An old boxing axiom starts with the advice “You gotta have a good nickname.”    But my own profession struggles to find a universally recognized label.  The lack of a universally understanding manifests itself in a variety of challenges.

My work is at the interesting intersection of a two industries, In-Store Marketing and Digital Marketing.  Both industries are the logical evolutions of earlier disciplines, and both suffer from a confusing variety of labels.  It  makes it all the more difficult to define what happens when the two industries converge.

When Pierre Lorillard put the first Cigar Store Indian in front of his tobacco store in 1760, the point of purchase industry was born.  Over the next 250 years, permeations of this industry have labeled themselves “Point of Purchase”, “Retail Display”, “Store Fixtures”, “Visual Merchandising”, “Retail Design”, and many others.   And as you might expect, the practitioners of each of these disciplines make important (and accurate) distinctions between these various labels, but these distinctions are often lost on the rest of the world.  Today “In-Store Marketing” and “Shopper Marketing” are in vogue.  

Similarly, when the Florsheim Shoe Company first put touch screen kiosks in it’s stores in 1980, the retail kiosk industry was born.  This industry has used numerous labels including  “Interactive Kiosks”, “Self-Service Technology”, “Digital Signage”, and “Interactive Merchandising.”

The challenge lies when trying to describe the use of digital customer facing technologies for in-store use.  Digital Signage is one common label, but it doesn’t imply interactivity and has many use cases outside of retail stores.  Interactive Merchandising is used by some, but it is also used by marketers who primary sell products over the web.  Digital Out of Home (which has the cool Homer Simpson sounding” acronym “DOOH”) includes a variety of non-retail use cases such as out door advertising.

So for lack of a better label, I’m going with “Digital In-Store Marketing” (DISM).  Why does the label mater?

Because our industry also struggles with the tools to develop standards, best practices, establish credibility with end users, and all the other things that come with being a well established professional discipline.

The In-Store Marketing Institute is a trade organization that hosts a web portal, publication, and trade show.  They occasionally attempt to have a section of their trade show dedicated to “Digital” and recruit “Digital” members.   POPAI is a well regarding non-profit trade org for “Marketing at Retail”.  They have created a “Digital Signage” workgroup, and even published a glossary and some proposed industry standards.  POPAI, along with several other industries including the Association for Retail Environments / ARE (formerly the National Association of Store Fixtures / NASF), hosts the GlobalShop trade show which has a dedicated area for digital.  The Self Service and Kiosk association has the Kioskcom trade show.  The Digital Signgae Association (until recently) hosted the Digital Signage Expo (DSE).  Several other industries including Infocomm, NAB, and NRF make some efforts to cover some aspects of the “Digital In-Store Marketing” industry.  Several of these players are for profit event and/or publishing companies that mainly want to make money hosting Trade Shows and publishing magazines, and they support the associations as a means to that end.  Some of these host multiple events every year.

This year the Digital Signage Association declared itself a non-profit (effectively separating from it’s corporate parent, event company and host of Digital Signage Expo, ExpoNation.  Instead of bidding to continue hosting DSA’s show, ExpoNation promptly formed a new organization “Digital Signage Federation” to host DSE, and the DSA will now launch yet another trade show, or affiliate itself with one of the many other shows listed above.

To market your “Digital In-Store Marketing” services, you could spend all of your time exhibiting at all these shows.  Buy ads in all the publications.  And don’t forget to buy ads on many of the stand alone websites, such as DailyDooh.  You might also focus on some specific retail verticals and participate in their shows/pubs/events such as Grocery, Consumer Electronics, Chain Stores, etc…

If you were a retailer or brand charged with learning more about using digital technology in stores, which of these resources would you find and use?  What if you were a VAR, Designer, Influencer, etc… that wanted to develop an offering for use in-store?  

If you were a Digital Signgae software company and decided to exhibit at GlobalShop, you might meet some brands and retailers but not many Out of Home Advertisers or Hospitality/Event Venues.  If you exhibited at Infocomm you might meet potential integrators but not many end-users.  If you exhibited at FMI you might meet some grocery retailers, but mostly not ones charged with exploring digital technologies for in-store. 

I got to meet Nikki Baird from RSR at Globalshop this year.  She did a terrific job of covering the show via Twitter, and when she got home she wrote an article “Why GlobalShop is Not DSE, But Should Be”.  She didn’t get to attend DSE this year, and so hoped to meet some vendors at GlobalShop, but when she got there she was disappointed with the lack of digital presence.

