Rob: We are back on the Connected Design Podcast, and I am excited to dive into a world that people may think gets a lot of attention, but I do not think gets enough.
Mr. Todd Katcher is Chief Product Officer for Zoney Digital Signage, which is more on the software side, and also Chief Product Officer for Digital Dealership System, which focuses more on the hardware side of digital signage, bringing those solutions into a nationwide network of car dealerships.
It is a really interesting space. Todd, I have a lot to dive into, but I want to give you the chance to talk about yourself a little bit. Give us your background, how you landed at Zoney and Digital Dealership System.
Todd Katcher: Thanks for having me on. It is always a pleasure to talk to different people when doing podcasts, and I appreciate your diversity and your background as well, and how you came to where you are from our conversation the other day offline.
To give you the abridged version, I used to own bars and nightclubs in Nashville, and I did a digital sign network at over a hundred bars and restaurants in Nashville back in 2006 and 2007.
One of my customers, a regular at one of the bars, owned a car dealership. He said, “Hey, you should really create something like this for my dealership.”
I said, “Well, what is this that you want to create? What would it look like in your store?”
That was a formative experience for my product development, because everything we have developed for car dealerships, and now in the software platform, was based on customer feedback. I think a lot of people who are starting a business create things for what they would want in the business, but they are not the actual end user.
When we created Digital Dealership System all the way back then, I was going to dealerships and really just asking questions. What do you want? We still do that today. Every single demo we do is about finding out what the dealer is looking for and then seeing if our product is a fit. Maybe they are using some manual systems now, and we want to modernize that through digital integration.
Digital Dealership System was born out of that conversation, and 10 or 12 years later we have over a thousand installations across the country. We have had many more since then, but we have that many currently online and working. We are the most technologically advanced digital sign company for auto.
Auto is a very unique industry. There are 20,000 retailers, and then there are a lot of independents. Retailers are names you may be familiar with, like Chevy, Volkswagen, Porsche, or Honda. Then you have independents, like Tom’s Car Dealer or Tom’s Car Sales. There is nothing wrong with those; there are just a lot more of them because anybody who has a state license to sell vehicles is considered an independent dealer.
Some independent stores outsell the franchises, and they make a lot more money selling used than they do new. Over time, our needs changed with Digital Dealership System, and we decided to create our own software program.
That was a big venture. It took about three years of product development and daily testing, and we are still testing things today. But the need was different because we wanted to come out with a product that was not only for us in Digital Dealership System, but also a product that could be used by the masses.
We wanted it to be extremely easy to use, not just an in-house solution, and not just something that would work for car dealers, but something that would work for any enterprise-level service. Digital Dealership System is technically a white-label enterprise customer of Zoney Digital Signage. As the maximum user of that software, we were able to really stress test it before we launched it recently, just this year, to the masses. I believe it is the best digital signage software in the marketplace.
Rob: It is awesome because you had the experience and everything you learned from one business, then used that to build the other. When you launched Digital Dealership System, you had the answer you wanted, but had to figure out how to do it. So you built that product. Really cool story. I appreciate you sharing it.
I want to ask a question that could come from both seats, whether it is Zoney or Digital Dealership System. When you initially walk into a space, you are probably like me. Covering the custom integration space, when I walk into a home or a commercial space, I am looking up. I am seeing the lights. I am seeing where the speakers are. I get all into it. I cannot go to a concert without my wife being mad at me because I am looking at the speaker array and things like that.
When you walk into a dealership, or somewhere that could be a good fit for using Zoney, what are the things you look at? Are they using it right? How analytical do you get about the deployment of digital signage in a space?
Todd: It is everywhere. If I go to any restaurant, bar, or anywhere that a TV is out, that bothers the heck out of me. It is a visceral, internal feeling of pain. That is a reflection of your store.
If you are building a franchise car dealership, you are looking at $15 million to $20 million to build a car dealership from scratch. When they do that and then have TVs that are three, four, or five years old, and they are blue because they are so old and they are on 24/7, and the dealer does not want to spend $500 to replace them, that drives me nuts.
Every venue is a little different. What I see is capturing attention. Back when I owned those bars, there was a company that advertised in the bathrooms. They would take an 8.5-by-11-inch piece of paper, put it in a frame, and have it in 10,000 locations across Nashville.
