Posted by gwessels on 04 OCTOBER 2008 at
Digital Signage in South Africa is just beginning to gain real market share, with recent research implemented by Marketing Mix revealing that in-store marketing is the most preferred means of reaching consumers by South African marketers and the mediums they favour in this space are media screens and digital signage.
In a country that didn’t know digital signage existed up until about two years ago, and that has been notoriously slow on the technological uptake, that is pretty exponential growth.
The leader in this arena is undoubtedly an affable organization based at a techno park in the glorious Cape Winelands on the outskirts of Stellenbosch. One Digital Media (ODM) is currently taking South Africa by storm and snapping up market share left right and centre with new business wins in a number of the larger retail chains.
The success of the company seems to be based on a number of things. One of which is obviously timing. Kudos is due to the astute CEO Mike Bosman and COO Andrew Ridl who moved into a market that was ripe for the picking with an innovative and solely in-house developed and locally produced product
As market leaders in South Africa, ODM spend a significant amount of time in China and Europe bringing new trends and technological advances back to their open offices for their young and techno-dazzled team to work with.
Local television set producer, Tedelex, who have produced TV’s from CKD kits for South Africans since 1974, was approached and they now make all of the ODM LCD media players to spec at their Atlantis manufacturing plant. Tedelex only started making LCD media players in 2007, which shows how young this market really is.
The ODM software suite has been developed in-house specifically for digital communication networks. Software at Retail Media (SWARM) is the base that runs the entire media network currently sitting at over 6000 screens. It consists of a Cluster Access Portal (CAP) which is the management software for the media control centre and acts as the ‘gateway’ from the site to the Media Control Centre databases.
The Automated Display Software (ADS) operates the Media Player Software, communicates with the Smart Station and manages the scheduled content on screens countrywide. Smart Station Software (S3) manages up to 250 screens individually on one site and also doubles up as the data gateway for data extraction from the site. The media player on each screen communicates with the Smart Station via CAT5 cable or a wireless LAN, affording each media player an IP address, and hard drive, giving it the ability to preload and play content according to the set media schedule. The S3 also implements ‘download once’ technology for all digital signage which is sent via GPRS, Satellite or ADSL. A Sequence Editing Application (SEA) and Content Management System (CMS) makes up the rest of the suite. The SEA is the playlist compiler software and edits and adds to the playlist while the CMS acts as the web based user interface.
The software development did effect the time to market for ODM in the initial launch stages, however the company is happy to have developed a stable and mature software suite that can be enhanced depending on client requirement.
The company as a whole is very proud of the suite and the lack of 3rd party involvement and licencing issues, highly advantageous in itself, is nothing compared to the control and flexibility gained from having in-house software and developers. ODM will customize software to suit individual client network needs. Due to the fact that the software has always been developed in this way allows for changes to be adopted and not rejected due to set systems.
With a solid set up and a young and dynamic team as the driving force behind this pioneering company, successful Digital Signage at Point of Sale is something that will surely be seen in almost all big chains countrywide over the next year or two.
