Silberbauer Says:

Just a couple of images of the Concerthouse illumination from last night. We’re changing the illumination everytime a major event is taking place in the Concerthouse and this time it is the Outgames’ Conference about human rights for gays and other minorities. The illumination will be on until wednesday from around 22:30 until 06:00.

Finally, after months of preparation, we have launched the digital signage system in DR’s new headquarter in Copenhagen… and it went well

From a workplace to a place to create.
That was the headline of the project from day one. DR Byen has been built by four different architects who has made four very different buildings.
Pictures from one of the four buildings in DR Byen

Our project was meant to deliver an integrated communication platform and to ‘bring the media’ inside these buildings.
As you can see on this images the last part in the project (the Concert Hall) is still more or less a construction sites (see the official site here). About three quarters of the building is finished and the digital signage project has been launch in three of the four parts of the building.

Number one: To connect the architecture with our corporate identity:
First of all, we needed to make a tighter connection between the architecture and the corporate identity.
Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) is, as the name implies, a media corporation. And although it’s an amazing piece of architecture made by 4 different companies, it is not immediately obvious that it was the home of the largest Danish media corporation, that we are delivering high quality public service content, and that we are the de facto keepers of the Danish cultural media heritage.

Number two
Second, we are experiencing an increasing competition in the media business, and the most important competitive advantage is creativity. Therefore I believe that it is absolutely vital to create a pleasant and inspiring environment for creativity to happen. Of course we can’t do an ROI calculation on how much creativity this project will generate, but I believe that we are creating the ground upon which creativity may grow more easily than usual. And that’s why we have been focusing on the integration of different kinds of visual art in the project and creating an experience instead of just an information screen.

Number 3
Finally, our customers have ever changing needs, and therefore we must able to communicate very fast inside the organization and also be able to change our communication procedures very quickly, if needed. A fully automated digital platform, as the one we have created, is a big asset in this race. In the web-2.0-user-has-the-power communication world of today it’s very important to have non-intrusive way of pushing important communication to your stakeholders, employees and customers.

First of all, the Entrance.
When you step into DR at groundlevel, this is what you see. Three large video projections (one is hidden in this image) on the white and grey concrete walls.

We’ve been working closely together with the architects to create a coherent experience of the room. The content is very abstract and meant to supplement the room with depth, dynamic and a creative atmosphere.

I think it’s important, to be very courageous and to use an abstract and symbolic content that will activate the viewer instead of communicating in the usual corp-speak discourse. We should stimulate experiences with the use of symbols and montage-effects and not with the use the very powerful media to promote corporate taglines. See for instance how Jason Eppink is transforming standard commercials to street art.

The entrance from another angle:

The foyer from one of the side entrances. Four 19″ monitors placed on a white concrete wall.

The ‘Main Street’ on the 2nd floor:
The connection between the four buildings in the ‘DR City’ is a giant glass-covered street (12*18 meters) with a bridge crossing the water channel going through the area called ‘Ørestaden’.

In this part of the building we have placed 6 46″ screens. The content consists of news from our own news-channel and news from the department of corporate communicate. Besides that, there are breakers made by young visual artists. They we’re given access to our media archives and used some of the old material to make new artistic expressions.

The ‘Main Street’ viewed from the bridge on the fourth floor.
Every screen has it’s own unique flow of information configured to the specific physical context and user behaviour.

The Meeting Center:
In our Meeting Center we’ve made an integration to MS Exchange Server. In this way our meeting booking system is automatically updated on the screens next to each meeting room. The interface is based on Flash using xml-data from Exchange generated by AgendaX.

What’s next??

Well, this is just phase one of the project. In the next 1-3 month we will be creating a lot more content to the system, for instance the weather forecast, trailers, traffic information and of course more visuals. In february we’re having the first art exhibition with the project ‘Runner’ in collaboration with Illumenart and EPI. Hopefully, we be able to extend the system to the other parts of DR in Jutland and on Bornholm and most importantly we’re learning a lot about what it takes to maintain and use this kind of communication platform.

Besides this, we’re of course looking forward to completion of the concert hall and to the exciting task of creating the digital projections in and outside the concert hall See the pictures. That’s gonna be amazing!!

I will hopefully be able to upload some video soon. It gives a better sense of the look and feel of the displays.
Please comment if you have any good ideas or experiences with digital signage solutions.