I said to myself, “This is not logical. You are advertising in bathrooms.” You have attention in the bathroom, but people do not come to your venue to go to the bathroom. The majority of their time is spent outside in the main area.
If we can promote events, slow days, specials, promotions, an email list, a subscription system, an add-on service, or a retail offer like “buy this, get this free,” it is really about capturing attention where people are.
I always say in my pitch for Digital Dealership System: look at the customer journey. Where are they standing for any length of time? Most people have serviced their vehicles. When you are standing at the counter getting your vehicle serviced, what are you looking at?
A lot of dealers still have 8.5-by-11-inch sheets of paper. Maybe they think they are advanced and have a trifold, or they have a big metal board that has been there for 10 years. In the lounge area, they may have a table filled with table tents from all the vendors they work with. In the showroom, how do you grab attention?
Dealerships do a lot that customers do not know about, and the opportunity is to educate customers based on where they are in their journey. The message changes based on where they are in that journey. It is no different from any other business.
Imagine you are in a sports bar and there are 20 TVs. If the company took over one of the TVs to put their own marketing on it, they could highlight different food options, a special, or something happening on an off night. Saturday and Sunday during football season, they do not have a problem driving traffic to the bar or restaurant. But how do you get people there on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday when there might not be that event going on?
What other events do you have? If they have fun there on a Saturday, how can you draw them back? Can you offer them something free? Maybe you say, “Register here,” and you build your email database.
A lot of bars and restaurants today use electronic checkout systems that capture someone’s email address, but most people are not eating by themselves. You could capture four times more emails if you put a QR code on the screen and get the people who are also sitting there at the restaurant to enter their email addresses. Now data becomes a motivating factor and a key marketing tool you can use through text messaging or email messaging. You can capture those leads very easily through digital signage.
Depending on the business, if you look at retail, how do you get rid of last season’s equipment or products? Maybe you have a “buy this and get this free” offer, or 20% off when you do something. Maybe you have new outfits in and you want to create a lookbook on a digital sign, so people know what those outfits look like instead of seeing them on a hanger.
There are a lot of opportunities for people to use digital signage in every business, even if it is just informative and telling people where to go in a building.
Rob: That segues nicely because you touched on it with the dealership example. Depending on the point in the journey they are on with their car, whether it is service or something else, the content changes.
In a space, and obviously it is going to be different for retail versus a dealership versus a bar or restaurant, how do you determine what goes on a certain display? Talk about your approach, maybe from your experience in dealerships, because people might think digital signage is one button and all the TVs show the same thing. Explain that a little bit more.
Todd: The good thing about a car dealership as an example is that every area of the dealership is different.
In the service drive, customers are only in front of that screen for less than five minutes. So consider the amount of content and what content you are going to present to that person: short-form content, menu content, pricing content, promotional content.
Then they go into the lounge area. The average wait time in a lounge is about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Now they are going to be distracted, but you also have a lot more opportunities to add a higher variety of content. You do not have to add service pricing there because anything they have already purchased is already past, and they are not going to add more to their service because they do not want to be there any longer than they need to be.
What information can you gain from them? Can you get them to go to your socials? Can you get them to scan a QR code to check inventory or trade-in values? They are getting their current vehicle serviced. While they are waiting, maybe they can get a trade-in appraisal. Maybe they can look at features of new vehicles they might be thinking about. Maybe there are store policies or finance programs they are not aware of that may be beneficial.
The opportunity is what is called retention: moving a service customer over into the sales floor.
In the showroom, your goal is to distract them in a way. You want to add some eye candy to the store. Car dealerships are franchises, but their independence is in the ability to customize the store outside of franchise requirements.
If a dealership is a Ford dealer, they have certain mandates for what their store should look like, but they compete against other Ford stores. Unlike franchises like McDonald’s or other restaurants, where there is a national or regional advertising campaign, car dealerships have those campaigns and then fight against each other for the same customer looking for the same commodity vehicle.
Imagine if every Starbucks advertised, “Go to the one on Main Street and Third. That is the best Starbucks in the area with the best pricing.” You cannot really do that. A car dealership is different, so it provides a unique experience.
When somebody walks into a car dealership, the emotional ROI is really important. Did I feel good when I was in the store? Did I feel like they paid attention to me? Did it feel like a unique buying experience?