Personally and selfishly, I’d love to see one of the shows most focused on retail applications become the definitive resource for brands and retailers interested in using Digital In-Store Marketing.  Because DSE was the show getting the most traction and the DSA is now looking for a new host, POPAI and In-Store Marketing Institute should both be reaching out to the DSA right now.  But if DSA aligned with one of those, they will still have a gap in coverage for all the non-retail use cases for their solutions.  I suspect that DSA will align with Infocomm, which will serve some of the other use-cases well but doesn’t have much exposure to retailers or brands.

The result is that Digital In-Store Marketing is likely to continue to be a confusing and fragmented industry.  As a principal of a firm that earns over $100M/year providing services to retailers and brands, I am heavily solicited by all these marketing opportunities. 

Frankly, all this Trade Show posturing is probably rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  Trade Shows are a dying marketing tool (at least the kind that encourage exhibitors to fund events by bringing extravagant and expensive trade show displays).  The internet has become a far more cost effective tool for communicating with your customer base than the traditional annual shows.  This evolution has probably been hurried along by the global recession which has affected trade show budgets for exhibitors and travel budgets for attendees across the board.  As exhibitors continue to cut back, I hope some new model emerges.  I find it enormously beneficial to escape the hustle of my day to day job and have a chance to rub elbows with all the smart peers in my industry.  Perhaps we not only need some major consolidation of events, but that we also need to see the events migrate from trade exhibits to peer conferences.

I’d love to hear you’re thoughts.

After the first day of the show, show defiantly “feels” smaller than it has in the past (official numbers aren’t out yet).  Clearly there are fewer exhibitors, and traffic on the show floor felt light as well.  The segment of the show dedicated to digital merchandising (digital signage and kiosks) is particularly light, continuing a several year trend, it seems that exhibitors in this space are opting to exhibit at the Digital Signage Expo instead.

Attendance issues aside, there continue to be a lot of great retailer marketers at the show, and insightful observations about the future of retail were easy to come by.

Here are some key trends identified by retail notables and GlobalShop conference speakers Wendy Liebmann, WSL/Strategic Retail; Tom Moseman, Envirosell; Joe Feczko, Macy’s; Lee Peterson, WD Partners; and Ken Nisch, JGA:

• Shoppers will remain more cautious, deliberate and value oriented.
• Online has empowered shoppers with information, yet they have not rejected brick and mortar stores. They want to be dazzled and have an emotional experience when they shop.
• Retailers must understand their shoppers on an emotional level, not just with demographics. 
• In order to create a compelling environment, retailers will have to integrate data mining with a synchronization of all retail disciplines: visual merchandising, store fixturing, design and operations, digital, point-of-purchase and marketing services. No more silos.
• Connecting emotionally with shoppers requires 360-degree marketing embracing all touch points from in store to social media.
• Retailers will have to innovate continually, making it more urgent to stay on top of trends and network with colleagues and suppliers.  It’s no longer enough to develop a prototype store, test it, reset all stores and then forget it. The new normal is a fleet of stores in constant flux.

I definitely think that the global recession has permanently changed shopping behaviors.  I really buy into the theory first put forward by brand marketers at Henkel that traditional demographics based marketing is dead.  You can no longer expect all people from a particular demographic, psychographic, or economic stratus to shop in a certain way.  Instead we need to think more about the specific missions and shopping style of those that visit our stores, and tailor in-store experience to their needs.  Henkel likes to talk about three distinct shopping styles:

Shoptimizers are most likely to be influenced in their choices by pre-shopping stimuli such as circulars and coupons. In fact, this group accounts for virtually 100% of coupon usage.

Mainstreeters do far less pre-planning and rarely save coupons, so their store choices are more likely to be influenced by location, convenience and price reputation. This group is highly sensitive to in store messaging and promotions.

Carefrees bypass pre-planning, and once inside the store, tend to ignore prices and promotions and simply buy what they like.

My own co-workers are doing a great job in MTI’s booth at the show.  Despite the slower floor traffic, we captured as many leads as we have in the past several years, and we’ve had great conversations with many of our client who have been nice enough to drop by an spend some time with us.  If you are at the show, please stop by booth #2230 and say hello.  If you’re not at the show, feel free to use the comments here to share your thoughts.

CES is the largest trade show in the US, it’s hosted in Las Vegas every January and it focuses on the Consumer Electronics industry.  A number of blogs do a great job covering the products introduced at the show.  Engadget is a great place to start.  Here is a nicely organized photo library from the show.

