Dovetailing with their presence at the CETW in New York, ComQi has added three key people to the U.S. sales team. They are Wendy Bosley, National Account Manager; Art Williams, Account Executive; and Todd Wulfert, Strategic Account Director. Wendy came most recently from Christie Digital, and will focus on the digital signage for retail market. Todd Wulfert is a veteran technology sales and marketing professional from Silicon Valley and has done turns at Panasonic, Philips and Scala. Art Williams has extensive experience working with end-users on designing optimal media solutions, with Disney, IBM and Add Awareness.
A pretty impressive lineup to add all in one shot, showing a lot of ambition in the U.S. market. Also interesting at the ComQi booth at CETW this week: ComQi was doing a demo with Shazam. Very nice application: Any advertisement or piece of content with audio can be made interactive.
Here is background on Shazam:
Making Digital Signage Advertising Interactive
As the consumer continues to gain power in the conversation with brands through the rise of social media and the ubiquity of mobile phones, it is becoming increasingly clear that reaching consumers effectively is no longer a question of the old model of reach and frequency but about an effective engagement between and consumer and the brand.
Advertisers and brands are beginning to engage with customers using Facebook, Twitter, and their websites both when the customer is at home and when on the go.
Digital signage has been one of the most effective means of reaching consumers when they are out of the home. It has been an effective medium in a variety of venues ranging from airports to physicians’ offices to retail stores to fast food restaurants. However almost all digital signage interactions to date have been a one-way medium with one-sized fits all media. Digital Signage advertising has typically been sold on a CPM basis, in line with other media such as television and print. In contrast, the web has evolved into more sophisticated advertising models including click-through, activations and renumeration based on actual purchases.
ComQi believes that the future of Digital Signage is in Multi-Channel Message Management, in embracing these new ways of reaching consumers so the medium becomes both a one-to-many as well as a one-to-one medium. This will enable advertisers to, in addition or instead of a CPM basis, pay on a cost per activation basis, when consumers actually interact with the advertising.
To this end ComQi has developed an interaction management platform that allows consumers to interact with Digital Signage in a number of ways. The first we are bringing to market is a partnership with Shazam to allow users to interact with Digital Signage that has audio using their mobile phones.
ComQi and Shazam
ComQi has partnered with Shazam to use the power of Shazam’s technology as well as their large installed base to make digital signage interactive. Here is how it works.
Any advertisement or piece of content with audio can be made interactive
ComQi will put a ‘Shazam Call For Action’ logo on the screen of the ad or piece of content
Users can Shazam this using their Shazam App on their smartphone (available on iPhone, Android and Blackberry)
They will get back an engaging rich media experience on their phone that can include any content the brand wishes to include, for example:
More information on the product
Videos
Coupons
Benefits
The benefits to the advertiser are that they can engage with customers easily using a pre-existing app and don’t have to get consumers to download anything new. They can provide a rich experience with this engagement and will get back detailed data from ComQi on how many people interacted as well as their phone details (if opted in).
The benefit to the network is that they can charge a significant premium to advertisers through a cost per activation. In addition, networks can also put the Shazam logo on their own content so that consumers can refer to it later. For instance, a health video in a physician’s office can be Shazam’d so that people can see the video again later when there are at home. This will help build the network’s brand with the consumer.
See Youtube ComQi / Shazam video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoUK9bq-XRU&feature=player_detailpage