I am buying the same Ford Raptor at any store. At the end of the day, I am rolling off with the same vehicle at approximately the same price. They all buy the vehicles for the same price, but they can negotiate however they want to the price they are willing to take for that vehicle. The franchise sets the price for how much they buy the vehicle for, but not how much they sell it for, unlike a McDonald’s or a Starbucks.
Rob: Imagine negotiating for a pumpkin spice latte: “That one is charging me $5. Can I get it for $4.50 here?” I wish it worked that way.
Todd: Right. Dealerships provide a unique experience because you have a front door and a back door. You have the sales side and the service side. You go to service much more often than you go to sales.
If you go into five Ford dealerships, each one can be different just based on the digital signs they use, because it is not mandated that they use digital signs. The dealer that elevates that experience is going to reap the benefits. We have proven that.
In addition, we also have products for the staff who work there. It creates a unique experience because there are about five areas of a car dealership.
If you walk into a bar or restaurant, there are really about two areas. You have the entryway, where people are looking for the menu. Maybe it is an interactive menu or it shows pictures of food in a carousel. Maybe it is an interactive menu where they can touch a screen and click different menus so it is easier to read than a big, never-ending menu.
Imagine a Cheesecake Factory menu as a touchscreen. You hit burgers and it shows burger options. You hit desserts and it shows desserts. It shows the different pastas. It would be impossible to do that on one page in digital signage, and you would not want it to just rotate. Being interactive is more user-friendly at that point.
Then, when you are sitting at your stool or table, the messaging might be different because now you are there. What can we add on? What other day can we promote? Can we increase the desserts we sell by showing pictures of desserts? Can we highlight new items on the menu by showing pictures and features? Do we have fat-free options, high-protein options, or other things people may not know about?
Pictures sell. There are statistics around sushi bars, where a lot of ingredients are unfamiliar to people. When there are pictures, I think sales go up 300% or 400% versus ones without pictures. That is a big impact people can use digital signage for as well.
Rob: I love that because it shows the level of thought you give to the entire customer journey. You could go into one dealership and sit there for an hour or an hour and 15 minutes waiting for your car to be serviced, and all they have on is Judge Judy in the lobby. Or you could go into one where it is more engaging and interactive and gives you a chance to take a survey or do something else. You are creating an entirely different vibe and experience for something that could have been an afterthought for that dealership or the person designing that space.
For the Connected Design audience, there is a lot of desire to blend technology into a space. It is integrators working with architects and builders to make sure a space feels modern, cool, exciting, and inviting, but at the same time you do not want technology to overwhelm it.
That is a balance I am sure you deal with as well, especially with digital signage. Talk about your efforts to keep it from becoming visual noise. You want it to grab attention, but you also do not want it to be overwhelming. Is that a balance you are trying to walk?
Todd: Definitely. What you said is right: attention versus distraction. That is a clear distinction.
You want to draw attention, but you do not want to be a distraction. In a sales environment, you want eye candy, but you do not want noise because it is going to interrupt the salesperson’s process and distract the customer even more.
But if you put cool stuff on the TV, whether that is cars, people snowboarding, or lifestyle videos depending on your environment, that is key.
The other thing is multiple TVs. Not a video wall, necessarily, but let’s say you have 10 TVs in a showroom and some dealers want something different on every screen. After a short period of time, they will say, “We want the same thing on all of them. How do we make that happen?”
When you walk into an electronics store, Best Buy, Costco, Sam’s, or wherever you buy electronics, a lot of the TVs have the same thing playing on them. Not only is that so you can technically compare one to another if their settings are the same, but also because it would be mentally distracting if they all played something different.
The idea is to blend technology into the structure of the building. On high-end buildings, you can embed the video player or monitor into the framework of the facility. Las Vegas is the extreme example for digital signage. The digital signs are part of the infrastructure.
At the Cosmopolitan, in the lobby, their columns have digital signs built into the columns. Without the digital signs, there are still columns holding up the building. But they incorporated technology into the infrastructure. The screens behind check-in are embedded into the actual wall structure behind the desk. You have wood going into a TV screen in a way that frames it out.
Depending on the level of installation and how much the technology is brought into the design from the architectural standpoint, you have the ability to merge those together. So it is not a distraction. It actually enhances the experience.
There is a fine line. People may be distracted by digital signs based on the content, but you are really grabbing their attention. The content is what distracts them, but you are getting attention with the digital sign.
Rob: It brings the idea of the journey full circle. If it is intentional and you map it out well, it may distract them for that moment, but it is grabbing their attention for the right reason. They accomplish whatever that digital signage intended them to accomplish, and then they move on with their journey.