My interests at CES are more about what retail designers and in-store marketers can learn from the show.

I try to focus on two key things.

1.  What new products are being launched this year, and how will we introduce shoppers to them in-store?

2.  What tools and techniques are brands using in their own booths to capture attendee attention and deliver product knowledge that we can apply to in-store use?

New Products

3DTV – Without question the main story at this years CES is the introduction of 3D technologies to home theater and gaming systems.  Most TV manufacturers had a least one demo.  This was well timed given Avatar had just hit theaters and was setting all box office records. 

The rapid evolution of TV technology is a real paradigm shift for consumers.  Many consumers owned the same NTSC TV set for 10+ years and never had a compelling reason to upgrade.  Then less than a year after investing in their first HDTV, they may find that they now want a 3DTV.  Most of the 3DTV’s for consumers are based on active shutter technologies which means viewers will need to wear special glasses.  The early research suggest that there is a market for these new products.  DisplaySearch predicts that over 1.2M 3DTV’s will be sold this year, and NPD suggests that about a third of shoppers were interested in the new technology.  CEA conducted their own 3DTV research “3DTV: Is it for Real?” which is well worth the read if you’re a CEA member.

But this technology is going to create a number of retail challenges in stores.  If we run 3D content on TV’s, those TV’s are going to look defective and unappealing to shoppers who aren’t wearing glasses.  How do we tell those shoppers that 3DTVs are also the very best 2D TV’s?  Where will we get 3DTV content samples?  What will the brand interoperability be?  Will shoppers know if their existing BluRay player, HDMI AV Receiver, and cables are compatible?  Will shoppers have hygiene or vanity concerns about trying on 3D glasses in public?  Will the glasses be stolen?  Will they break?  Will the batteries in the glasses last?  How will shoppers know to hit the “on” button on the glasses?  Will retailers existing video distribution infrastructures support 3D?

As is often the case, most of these challenges haven’t been fully considered as the technology is being rushed to the market.  SonyStyle stores now have pre-released demos in most stores (and more often than not you’ll find the Sony power button broken on the glasses).  Best Buy expects to have 3DTV demo’s in several hundred stores this month and 1,000 by the end of the year.  

Undoubtedly, the first demo’s will be stand-alone vignettes probably from a single OEM brand.  But pretty quickly this is going to trickle down to all sorts of retail infrastructure and customer experience decisions.

SETTOP BOXES – There was also no shortage of boxes to add all kinds of downloadable content and new features to your TV.  Boxee probably got the most ink for their announcement that D-Link would be making a Boxee branded devices (Boxee Box). 

Unfortunately, consumers generally can’t tell from the typical retailers fact tags, what these things do, and why they would want one.  Many of these features are built into versions of the latest BluRay players already on the shelves but very few consumers are savvy enough to compare features like “Vudu” vs. “Pandora.”  Even Apple struggles to properly position AppleTV, it’s own offering in the space.

These products all suffer from what I call the “Tivo Problem.”  Early in the lifecyle of personal video recorders, consumers didn’t know they needed one.  Millions of shoppers would walk by the Tivo and ReplayTV boxes on the shelf and never have a clue what was offered within, but go to a friends house that already owns one, and instantly you want one!  So how do we create that same experience in store?  Live demos are certainly one way, but frankly many of these products are too complicated to learn in the 30 seconds a shopper is likely to give you, so I’m a big fan of using video to show simulated ownership experiences.  Show vignettes of consumers happily using these things in their home, and you’ll create demand.  The first OEM to get a really good Vendor Provided Display in BestBuy is going to win a lot of marketshare.

E-BOOKS – The Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and Barnes and Nobel Nook got some serious competition at CES in the form of about 1,000 different cheap devices being made by seemingly every factory in Asia.  Then later in the month, Steve Jobs gave millions of consumers permission to want one when Apple announced the IPad (which includes an eBook use-case).

I’m curious to see how these guys get merchandised at retail stores, because to me the real benefit isn’t the device itself, it’s the content I can get for the device and the use-cases they enable.  Will retailers just focus on the networking and display features of these devices, or will they tell the story that buying an IPad means never having to take out the Newspaper Recycling again?  Will the in-store signage feature pictures of hardware or of John Gresham? 

