Magazines Archives - 2011 June

Panasonic forging ties towards a seamless, digital future
Story 2 - Cover Story

As advertising avenues become increasingly diversified, retailers are constantly challenged to select the right medium to justify their advertising & promotion (A&P) spend. On top of having to choose from a wide variety of solutions, one has to do so within a specified budget — a tough balancing act. Jolene Klassen finds out that multinational systems solutions provider, Panasonic Systems Asia Pacific, is collaborating with IT and network operators to help bridge the gap between various mediums, thereby ensuring advertisers can reap maximum impact at minimum cost.

Turning this into a reality is Singapore- based Panasonic Systems Asia Pacific — together with a consortium of service providers — decked out with the newest digital media solutions to provide advertisers with the means to reach their target audience.

Graduating from being a provider of digital-signage solutions, with its plethora of professional screens that have been used in various retail environments, Panasonic identified that its clients were increasingly looking for a one-stop solution for their advertising needs.

In order to capitalise on this trend, the company has forged partnerships with various vendors, with the aim of providing solutions that extend beyond the provision of a simple screen.

“Panasonic adds value by enhancing the use of the screens instead of purely having a display purpose. With strong collaborations, Panasonic is able to provide unsurpassed levels of scalability and customisation,” says Marcus Wong, general manager at Panasonic Systems Asia Pacific.

Wong notes: “[Clients are looking for] solutions that create and deliver timely, targeted messages, which inform, educate and motivate audiences with ease. Panasonic is the one-stop provider, which, on top of screens, provides the digital-signage software and ad-management capabilities that can give the digital signage and traditional media a modern edge that has proven ROI (return on investment).

“More importantly, in today’s market, Panasonic is poised to leverage its experience as one of the largest LED suppliers in Singapore.”

One of the many partners that Panasonic works closely with is local wireless infrastructure pioneer, iCell

Network Pte Ltd, which is also the nationwide operator of the [email protected] SG platform. Panasonic has partnered iCell to extend a range of wireless digital services to its clients.

According to iCell’s CEO, Ken Chua, the advertising audience is becoming more fragmented, more difficult to reach and more savvy. At the same time, advances in technology — ranging from digital video recorders to inexpensive satellite, digital cable and Internet television — have proven to be a double-edged sword.

While exposure to viewers has increased tenfold, by putting the remote control in the hands of the audience, viewers now have the option of skipping over advertisements completely, he observes.

This, Chua opines, has seen advertisers transitioning from traditional in-home advertising to exploring an Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising environment in order to maximise their exposure.

“OOH has evolved from the static traditional posters and large billboards to plasma and LCD screens, and large LED outdoor panels covering building façades,” the IT chief states, adding that these not only bring dynamic delivery of digital content to viewers, but also serve multiple advertisers via a central control centre.

Ultimately, this means that the potential to reach and engage consumers with different advertisements, depending on the time of day and other variables, substantially increases, thus ensuring the right ads reach the right eyeballs, Chua elaborates.

Panasonic maintains that the deployment of the next generation of its Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) network will provide advertisements that are intelligent and interactive, bringing real-time user engagement by bridging traditional and new media. Among the new media are Web or mobile applications that can be sent to the user’s mobile devices or to a touch-screen kiosk, Chua continues.

Additionally, the deployment can be customised from one advertiser to the next, made possible by Panasonic’s range and capabilities of its digital screens.

Not only can an advertiser modify the frequency of engagement with the customer, but an advertisement can also bring about enhanced user experience and improve the ability to retain the advertiser’s message, the company emphasises.

Singapore’s MDA steps up digital adoption

iCell, in partnership with Panasonic, has started to roll out a wireless network in major shopping centres and public transport stations, primed for Panasonic says that the deployment of the next generation of its Digital Out-of-Home network will provide advertisements that are intelligent and interactive, bringing real-time user engagement by bridging traditional and new media. the deployment of the DOOH experience. This is in line with the Singapore Media Fusion Plan (SMFP) launched by the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) in 2009. Among its various activities, the SMFP aims to step up the adoption of digital advertising in the local scene.

The SMFP hopes to develop the city-state into a “global media city”, by engaging industry players and partner agencies to help spur the industry forward.

A new generation of media consumers has emerged. They are constantly connected, accessing content “anywhere, on any device, at any time” and have more control over the content they consume. In order for businesses to reach this tech-savvy, highly connected consumer, converging on various platforms and devices is increasingly vital.

“The wireless network connectivity will allow ease of deployment of display screens and also provide flexibility to relocate screens if the location scenario changes,” states iCell’s Chua.

Local test-bed of digital innovations

To ensure that transitioning into the DOOH environment remains seamless, Panasonic is working with Singapore tertiary institution, Temasek Polytechnic (TP), to trial technologies and innovations to sustain the roll-out.

Leveraging on Temasek Polytechnic’s campus, Panasonic has both the experience and capability to provide a full suite of solutions to develop a Co-Space testbed to offer an environment for made-in- Singapore innovations.

Dubbed the i-Digital campus development, the polytechnic will deploy a variety of gadgets throughout the campus, such as 3D energy-saving digital displays, interactive digital signage, security and surveillance devices, an 11m x 6m LED video wall and mobile platforms, and link these to a campuswide system, creating an environment for future learning and experimentation with these technologies.

“The i-Digital intelligent campus infrastructure will allow 15,000 TP students from all disciplines to explore future possibilities with integrated and interactive digital display and surveillance systems. These include IDM initiatives to enhance the study learning experience, develop staff capability and create innovative incampus services,” Wong continues.

Additionally, collaboration allows the institution to explore seamless mobile Web content features to deliver information to mobile devices throughout the campus, which can be integrated with digital signage and kiosk systems.

Elsewhere across the city-state, Panasonic is also hoping to link up large LED screens on buildings throughout the city-centre and the immediate outskirts with a central data centre.

The data centre would bring about a larger network of mediums, allowing advertisers to use kiosks and other digital signage to reach out to consumers.

The network would help provide instant information to consumers, as well as display this information on any application — be it a kiosk, an interactive digital signage screen or a mobile device — in a variety of ways from video and graphics to still images and text.

And with the growing popularity of Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) and 3G networks, information exchange between screens, displays, kiosks and mobile devices are set to change the way advertisers collate information about consumers. ra

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