This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine's special section, FOCUS: Self-Service in Travel, March 2007.
To travelers, nothing is more important than getting where they need to be on time. This presents a challenge to those companies that choose to market their products in airports, where most of the traffic is hurried.
"Travelers do not have much time to browse, and therefore you do not have much time to influence their purchasing decision," said Wayne Ruttle, vice president of digital signage provider ADFLOW Networks. "The airport is a hustle-and-bustle retail environment with customers on the fly, and attracting their attention and trying to influence their buying decisions is tough."
With 320 stores located in airports, The Nuance Group is the largest global duty free retailer in the world. In 2004, the company's North American branch decided to install seven digital displays at its stores in Toronto Pearson Airport, in an attempt to catch the attention of some of the estimated 25 million people per year that pass through.
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| Digital signage in the store window attracts customer attention, drawing them into the store. |
The screens, connected to ADFLOW's media player hardware and Web-based content management system, serve two purposes: Some of them are mounted in store windows, facing outward to bring traffic in, while the rest are strategically situated inside the store, strengthening merchandising efforts and allowing the retailer to tap co-op advertising dollars.
Case in point: A key liquor supplier wanted to run a national promotion on one of their products within Nuance stores. They created a one-minute video clip and purchased a month's worth of time on the in-store displays. The result? A sales record for that product during the promotion.
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| Inside the shop, digital signage incorporated into the displays influences buying decisions through vivid, animated visuals. |
Ruttle said the Web-based system was one of the main reasons Nuance chose ADFLOW; the other was the fact that they offered an IT-free solution.
"Since their corporate network infrastructure was off-limits to any digital-signage initiative, our Web-hosted solution was ideal," he said.
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Growth is on the way for both the airport and for Nuance. Toronto International is in the middle of a 10-year, multibillion dollar expansion and development program. By the time it is all said and done in 2010, Nuance will have expanded its signage program to 36 display screens throughout the airport, all networked and controlled by the ADFLOW system.
"Millions of people every month will see the screens and react accordingly," Ruttle said. "Digital signage works best when it is strategic in nature and designed to meet specific retail objectives."