Todd: You can think about the customer journey when you look at the content they play in Vegas. The content they play in the casino is very different from what they play in the lobby.
During check-in, what are they trying to relay? They are trying to help you check in, guide you a little bit, and maybe distract you in a positive way. On the casino floor, they are talking about their rewards program, concerts, dinners, and restaurants on campus because their goal is to keep you on campus and make it so you do not have to go anywhere else.
They have to educate you on all the different aspects available to you, all the entertainment, and all the reasons you want to stay there versus going anywhere else. The intention is different. Again, based on customer journey, not only in car dealerships but in larger facilities, the messaging is different based on where the person is in their journey.
Rob: I am glad you brought up Las Vegas, because one of the things we see, especially in a town like that, is so different from standard bars and dealerships, where it is mainly TVs. You and I have both shared experiences at shows like InfoComm and have seen massive displays, new technology implementations, and new concepts.
Talk about the evolution of the technology around digital signage. When people think of digital signage, their mind probably goes initially to TV screens being hung on a wall that display things. But there are way more advanced and unique use cases and technologies out there. Talk about the impact of that evolution and maybe some of the coolest examples you have seen.
Todd: When I first started getting into digital signage, you had to order a commercial-grade screen. They were extremely thick and extremely heavy. HD screens were not available. HD back then was 1368 by 768, or 1366 by 768, and they were $3,000 a panel. There was no upscaling.
That was around the time when the advancement in home TVs was the Sony Vega TV. They were big box TVs and super heavy. I do not know what they filled those things with at the time, but they were extremely heavy. A lot of people still had floor TVs as well. Widescreen was not available.
Then we went into 1080p, and now 4K is the standard, with a little diversion into 3D TVs for a couple years.
Digital signage is kind of like artwork or any type of technology where you can get in on the ground floor. A lot of TVs today have a built-in player where you can rotate images. They have ways to upload your own images. Some even have their own software built in to some degree.
You can take a USB stick with images on it, and it will run a slideshow or videos in order. There is an advantage to more advanced services based on your needs. A USB stick is going to have a delay between each image, it is going to play one zone, it is going to be full-screen, and anytime you want to make a change, that change has to happen from that USB stick. That means getting up on a ladder and changing the USB stick, and every TV has to have its own USB stick.
Then you get into other technologies that allow you to manage things more easily. The ability to use a media player, or technology built into commercial-grade TVs, allows you to run basic digital signage. But there is a big difference between digital signage from the TV operating system and a separate media player.
When you have a separate media player, you have a lot more options. The media player we use at Zoney as part of Zoney Plus can handle unlimited zones. It is a full-fledged media player with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Compare that to a USB stick, an HDMI stick, a Raspberry Pi, or other options. Depending on what you are doing, those are all digital signs, but there is a difference in what you can do with them.
There is a limitation until you get up to the level of a full-fledged media player with a real hard drive and real internet connectivity. The opportunity depends on what technology you are trying to serve, what apps you are using, what bandwidth you have at the store, and the overall content you are trying to relay to the consumer.
The difference gets into technologies for allowing that distribution of knowledge, technology, and content across multiple TVs. If you have one TV, a USB stick is super easy. If you are just running a basic slideshow, an HDMI stick works well and you can update it remotely. Even the software built into the TV may be good enough for you.
But if you are running a digital sign network at MGM, you are not going to go around to every system and plug in a USB stick. You want to link TVs together so they are in groups, and then you can update a group at a time or schedule things based on the day. The messaging changes by day, calendar, or event. You want to make changes in the background without taking the system down. There are lots of reasons you want multiple users.
For those advanced reasons, you are going to want a different type of digital sign solution. A lot of the ones people may be familiar with, or that come out as free, $5 a month, or $10 a month, are extremely limited, but they may work for a large group of people. It depends on your individual needs and the opportunity to grow.
Changing from one digital sign provider to another is similar to changing from one CRM to another. It is not easy. If you are with QuickBooks and want to change to another system, it is not easy. When choosing your digital signage, it is important to think about your future and whether the company you choose can support growth, if growth is a goal.
If you have a one-store restaurant and want to update your screens, and you are not a big technology person, a USB stick is great. That is still digital signage. You realize you have to do things manually, and you understand what you are in for. Maybe it does not get updated as frequently, but it is an easy way of doing it.