There definitely is going to be some complicated stories to tell in the store: with the Kindle you get your books wirelessly, with the iPad you get them wireless if you pay or are on free-wifi, and with the Sony Pocket Edition you need to download books on your PC and sync it with a USB cable.  What authors are available for each platform, what are the price points?  Touch Screen?  Backlit vs. Reflective?  Etc…

Shoppers are clearly going to want to see the screens and evaluate the form factors in the store, with all the live-sell merchandising and loss prevention challenges that implies.  I hope retailers don’t put these things inside of product jail (a glass display case), or try to re-use a merchandising system that was designed for an MP3 player.

WIRELESS CHARGING – Because I help so many retailers merchandise handheld devices (and because keeping the batteries on those devices charged for live demos is such a pain), lots of people are asking me about the new wireless power products.  And certainly Powermat and others are getting some good traction and shopper awareness. 

The problem is that so far all of these near field induction power solutions are proprietary and aftermarket. You need to add an adaptor to your IPhone in order to charge it on the Powermat.  The charger option for the Palm Pre can’t charge any 3rd party accessories, etc… So selling these products to consumers makes perfect sense.  Although I’ll bet return rates are high, because few retailers really explain the whole adaptor requirement very well.

But using this technology to more easily demonstrate handheld devices in the store doesn’t make much sense yet.  Today retailers use inexpensive charging adaptors (i.e. SmartCables) to charge each device.  SmartCables are much less expensive than Wireless Charging Adaptors and unlike the consumer adaptors no one has any incentive to steal SmartCables.  So I don’t think any of the current systems really replace a retailers need for a good SmartCable solution. 

However, if an industry standard were to emerge and if wireless device manufacturers pre-built the technology into their devices that was compatible with that standard, then we’d have a whole new ball game and could eliminate the need for retailers to buy and use SmartCables.  One such effort is called Qi (pronouced “Chee”).  Unfortunately there are a number of competing standards and financial interests at the moment, so this is going to take a while to play out.

The elephant in the room on all induction power solutions may be how Un-Green they are.  The energy transfer loss of these technologies is huge, some solutions require 10X the power of a direct coupled solution.

Merchandising Techniques

Show Me Don’t Tell Me – Many exhibitors did a good job of building displays into their booth to visual communicate an abstract concept.  Tell a consumer that a product has “Motion Tracking” and they probably won’t internalize the benefit, but show them a camera staying focused on a train engine as it runs circles around a track, and they will instantly want a camera with that feature.

Some of my co-workers call these sort of displays the OMSI Style (named after our local science museum that does a great job with these illustrative displays). 

Don’t tell me you are more energy efficient, brighter, cooler, smarter, better, etc…  Show me that you are, and why that’s better for me.

Get my Attention – You are in one of the most excessive cities in the world, at the largest trade show in the US, and giant TV’s are a dime a dozen, so how do you stand out from the crowd?  Exhibitors have to come up with something visually unique and novel to surprise you and capture your attention.  Getting your attention amongst all the visual clutter is first critical step to having a conversation with you, and retailers face the same challenge every time a shopper walks in the door.  So how do the best of class CES exhibitors do it? 

Well most do it by throwing a ton of money at the problem and surprising you with a scale you wouldn’t expect.  “Hey the ceiling in here is made up of 100 65” LCD’s!”  And these kind of featured displays can be very effective.  They certainly worked for LG, Samsung, Kodak and others at CES.  The problem is that in a retail store where a customer might visit 12-50 times a year, the same $1M featured display that might easily catch their attention on the first visit, will not be so surprising or attention capturing on the 50th visit.  So in a retail store it’s usually better to use something other than extravagant investment to engage shoppers.

Microsoft used some inexpensive light projectors to put moving geometric patterns on fabric walls in their booth.  It cost a fraction of the Samsung display above, but both were equally effective and cutting through the visual clutter and capturing your attention.  The difference is that you can afford to change the Microsoft one every month to keep it fresh in your store.  You can’t do that with the cool but expensive Samsung approach.

Conclusion

It definitely felt like a more energetic show in 2010 than it did in 2009.  That’s probably partly because the economy is showing some signs of turning around, and partly because CEA consolidated exhibitors into a smaller footprint to feel busier.  There were a lot of good ideas at the show worth learning from, and it’s certainly going to be a busy and interesting year for CE Retailers!

I hope this recap is useful for those of you that didn’t attend, and I’d love  to hear what most caught the attention of those that did go.

Obivously, the economy will have a major effect on attendance this year (as it has with almost every trade show).  I’ve spoken to many clients who will not be making the trip (many will be missing the show for the first time in years).  Once again the show is during Spring Break, and March Madness here in Las Vegas.