/Lars Silberbauer

Just some slides (in danish) from my presentation at the seminar on “Corporate Branding and Architecture” last week.
foredrags_resume.pdf

Just another post on the use of digital billboards in NYC.
On his website, Jason Eppink is showing how to create street-art out of the commercial content on the digital displays in the NYC subway entrances.
There is a lot of money involved in marketing on the digital displays in the New York Metro:
(estimated $274,000 for a ten-second spots every minute on each of the city’s 80 digital displays for a month). That’s a lot of money! But you’re not getting you’re moneys worth if you are broadcasting the same standard made-for-tv commercials as always.
The content should be made especially to the digital displays and be somehow adjusted and relevant to the specific physical surroundings.
Or why not hire Jason Eppink… it looks great!

Really good slideshow about the economics of micromedia, connected consumption and the snowball effect.
Nice to see a web 2.0 slide show that’s not focused on technology but on the development of the New Media Economics.
Although 107 slides is a lot, I liked the intelligent analysis of broadcast/blockbuster media and micromedia. Enjoy

The new French president Sarkozy shows up drunk to the press conference at the G8 summit.
Why do you hire communication professionals if they’re not stepping up to the occasion and preventing the president from going on stage drunk??…
Thank God it was just a microphone at a press conference and not the launch control to the nuclear missiles.

A small YouTube clip from a Tom Peters presentation. Play the clip for your boss, the next time he wants to benchmark you against the current Market Leader
Enjoy !

Just a couple of books that I would recommend on branding, design and innovation.

Tom Kelley: Ten Faces of Innovation.
A very inspiring book on how to beat the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization.

• Good:
  - All in all, it’s a very good book for anyone with an interest in generating creativity and innovation in their own company.
  - Kelley makes an very important distinction with his focus on faces and not phases. It’s people that drives innovation, not Gant diagrams and Project Management phases and schedules.
• Bad
  The next time Kelley writes about innovation, he should make up his mind whether he wants to promote Ideo or write a serious book about innovation. He knows a lot about innovation, no question about it!, but to much cheering about the wonderful successes of Ideo does not make him or his argumentation any more credible or convincing.

Tom Peters: Design

Tom Peters has the ability to get you pumped up with enthusiasm just by the way he writes and in this book the content is just as inspiring as well. This is a book with a message and you feel the commitment throughout the book.

• Good:
  What I like the most about this book is the radical all-or-nothing message that it sends out, for example this passage from the first chapter:

The harsh news: THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. The microchip will colonize all rote activities. And we will have to scramble to reinvent ourselves – as we did when we came off the farm and went into the factory, and then as we were ejected from the factory and delivered to the white collars towers.
The exciting news: THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. The reinvented you and the reinvented me will have no choice but to scramble and add value in some meaningful way.

• Bad:
  If you’re reading the book because you want to know more about design, you’re going to be disappointed, it’s not about design, it’s all about business and not about new colour schemes and design trends.

Martin Lindstrom: Brand Sense

The Danish Brand Guru Numero Uno has created a follow up to his previous bestseller Brandchild.

• Good:
  Basically, he’s making a point with his concept of branding for all five senses. It’s obvious that there’s room for improvement and that we need to consider all elements of human cognitivity when we are trying to make an impact on customers. But the way he’s trying to measure human senses is not convincing. It seems to me, that he’s got a point and he knows it, but in his ambition to prove his idea, he is crossing the line from giving proffessional advice and doing academic research. And there’s a very big difference!
• Bad:
  As in Tom Kelley’s book about innovation it seems to me that Lindstrom sometimes doesn’t know which one of his two objectives that’s most important. Is it to contribute to the shared pool of knowledge about branding? or is it to use his own branding abilities and tools to strengthen his own brand “Martin Lindstrom”? It’s not clear to me, but I would prefer a honest personal branding exercise without the want-to-make-ground-breaking-academic-research stuff.

Anyway, all three books are worth reading. Enjoy!

Søren reminded me that it was about time to make a follow up on my previous posting about digital signage in the Big Apple. Klaus’ Zune posting created a lot of buzz, so we thought it would be appropriate to let it be the topposting for a while.

Right now there’s a lot going on in the field of digital signage and corporate branding. Some companies are leading the way and are using digital signage in their corporate branding and are redesigning their corporate HQ in order to make the ultimate corporate branding experience. They are closing the gap between architecture and communication and creating a more consistent and holistic branding experience than I’ve ever seen before.

One of the best examples is the new Bloomberg Building in New York (created by Cesar Pelli & Associates). When you visit the building it’s obvious that the architecture and digital signage have been merged to create a unique branding experience. The building is absolutely soaked with large digital displays and the architecture is stunning. The visitor leaves the building with the impression of an innovative, creative and open minded organization. I don’t know if this is the true nature of the Bloomberg Corporation, but the building itself gives the visitor this very positive impression.