If you have three or four bars or restaurants, a franchise, or you are a corporate director and want pricing on digital menus in 20 stores in one region that is different from other stores, you need a more advanced program that supports that.
Rob: That makes perfect sense. On the hardware side, when I think of some of the crazy implementations, the example that comes to mind is the corner building, maybe in Times Square, where it looks like there is a cutout in the building and a wave is coming at you, or a spaceship looks like it is flying out of the top. Curved displays and flexible displays have been crazy in what they have done.
Are there examples like that where, even if you may not be employing it in a car dealership, it gets your mind thinking about what is possible and how far we have come with display technology, inside or outside?
Todd: The basics are still the same. You have a media player set up for a certain screen, and then that media player puts out at a resolution that often gets scaled up to the proper size for the screens.
When you are dealing with something that is a unique shape or size, that gets programmed. Look at the Sphere in Vegas. There is a team of people who program that 360-degree screen, and that is digital signage, broadly speaking. It is creating an experience inside that is unique to that structure, and they have to create content that is unique to that structure.
When you have a specifically shaped LED or some sort of screen that portrays an interactive-looking or 3D-looking feature, that is part of the program. They have templates specifically for that. A lot of times, the same company that installs the system handles the content. You hire them, and it might include a certain number of hours for content that needs to be designed.
Those people are paying for attention, or as we mentioned before, distraction, in a very convoluted area. I was just in Times Square last month, and when you are there, how do you stand out among all those displays?
Most of them are not TVs like what you would buy at Best Buy, and most are not curved screens. They are small-panel LEDs, usually LED boxes around 12-by-12 inches, strung together. When you take something that size and move it around over feet or yards, it looks curved. Those screens are not necessarily curved. They are just made to create that perception.
One of the cool installations I saw was at InfoComm. It was that distraction type of thing. The Salesforce headquarters has a whole LED wall where their elevators are, and they do waterfalls and other immersive visuals, like outdoor rainforest scenes.
At InfoComm, I think it was Samsung or LG, they had actual 55-inch panels that could bend as much as 15 degrees, and they made a waterfall out of it. But if each one bends only 15 degrees, you have to put a few together to make that curve. Again, it is the perception of a big curve, but in reality it is incremental curves.
At InfoComm, you see these really big screens, like 20-foot TV screens, and they are curved. But they are made out of smaller panels, probably meter-by-meter or foot-by-foot panels. The idea is that you are creating an illusion of curvature, and that draws attention. Then the content becomes secondary. It is a delivery system for the content.
You design the screen, and then you design the content for the screen. There is an architectural component that can be done with digital signs. I know Planar has panels that are oddly shaped. They might be thin and very wide. You are not necessarily putting a standard video on them. You are putting something that draws people’s attention, or using a series of different screens together in different shapes and sizes to create what I call an architectural feature with motion, as opposed to just putting a picture on the wall.
You are creating motion that creates emotion. It makes someone say, “I had a really cool experience. You have to see their lobby.” It makes for a memorable experience.
Digital signage can be used in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it is eye candy, sometimes it is marketing, and sometimes it is advertising. I personally separate marketing from advertising. Marketing draws your attention and is for brand awareness, whereas advertising is something you actually want to sell from.
When you see a banner with the Nike swoosh, they are not necessarily selling something. They are putting their brand in front of you so that when you go shopping, you think, “Nike, I have heard of that before.” They know “Just Do It.”
When you look at newer brands that come up, they have to do a certain level of marketing to get their name out there. On Cloud became a very popular shoe because they did a very good job of branding. That name became, “I have heard of that before,” even if someone has never seen the shoe, worn the shoe, or known anything about it. They just knew On Cloud was a brand. That type of marketing drives traffic, which intentionally drives sales down the road.
Rob: I am going to credit my line of questioning for getting us here, because the segues are perfect.
To me, that shows the collaboration required when you have installations that create an emotional connection to a space, or highly integrate the signage, or really the displays, into an area where it becomes a feature. You are talking about collaboration between the owner of the space, the designer, the architect, and the integrator doing that work. It shows they are highly in tune with one another and with the goals they are trying to accomplish.
For the designers, architects, integrators, and space owners out there, what types of questions should they be asking early in a project to ensure that digital signage is not an afterthought and that it does create that kind of connection?