Personally, I suspect that many exhibitors and attendees will skip this year, learn the world did not end, and may not come back even if when  the economy does turns back around.  I’m really suspicious about the ROI for companies like mine to exhibit at these shows, so in one sense, I won’t be disappointed to see the show become less relevant.  On the other hand, I really enjoy the opportunity to network and spend time with my peers in the industry, and it will be shame to lose that.  Perhaps it will all get replaced by some flavor of social network?  One idea that makes a lot of sense would be to put on these shows every 2-3 years, as is the practice with the big European shows.  That would allow enough time to really build up some interest and buzz when the show year does come around.  I’m sure that the event companies that put on these shows don’t want to walk-away from the annual revenue, but they really need to consider something dramatic to save their business.

Ad:tech is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition. They do a number of events each year at a variety of international venues. The primary attendees are brands, agencies, publishers, portals, and service providers.

I’m not sure if it’s the intention, but the bulk of exhibitors and content are primarily focused on web based activities (media buying, search, e-mail marketing, web analytics, affiliate marketing, blogging, etc…). There is not (yet) much of a presence for Digital Out of Home, much less retail environment specific content.

Obviously, their oversight willingness to let me in, shows they have some interest in retail. The exhibit floor has about 300 exhibitors, mainly with 10×10 or 10×20 booths. The anchor exhibitors were Yahoo and Google. It felt like the overwhelming majority of exhibitors were focused on some element of the web advertisement delivery supply chain.

The only Out of Home or Retail focused exhibitor was SeeSaw Networks. SeeSaw is a what I like to call a network aggregator for DOOH advertisers. Meaning, they allow an advertiser to buy spots that play across multiple DOOH networks. They also partner with LocaModa to do some interesting marketing campaigns to mobile handsets.

As for my panel, I found my fellow panelists pretty interesting. Our moderator was Lori Schwartz for the Interpublic Groups Media Lab (I’m looking forward to visiting her lab in Los Angeles next week).

After Lori introduced us, I led things off talking about state of in-store marketing, and my often repeated opinion that the goal of in-store marketing activities in the store has to be to drive sales and customer satisfaction, not to sell ad space. I shared a few case studies of our work with context sensitive digital signage, RFID based customer affinity, and SKU Activated merchandising. Lori and the audience asked some tough but insightful questions, and hopefully I didn’t stumble too badly. I think the RFID based customer affinity (aka “the Minority Report” style marketing) was most interesting to the audience.

Alan Schulman, the creative director of IMC2 talked about what was new and cool from the perspective of an interactive agency (Alan was quick to point out that IMC2 is the largest still independent interactive agency out there). He showed a case study of the next generation of proximity marketing experiences planned for deployment in New York City taxi cabs.

Michael Mak, demonstrated bCODEs kiosk/scanner for optically reading a text message from a standard cell phone. This allows a marketer to SMS a textbased eCoupon to a consumers phone, and then the consumer can redeem it in a store by holding their phone up to a kiosk. I’m a big fan of using a mobile phone (or other consumer owned device) as the “physical cookie” in retail stores. At the moment, bCODE has one of the best means of doing so. The minority report style experience we can create with a wireless keyfob is very compelling, but how many consumers will carry a pocket full of electronic tracking devices once the experience really takes off? Clearly consumers need a single device that they already have reason to carry, that lets them opt in to multiple environmental CRM experiences. Obviously an RF based solution would be much preferred to bCODEs optical system but at the moment bCODE is a pretty good cost/experience trade-off.

Last, we had Bruno Uzzan from Total Immersion demo their very cool “Augmented Reality” technology. This was by far the coolest live demo of the four of us, and drew all the oh’s and ah’s from the audience. Basically, they load 3D models of objects into a computer, and plug a video camera into the computer. So for example, Bruno had scanned the physical box that a set of LEGOs comes in, as well as detailed 3D models of the items you can build with the LEGOs inside. When he holds the box in front of the camera, the camera recognizes the box (no mater what angle or orientation), and the computer software superimposes the 3D model on the face of the box and even lets him manipulate the model. So you can imagine setting up a “Magic Mirror” in a LEGO store where kids can grab any box off the shelf, hold the box up to the “mirror” (aka Monitor w/ camera), and see what can be built with those LEGOs. It’s a visually stunning demo. I can clearly see the benefit for large scale presentations and events, but I have mixed feelings about its retail application. I have no doubt that the technology can be used as an effective traffic generating novelty. And I can also see the great benefit to interactive 3D models being used to demonstrate certain products in a retail store. I’m imagining back-yard swing-sets in a toy store that has no room for actual swing-sets, for example. It’s not clear if attaching the 3D model to a physical object and then watching it on a video display is really better than just directly watching the 3D model on the display. I could see it going either way, so I’d certainly want to test it with real shoppers before I made a major commitment of resources. If the price is right, I’d put one in a flagship store without a second thought. This has much more visual impact than say, a MS Surface.

