is the programmatic ads, right? The ad business that Walmart has put forth as far as what they were able to generating revenue last year was over a billion dollars in ads alone. That’s all based on their digital signage platform. So you’re going to see more and more of that of the programmatic ads and you’re going to see more and more sensory technologies to really try to draw in that emotion of your consumer.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, Misty, thanks so much for joining today. One last question before we wrap up here. What advice would you give to brands to kind of stay ahead and utilizing digital signage effectively as things continue to evolve as you just shared?
Misty Chalk: But there’s so, there’s so much data out there and there’s so many resources out there. And that’s one thing I love about the digital signage industry is that we’re very consultative. We understand that it doesn’t, you can’t do everything you want to do with just BrightSign, right? We have an entire ecosystem of partners that we work with that make it go from point A to point B. And so I would say the biggest thing you can do is find a consultant that you can work with throughout the year so they can keep you abreast. There’s so much information out there, so just make sure that you’re following the right information because it’s so much out there. But I do think that, and I tell this to people all the time, it’s really difficult when you get wrapped up in your own world. talking to somebody that understands digital signage and understands the trends and using them as a consultant. We are, our industry is really, really well known for that. So that would be my biggest advice is find a confidant in this industry that, that you can bounce ideas off of that can keep kind of keep those trends going.