Todd: Two aspects come to mind. One is infrastructure, the actual building. The other is customer flow.
When people are coming in, what are they looking at, and what can you do to enhance their experience? Where you have a focal point, do you put a digital sign there? Where you thought about putting a big art piece, could that be digital instead? What is the functionality?
Architecturally and building-wise, if you have any plan at all in the future for adding anything there, you need the proper wall structure behind it so anything can be mounted there. Whether you want to do a standard video wall of nine panels, that is going to have some weight to it. If you are going to put in TVs, are you going to want a network connection and a power connection? How much power and internet do you need there?
You want future compatibility, so if you want to do something later, you have that option, even if it is not something you do from day one.
Another thing to consider is whether you want it recessed into the wall. Today’s mounts for regular TVs and video walls are so thin you cannot put a plug behind a monitor anymore. You have to have a flat plug, which is not always compatible with the TV or system, plus you have an internet cable. If you recess that into the wall from an architectural standpoint, it makes things easier.
How do you support it if it needs support? Is there a trapdoor behind a big video wall? These are things to consider as part of the building construction.
The other thing is the customer journey. Where somebody is in that journey, and what can you provide to them?
What do you want to see when you are in front of an elevator? You do not want to see advertisements. You want to see where everything is. But if you do a split-screen system and put advertising with a directory, then depending on the environment, maybe you are in a high-rise building and there are restaurants on the ground floor or the top floor. How would you know about that if it was just a directory?
The directory needs to be up there all the time because that is what people are looking for. Adding advertisements in a separate zone creates value. People miss that when they rotate information and advertising in a single-zone system.
Imagine you went to an airport and were looking for your flight, and instead of seeing flight information you saw an advertisement. That is counterproductive. It would upset people. But what if you had advertising in a banner on the bottom and the flight information and status at the top? Now you are capturing eyeballs and monetizing it.
With a dual-zone or multi-zone system, you are able to monetize and have some value. You can charge people for putting ads there if that is your business model. If it is your own facility, you are still grabbing people’s attention, and then you can educate them on other products and services you offer that they may not be considering.
Rob: Even hearing that example gets me angry. I just want to know my gate number.
Todd: Imagine going to a quick-serve restaurant, like Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks, where they have digital menu screens. You want to know what you are going to order, and it says summer drinks or specials this week. Then two seconds later, it flips over to a full-screen ad for a car dealership, Verizon phone, or something else.
You are thinking, “Wait a second, I do not even know what I am going to buy.” It does not make sense. But if you embed advertising into the system through multiple zones, you have a way not only to monetize the eyeballs, but also potentially offset your cost of doing digital signage in the first place.
Rob: It shows intentionality. We keep coming back to that: the connectedness of the experience to the customer journey, and what you expect without being punched in the face with advertising. It is simple enough, but it probably cannot be heard enough because I am sure you see examples all the time of mismanaged digital displays.
Todd: Mismanaged, missed opportunities, poor design, even with digital signs, let alone the screens themselves.
We rarely look at the screens these days as anything more than a way to deliver content. Of course, you can amortize or finance them. But the screens are there, while your content is constantly changing.
What is more important? Your content and the delivery mechanism, the software that drives that content and allows you to manage and schedule it, are more important than the screen itself. The screen is secondary. I always say the screen is a way to deliver the content. Without the screen, no one cares what type of content you have.
In today’s market, commercial-grade screens are great with their warranties and 24/7 operation. But you can also get a 65-inch screen on Amazon for $400, and it gets delivered the next day for free. Depending on your installation needs, you may decide you do not want to get a commercial-grade screen.
Screens are a commodity. There is a quality difference between them, but for small establishments, it may not matter. But when you look at big places like Vegas, or if you are doing a stadium, you are not going to use TVs you buy at Best Buy, Costco, or Amazon. For a TV that is going to be on 24/7 and is basically crucial to your business, you are not going to use a consumer-grade TV. You are going to use a commercial-grade TV. There are different levels of commercial-grade TVs as well.
But once you have that TV, the technology disappears and you focus on the content.
Rob: To the point of those larger installations, I know we talked previously about your work with integrators and your partners who help install these things with dealerships or other spaces. For the integration side of the audience, what makes a good partner? Not just in making sure the spaces get designed properly, but once you have the design, what do you look for in an integration partner to ensure the project gets completed successfully?
Todd: There are different types of integration partners.