Here’s a few more independent reviews of our panel:

Internetnews.com

techconfidential.com

ad:tech blog

My bottom line… if you are in retail or DOOH you can definitely get something out of these shows, but I wouldn’t skip a major retail show to attend ad:tech instead. On the other hand, if you’re looking for some cool IT services and tools to serve up banner ads, you’ve hit the mother load.

The confusion comes from the fact that the 2011 date is an estimate for when a touch screen table top computer might be available as a consumer purchase, versus the (apparently) immediate availability for select business partners.

AT&T has a concept store design which blends it’s traditional wireless offerings with AT&T Broadband services in what AT&T calls its “Experience” stores. On Thursday April 17th, the first five experience stores were retrofitted with the MS Surface to help consumers make wireless phone purchases. I visited the San Bruno, CA store on the go-live day.

The basic layout of the Experience Stores is pretty straight forward. The two long perimeter walls are the primary wireless phone merchandising area. All phones are real samples (not dummy phones) tethered to the wall with a coiled cord. The phones are charged overnight, so most of the phones are functional during the day. The wall features a long backlit lightbox feature as an AT&T branding element, and the long walls are broken up by portrait mounted digital signage, and touch screen kiosks approximately every 12 feet.

A false back-wall features 3 flat panel TV’s and a seating area used to demonstrate broadband products (and doubles as a waiting area / spouse parking area). Behind the false wall is the customer service area, which does a nice job of segregating disgruntled customers with billing disputes from potential new customers. The corners of the store have 42″ monitors mounted which serve as a wait-time-management feature (showing customers their spot in line) so they can safely browse while waiting for an associate.

The open floor space in the store features “project” tables which demonstrate specific wireless phone applications, such as digital music, video conferencing, games, and wireless data for laptops.

Of course, AT&T is also the exclusive US providers of the Apple IPhone, so the stores features a 6 foot wall display for that product, as well as a 4 foot freestanding display. Both displays are clearly designed by Apple, and are very much in brand for Apple, but a bit incongruent with the rest of the store.

A concierge desk is placed by the front door with a greeter who helps customers get oriented to the store, and/or puts customers in the virtual queue for a sales associate.

The stores are designed by Callison, and won a VM+SD Award for best new retail channel.

The five existing experience stores that were retrofitted with the MS Surface display include:

New York City
381 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10017

New York City
350 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10022

Atlanta
3429 Lenox Road NE
Atlanta, GA 30326

San Antonio
13127 San Pedro Ave.
San Antonio, TX 78216

San Francisco
1206 El Camino Real
San Bruno, CA 94066

I visited the San Bruno location on the afternoon of April 17th. This store had six MS Surface units which replaced several of the “Project Tables” as well as a couple of round glass display cases.

The exterior of the store had been dressed for the launch. Vinyl graphics were applied to exterior pillars, a sign hung over the door, and window signs were installed. The store had clearly been hosting press all morning. Video lights were still set up around one of the Surface Tables to facilitate filming. There was quite a bit of extra staff in the store, with one dedicated employee doing demos on each of the six surface tables.

AT&T and Microsoft clearly intended to make a media event out of the launch. It is interesting that AT&T would do such a big event around adding a new infrastructure element to the store, rather than about a product for sale in the store. Granted, it’s much easier to make a splash in five concept stores than in 1000+ mainline stores, but on a per-store basis it feels like AT&T is making more of an effort to promote the arrival of Surface, than they did the arrival of the IPhone. Maybe AT&T just conceded that Apple Stores rather than AT&T stores would receive all of the media attention from the product launch? It’s pretty clear that both Microsoft and AT&T are getting a nice news cycle out of this surprise launch. The big question is if Surface will be compelling enough to convert mobile phone browsers into buyers and get deployed to many stores, or if Surface will remain a gee-wiz element in flagship stores only.

Each surface table has 8 mobile phones (4 on each side), and one accessory (such as a blue-tooth headset). The sales associates say that the selected handsets are the most popular models, but the handsets due seem to vary from table to table. The accessories are not related to the software on the surface at all, and are non-functional. They are simply attached to the Surface fixture via a thin steel cable on a retractor.

