In Texas, some sophomoric college students from Austin hacked into the digital signage that alerts motorists to highway construction ahead. The red lights of digital text greeted motorists that morning: “Zombies in Area. Run.” That could be an appropriate warning for morning rush hour, but authorities failed to see the humour.
Apparently other college students were more amused than the Austin police: similar-in-phrase zombie hacks have popped up in highway digital signage in Oregon and other US states.
In film and literature, ‘zombie’ calls up an iconic image of a mindless state. You generally see zombies portrayed as clueless and wandering the landscape aimlessly. The zombie is not dead, but you can’t call it alive either. It just exists... walking its territory and inflicting random damage.
If that sounds familiar, maybe we should publicly recognise a new category within the realm of the living dead: the AV business zombie.
Focusing the mind
The AV business zombie is the company that wanders aimlessly in the market as unfocused as the undead. It often unwittingly destroys the business for the rest of us with its mindless actions. It never learns from experience. And while it may understand ‘kill or be killed’ (the simplest of survival instincts), it fails to comprehend how its very existence depends upon conserving, not wasting, its food source.
In the US, Arbitron is waking the AV business dead with a study that highlights that more Americans see digital signage in a month than have ever texted a message, opened a Facebook profile or viewed an online video. That’s a powerful medium!
At least 71 million people per month view digital signage thanks to the lower cost of technology and the push from big corporates such as HP and Intel.
Yet there’s a shockingly slow uptake of digital signage strategies by pro-AV integrators. That’s why I have shamelessly dragged out the zombies to get your attention on seizing the opportunity.
If you won’t take a serious look at digital signage by the end of this article on business zombies, then you may be one of them.
Maybe, as in Austin and Oregon, we too should flash a warning during ISE: “Zombies are in the area. Run.”
Yes, run away from the zombie pack and head towards the living, breathing market of digital signage. Act intelligently and target digital signage opportunities and you will have separated yourself from the zombies, the mindless ones who currently overrun the territory.