For instance take a look at this large 3 tier displays which is one of the first large displays that the visitors encounter.

I know, it’s a short clip, but it shows how Bloomberg has made a combination of a large digital display that delivers news content from Bloomberg Media, but at the same time creates an branding experience. It’s not just a news ticker, it’s so much more.

Or have a look at this elevator area. Nice huh?
I can’t describe the entire visitor experience, you have to experience it by yourself – and that is basically my point.

The corporate headquarter is the ultimate place for making a lasting impact on your customers, the press or your stakeholders. You control all the elements and you can create an experience that will be able to push through our personal “ad filtering system”, that most people has developed by watching the estimated 86.500 tv commercials per year (Ries 2002). Instead of having your customer placed in the couch in a familiar environment, you got your customer immersed in a controlled environment, where you can create an experience by making a complete experience for all five senses. As Martin Lindstrom (Danish Branding guru) says in his book “Brand Sense”:

Brand Communication has reached a new frontier. In order to succesfully conquer future horizons, brands will have to find ways to break the 2-D impasse and appeal to the three neglegted senses. Superb picture quality won’t do it. Rather we should look to embrace all five senses in order to create a foundation for future brand strategies.

You cannot send out a press release, make an online ad, create a television commercial or making a blog posting that will be able to make the same impact as the well designed corporate branding experience in your HQ. I know that not all your customers will come and visit you, but you will be able to make a lasting impact on those who does. Bloomberg has definitely showed the way by using digital signage and architecture to communicate corporate values and goals.
Take a look the next time you’re in New York, it’s really really cool.

First of all, no one should be in any doubt that I believe that blogging and wikis can be used as an extremely powerful tool for corporate communication, but this demands a RADICAL change in the state of mind of most communication professionals. You cannot just add blogs or wikis to your existing communication platform without taking into account that this is just not another new tool, this is a completely new way of communicating. If you do not realize this difference, then your corporate blogging initiative is not gonna fly. To succeed, you need to rethink your communication/knowledge management strategy and it’s not done by:

“Lets do some corporate blogging – that will definitely put us right up there with the big shots in the Fortune 500 (and if not, we’ll add a Wiki, that’ll definitely do it).

You need to change! By now, devoted bloggers have praised and glorified this new medium for a couple of years and even the most well defended stronghold of corporate communication have sensed that something is happening outside side of the outer defenses. You can no longer attend a serious seminar about corporate communication without stumbling over talks on how corporate blogging will revolutionize business communication and of course the general worshipping of wikis as the greatest thing since Post It Notes.

More and more companies are showing interest in adding blogging and wiki-tools to their ever increasing portfolio of communication tools. And it’s just great? or is it??…

In my opinion, there is still a huge challenge to overcome and we’re not their yet. In fact we’re not even close!

A couple of years ago the “MUST HAVE” of communication professionals and one of the most popular subjects on communication/intranet conferences was portals and personalization. Did that really help us? Did the promised benefits arrive or have we just silently agreed on that we’ll leave the past alone and move on??

Now we have some new exciting “MUST HAVE” tools and that is the problem in a nutshell. Most communication professionals are just not getting it, they are thinking: “Cool, a new cheap digital publication thingy”. They should be thinking: “Amazing, the world of communication has changed, I must change before I’m obsolete”.

The new tools will not help and will not improve the way your business works if you don’t change your mindset. YOU need to understand that if YOU want blogging to create value for your business, YOU need to know how and YOU need to change accordingly.
Blogging is just not a thing you put on a server or get hosted somewhere in India. Blogging is a strategic decision about your corporate culture and it needs to be aligned with your overall corporate strategy and integrated in your company’s knowledge/information management strategy.

And most importantly – If you don’t feel it, if you don’t understand the media and if your not ready to bet your job on your corporate blogging initiative, you’re not ready for it.

Just returned to Copenhagen from a research trip to New York. We’ve been researching on trends and developments in the Digital Signage Business. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some of my recently gained insights in the next couple of postings.

First of all – The Research Team:
From the left:
Morten Tue Ankjær (Technical Project Manager)
Lars Silberbauer (Project Manager – Communication)
Nilo Kuhlmann Hansen (Project Manager – Architecture).

We’ve spend four busy days in meetings and on field research and the basic conclusion is that a lot is happening, both in content creation, system developtment and business models.
In the next couple of posting I’ll try to some up on the following:

1. Digital Signage and corporate branding
2. New trends in content developtment
3. Business Models and increasing revenue
4. Developments on the market for digital signage solutions.

I’ll be back!