Let’s start with the basic one, which is installing. You want an installer who does not bicker about every little problem. Ask one of your installer friends or listeners when the last time was that they walked into a project where everything went 100% right and they did not have to make any decisions. They had exactly what they needed. Every wall they were going to put a TV on, every line they were going to run, did not hit a firewall or a stud they did not expect. The wall was not concrete when they were told it was wood or plaster.
All these different things come up. Maybe they thought they had the right grommet or tool in their box and they did not, so they had to make a trip. Maybe they needed wood backing because the dealer or customer said they were going to put up wood backing, and there was no wood backing, so now they have to make a trip to Home Depot and pick up timber.
Tell me the last time a project happened perfectly. It never works out that way. In that situation, you are counting on your installer to be a problem solver, not someone who bickers. Do not just tell me about all the problems. Solve the problems, because that is what I pay you for. Having someone reliable for installations is paramount.
Then, when we talk about integrators, to me an integrator is someone who uses our software, like Zoney.com. They are the actual customer, and they are selling our product as a solution. They are going to be the support mechanism for their customers. We are white label in a way. We are the technology behind them.
The right partner in that case is someone who gives us feedback. “I like this. I do not like this. Can you build this for me?” We want to be their technology partner, delivering the software that allows them to focus on what they want, whether that is customer service, content generation, extending the network, or supporting the system once it is installed.
Digital signage can be anywhere from $10 to $30 a month per screen. It is not a big expense for these guys. There is a high markup for the right integrators to sell additional services, and they will make more money than we do for sure. That makes them a good partner for us because they can rely on us as a scalable technology company and as someone who will be responsive to their needs.
When it comes to a true integrator, I do not like the word reseller because I consider them more of a partner. We have developers constantly working on customer feedback to make our product better and to handle any bugs that come up along the way.
“Hey, I was expecting this to happen, but it did not work that way. Is this a one-off, or is this something you are seeing across the board?” Then it is about how quickly we fix that. We want to be a good partner for them as well.
We also look at integrators as the architects and designers of the building. Maybe they are building a vanilla box, they do not have tenants yet, or it is a multi-tenant situation like a big office building. They want to create something, and they come to us and say, “Where would you put digital signage here? How can we use digital signage? We want to put TVs here. What do you think about that? What do we do for content?”
Each office as it goes up the tower may make its own decision, but they are focused on the central part and building the space. They would use us more as a consultancy partner for the base floor, then let each individual unit customize independently from there.
I think any good relationship comes down to communication.
Rob: That is something we hear constantly. It ultimately comes down to a two-way street of feedback. There is always going to be something that comes up, or feedback you get from the end user that you want to bring back and make sure everyone is aware of or can help address.
That feedback can result in new features you implement or other improvements. It is age-old. It does not matter the industry. It could be marriage. Communication is key. Happy wife, happy client, happy life. I think that is the saying.
Todd: Exactly. I think communication is key for everything. I often say to our staff and partners that all relationships are the same. The foundation of all relationships is the same. There is a certain level of respect and communication.
We want to do best by our clients. We would not be here if it were not for our customers. You and me arguing does not change the customer in any way whatsoever. Our goal is that we need to walk this path together and come together with the idea that we are here for the common good of our customer.
Any problems with the software, limitations, or things like that, do they impact the customer? If they do, how do we address them? There is no reason to argue about it. Let’s talk about the facts of the situation. Let’s talk about it like responsible adults.
The opportunity is to realize who your master is, and your master is your customer. Our universal goal is to do right by the customer. There is no reason to be derogatory. There is no reason to get angry at your vendor. At the end of the day, we are on the same side. We are trying to deliver a product and a service to the customer that they are going to like, and we want to be able to communicate on their behalf.
Rob: Todd, this was a lot of fun. I feel like we could keep going, but I also do not want angry listeners. That is who I answer to.
I appreciate this, and I feel like it is something we could continue talking about down the line. The biggest takeaway is that digital signage feels like such a simple subject, but there is so much to it. There are so many nuances, so many ways it can be implemented, and so many partners out there like yourself who can help do it.
It is always an interesting world for me to dive into and ask questions about because everyone has a different approach, even for something that seems as straightforward as putting content on a display. As we have learned, it is so much more than that.
We appreciate you taking the time and sharing your insights with us. I look forward to catching up down the line.
Todd: Thanks. I appreciate the time today.