Each handset is attached to a plastic puck with a strip of very high bond adhesive, and a set of zip ties. The puck rests in a magnetic cradle on the side of the Surface fixture. The puck is attached to the fixture via a coiled cord which provides an electronic alarm if removed. The pucks on the Surface tables are different than those used in the rest of the store. However, the electronic alarm is the same system used throughout the store (Invue, formerly Alpha). The bottom of the puck has a sticker attached to it with a unique pictograph (a series of dots) printed with IR reflective ink. So when the handset is rested on the surface of the table, the sticker is facing straight down, and makes it easy for the MS Surface to recognize what product is resting on it. While Microsoft has talked about Surface using cameras to recognize common objects placed on the table, that isn’t what’s happening in this implementation. Here, an IR sensitive CCD is being used to detect the customers touch and a handful of stickers on the back of the handset pucks. The Surface doesn’t have the ability to recognize a customers phone if it is placed on the table, for example. Also if the stickers are applied to the wrong handset, the Surface will have no way to know.

All four corners of the screen have a simple user interface control. The entire display can rotate 180 degrees, so that it’s always facing right side up, no mater which side of the table the user is standing on. There is no facility for more than one shopper at a time to use the Surface. The UI lets shoppers see rate plans, accessories, and a coverage map. When a handset is placed on the Surface, the UI makes it easy to see the features, accessories, or rate-plans specific to that handset. When two handsets are placed on the Surface, a cool side-by-side comparison is made of the two handsets. The comparison shows features common to both handsets in bold, and grays out features that one handset has and the other does not. The most visually interesting features is the scrollable and zoomable coverage map that can show potential coverage for voice calls and separately for 3G data service.

Of course, because Apple is exclusively responsible for all the displays in the AT&T store that feature IPhones, the IPhone is not included on any of the Surface tables, which is a shame.

Like any brand new product, not everything is perfect on day one. Several of the sales associates said they met Microsoft programmers who where up late into the night, working on a final build of the software to install for the launch. Several glitches are still evident. While you can scale most of the UI elements, they act like pictures rather than live text, so when you scale them, the fonts get jaggy and illegible. When you put two phones on the surface, the software often gets confused about whither it should show the side by side comparison or the product info for a single phone. Often you have to reposition the phones to make it work. There are no personalization features, so you can’t see anything about your account history or add personalization features to your existing phone or account. Despite the face that these kind of one-to-one experiences where heavily emphasized in earlier Surface demos. There are some elements of the UI that seem to be buttons but do not work. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, not all the coiled cords tethering the handsets are the same length. Some seem too short to easily let you put the phone on the Surface, and many of the cables get tangled with each other after just a bit of use.

These flaws aside, the customers in the store getting demos seemed generally wowed by the MS Surface. I didn’t observe any shoppers go from the Surface directly to the cash register, but today was a lot more about introducing a new gadget than it was about signing up new AT&T customers. Time will tell if sales people will continue to drive customers to the tables, if the tables will be intuitive for self-service when they aren’t permanently staffed by a demonstrator, and if the information presented ultimately drives incremental sales.

My own research does consistently show that side by side comparison is a highly desirable feature amongst consumers shopping for a handset. So if the kinks get worked out of surface, this is a feature that could add real value. I’m not sure the other content is rich enough yet, that it will cause shoppers to purchase more network services than they were otherwise intending. Hopefully, the content will continue to mature and improve.

An interesting sub-plot is why/how AT&T became the first partner to get the MS Surface. Back in May of 2007, Microsoft announced Surface and said that the first three partners would be: Harrah’s Entertainment, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, and T-Mobile USA. Not only was there no mention of AT&T, but T-Mobile is a direct competitor of AT&T’s. Then in November of 2007, Microsoft announced that the first deployments would be delayed until Spring 2008. Now of course, it is Spring 2008 and Microsoft has delivered on it’s promise to go live, but not with any of it’s original partners. It I were T-Mobile and I had made any kind of investment in development of this new technology, I’d certainly be upset. Particularly since the T-Mobile brand had been used in countless demos of a mobile phone application, and now AT&T is seemingly getting the same user interface that used to be branded T-Mobile. That raises another interesting question, who owns that look and feel? Microsoft or AT&T? If AT&T doesn’t own it, will they be upset if down the road Verizon or T-Mobile have an identical experience?

Here’s my flickr set from the store.