Yesterday we pitched on a redesign proces on a large e-gov site (I can’t tell you exactly which site, of course) as one of three contestants. We came in second (the first of the loosers, as they say).

Win some, loose some – that’s ok, I can live with that. What annoys me in this case is that this not-to-be client told us we lost because we focused on issues with the website’s structure, navigation and usability problems in our quest to come up with a process that would make more citizens use the site.

The user’s flow through the site is so obviously screwed up by bad communication, bad usability and a non-functional navigation – all issues that desperately need fixing, and we felt we needed to address that. Some relatively easy, but subtle, fixes could be applied that would improve the UX a great deal, making the site more usable to the citizens who are paying for its maintenance through taxes.

But the politician that controls the site (new in office) needed something else: Visible features that can be shown on the front page for the press and other politicians to see. Quickly. So the bureau with the easy-to-implement, flashy ideas won. “Let’s add some more features”, they said.

I’m not blaming the project manager that had to make that choice. I’m blaming the politician that asks for that kind of solution while down-prioritizing the process that would make the site usable for the citizens.

Of course that kind of real IA-work will have to be done sooner or later, we were told. But right now it’s time for some really visible features.

But I fear that when it’s time for the important changes, the ones that make a difference for the citizens, some other politician has taken office and then SHE needs some really visible quick fixes, and so on…

It’s no wonder that so many e-gov solutions suck so bad. Politics and personal preferences mess up the process even before it begins. Let’s all recite Reiss’ Dogma No. 1 in a mantra-like way:

1. Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner must be eliminated.

So guys, You’re ready to launch your new fantastic ubiquitous cross-media cutting-edge Web 3.0 software solution which, without any doubt, will bring you instant succes, fame and fortune.
All there’s left to do, is to launch a major marketing campaign in the Big Apple. If you can make it here, you can make it everywhere.. remember??

Here are the numbers:

The “Noobie” Campaign (no guarantee of instant succes, fame and fortune)
- Starbucks coffee sleeves: estimated 12 to 14 cents each.
- Street hawking with megaphones: $36 per hour.
- Ads on urinals and on the back of stall doors: $100 to $125.

The Medium Campaign (no guarantee of succes, but you will have a lot of fun)
- Airplanes: $8,500 per flight for skywriting; $1,000 per flight for flying a banner.
- Spotlight or projection on a building: $4,500 and up per night.
- Mobile billboard trucks: $5,000 per 50-hour week.

The “Big Spender” Campaign (guarantee of some buzz)
- Digital subway-entrance ads: $274,000 for six ten-second spots every minute on each of New York’s 80 digital displays.
- New York Marathon naming rights: About $2-3 million per year.
- Naming rights to the new Jets-Giants stadium: at least a $12 million onetime cost.

What are you waiting for? Go for it! (and remember to invite me to the big opening at the New Stadium).

Read the full article by Brooke Kosofsky Glassberg

The BBC has launched a new site to help the ignorant masses use RSS (BBC Feed Factory).
That’s great – nice work guys, but are your graphic designers and information architect on crack?
What have you done with the icons and your labeling?
I won’t comment on the graphics, you’ve probably been forced by a branding guide, but it is obvious that you don’t practice the ancient art of labeling. You’ve made a category called “Talk and Interact” and one called “Knowledge”. How can that describe a collection of RSS feeds???
Please, come on guys – you can do better than that!
If you want to help people find RSS feeds, make a labeling that makes sense!

CNN Money senior writer Paul R. La Monica reports the rising interest in billboards – and more importanty – digital billboards.

Lamar and Clear Channel outdoor are highlighted in the article.

Here’s an excerpt:

For one, billboards, unlike other “older” forms of media, have not faced the same pressure from the Internet, iPods, satellite radio, TiVo and other technology. When you’re driving on a highway, the only way to not see a billboard is to not look out your windshield. Needless to say, that’s not a good idea.

“Technology helps people avoid other advertisements, but we are the one unavoidable media. There is no mute button, no off switch. You can’t change the channel. We’re there,” said Paul Meyer, the global president of Clear Channel outdoor.

In fact, technology is actually something that could help Clear Channel Outdoor and Lamar in the near future. Both companies are testing digital billboards, LCD screens that can change advertisements instantaneously through Internet connections.

That’s a far cry from the old vinyl billboards that only get changed every couple of weeks (or sometime months). “For our industry, technology is no longer a threat, it’s just an ally. Digital displays eliminate the biggest disadvantage to outdoor right now, which is that we are a relatively slower acting cumbersome media,” Meyer said. “With digital signage, there will be no limitations on how often and when advertisers
change their ads.”
Full article here.