Digital signage gets interactive with Screenfinity

Screenfinity by Mindbomb Creative: Interactive digital signage controlled simply from a smartphone’s web browser. The cloud-based platform we've developed provides an opportunity to tailor digital signage content for individual customers, to deliver on-demand, one-to-one or group video training to sales staff on a local level, or even create bespoke data-driven interactive displays.

The premise: We're able to provide an interactive element to in-store digital signage without the requirement for additional software/apps to be installed on a consumer's smartphone – it simply runs in a mobile web browser. Currently deployed across six key markets in Europe for Yamaha Music, Screenfinity is able to identify which screen a consumer is interacting with in order to deliver a customised, fully branded ‘remote control’ interface tailored to the in-store content. This means we can have multiple unique instances running within a single retail environment, with customers independently controlling different interactive playlists. All of this happens in real-time.

How does Screenfinity differ from 'traditional' digital signage installations? Screenfinity is an enhancement to traditional digital signage. Our cloud-hosted service acts as an interactive bridge between a customer’s smartphone and an in-store digital signage display. Screenfinity handles the exchange of information and all of the logic between the two internet-connected devices. The customer experience looks relatively simple on the surface, but that’s the intent – there is a lot of clever stuff going on server-side. And by keeping the logic mainly server-side, it allows us to iterate quickly and test new features – and keeps the technical demands of the customer’s smartphone to a minimum, ensuring greater compatibility across a range of devices. We've currently integrated Screenfinity with one of the largest global digital signage network providers, pairing our cutting edge interactive features with and industry-leading asset management and content delivery solution.

How the project started: An initiative that Mindbomb started planning with Yamaha Music back in 2013 in order to manage and publish engaging screen content into retail. 2014/15 saw an initial roll-out of over 25 in-store screens across six key markets: UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia. Yamaha is using interactive digital signage in-store to promote and support product launch events and artist appearances, and to provide in-depth product information. Being able to react quickly to changes in the market has allowed us to remotely deploy and schedule fresh campaign content that would otherwise have been logistically impossible or too expensive with traditional media.

As part of our Screenfinity platform, here are a few key features we shout about:

• Example Application 1: Tailored on-screen content for customers. Customers interact with the screen using just their smartphone’s web browser.
  Technical insight: In the background. we’re able to log and analyse customer interactions – showing us what content is popular, informing us about what type of content to produce more of. By understanding what customers are choosing to watch in store, we can also provide an in-browser call-to-action to receive follow-up product information via email, or tap through to a product information page. At the customers discretion, there is also scope to integrate ad-retargeting.
• Example Application 2: Deliver in-store training for sales staff (out of hours or on-demand)
  Many of the best digital signage networks provide day-parting features, which can be used to display staff training videos out-of hours. To augment this concept, we have just launched a ‘sales member access’ feature in the Screenfnity web interface. This provides an expanded selection of ‘exclusive’ content for sales staff so we can deliver one-to-one or group product information/sales training videos on-demand.
• Example Application 3: Custom logic/integrations
  When developing Screenfinty, we’ve certainly kept the door open for bespoke integrations. Being a creative agency at heart, we’re keen to explore the creative application of data-driven triggers (i.e. social media trends, weather conditions), physical objects with NFC tags, or a remote data feed. Screenfinity is not 100% dependant on consumer triggered content either, we’re able to effectively run that aspect of the system completely in the cloud: we’re thinking large scale interactive/reactive retail window displays or public spaces that change based on live or aggregated data feeds. Watch this space.

Expand article text