Here’s a short YouTube video of the experience (do a search on YouTube to find countless other demos).

Wednesday was also “Digital Signage” day at the show. Which included a conference track of six sessions on digital signage topics presented by digitalsignagetoday.com. The program kicked off at 8:30am with Bradly Walker and Brian Ardinger of Nanonation doing their usual great job of showcases some best of class customer experiences. Bradly and Brian are both business partners of mine, whom have become good friends that I really enjoying working with.

Other speakers included Alex Richardson, Chris Riege, Jeff Porter, John Melillo, and David Drain.

It sounds like most of the sessions were attended by 50-100 people which is a decent turn-out for this show.

The morning started out with a nice surprise for MTI as Display and Design Ideas came by to tell us that our trade show booth had been named the Best Booth in the digital store area. We’re in the running for Best of Show, but as you can imagine there’s a lot of great competition for best booth at a design show.

One interesting thing at this years show, is the presence of several turn key shelving systems from well respected fabricators that include built interactive digital signs.

Artisan Complete is a Canadian design/build firm that introduced nCap(tm), a turn key end-cap fixture with an integrated 24″ monitor (can be portrait or landscape) and a set of soft menu buttons for interactivity. A PC embeded in the end-cap comes pre-loaded with Broadsign software and CongoVision audience measurement. Dave Haynes of sixteen:nine blog, was working in the booth and we got a chance to meet and chat for a bit. This industry is full of good people. You can read his recap of the Artisan display here.

Madix is one of the most popular providers of standard metal fixtures in the industry. They were showing their new Easel(tm) product, which includes a printed sign channel extension for the edge of their fixtures that can include an integrated small format touch screen and even a bar code reader. The screen appears to be driven by Symon software. Madix also announced their partnership with CBS Outernet. I was a bit surprised to see Madix get in bed with a particular vendor vs. developing a solution that could work with all the software vendors in the space.

The day ended with the 50 Anniversary OMA (outstanding merchandising achievements) awards gala. Both Nanonation and Scala were among the winners in the Digital Signage category. The RedBull Refill station display that won Display of the Year was very clever. Most humbling, MTI’s Verizon PDA Wall display won a Gold award and was named Digital Signage Display of the Year! I’m lucky to have great clients like Verizon, and a great team to execute projects like this.

This year’s show got off to a slow start. After getting swamped in our booth the last two years, I was surprised to the trickle of people coming by. Our traffic is probably down 25% from last year, and although we’re seeing most of our key clients, we’re not seeing as many new prospects as we’d usually expect.

As for other exhibitors. The digital signage area would be a big disappointment to anyone who was at DSE. Of the 20+ software vendors who were at DSE, only NanoNation, Wireless Ronin, Stratache, and Symon are at GlobalShop.

As for more traditional visual merchandising and retail design tools… I haven’t seen anything I didn’t see at Euroshop.

I didn’t make it to any of the seminars on day one, so I can’t speak to the attendance or quality.

There are a number of theories to explain the low turn out. The show is in Chicago which is an exhibitors nightmare (in terms of cost to exhibit), and isn’t as big of a draw for attendees compared to Las Vegas. It’s the week before Easter. It’s the day after St. Patrick’s Day. The economy is soft. It’s a Euroshop year. DSE was just a few weeks ago. Etc…  Personally, I suspect it’s a combination of all of the above.

Usually Day one is the busiest day of a show, but hopefully I’ll be surprised by traffic tomorrow.

CES, Las Vegas

NRF, New York

EuropShop, Dusseldorf

DSE, Las Vegas

The next stop on the tour is Chicago for Global Shop. My company MTI has an exhibit here, and the team has been working long hours to get the booth constructed while complying with the all the quirkly Chicago exhibitor rules. The show opens tomorrow, and I’ll look forward to posting a recap. If you happen to be attending the show, feel free to stop by booth 3416 and say hello (ask for Jason G).

What was disappointing was the show producers, ExpoNation, announced a second digital signage show in Philadelphia, September 18-19 as well. Do we really need yet another digital signage show? What the digital signage industry needs is a critical mass, not a handful of vendors decided how to spread their marketing dollars among 10 different trade shows, and attendees randomly choosing one or two to attend. I’m going to put up my own list of shows that I track as a permanent page on this blog, feel free to contribute.

I spoke on a panel about “Future Change Agents That Might Effect the Future of Retail Digital Signage”. Sonya Rosas from Interpublics’ Emerging Media Lab gave me a nice review on their blog.