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April 21, 2010
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yourmoney ezine
Dominic azanbusiness Lounge
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elcome to a world where television programmes are viewed commercial free through the use of digital recording devices or on video streaming sites. In this strange yet oddly familiar world, newspapers are be-coming increasingly archaic, with the young simply perusing a digital copy on their handheld device or getting news updates via an application on said devices. It doesn’t stop there; even radio, which normally has the
jump on the competition because of its portability, has been circumvented by streaming radio applications and websites. Welcome to the nightmare of our parents’ advertisers; welcome to our reality.
A bit melodramatic perhaps, but the fact that today’s marketers and advertisers are finding it increasingly difficult to reach their target market, where they rest their heads at night is no laughing matter. Yet Dominic Azan, Business Development Manager of the six-month-old Intelligent Multimedia Limited Company (IML), has the air of a man who has solved the riddle of the day. This is because IML is a company that specializes in Digital Signage Advertising, as an alternate route of offering advertisers an extremely targeted and powerful method of reaching consumers.
Mr. Azan, a St. Georges Old Boy and graduate of Lawrence University in Wisconsin, explained that in six short months IML has garnered the largest network of digital signage screens in Jamaica, with their multimedia full colour screens pres-ent in 35 locations across the island. “Currently we have the exclusive contract to have our screens in Inland Revenue Department (IRD) offices, and we plan to expand to 250 locations within the next 18 months,” said the IML executive. “We want to get to a point where our screens become a part of popular culture, so much so, that it is as familiar as the television or a newspaper.”
For the small business without the spending power necessary for expensive, broadside ad campaigns or a large corpora-tion looking to sharpen the point of its marketing approach, Life Pattern Marketing represents a welcome adaptation to the habits of the 21st century consumer. To edify the concept of this “new media”, Mr. Dominic Azan explained further in the Your Money Business Lounge.
We want to get to a point where our screens become a part of popular culture so much so that it is as familiar as the television or a newspaper.
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by Andre burnett
Outlines How Intelligent Multimedia is Revolutionizing Advertising
How does it work?“Essentially a client that wants to advertise with IML simply needs to provide us with a graphic ad or let us create one for them. This ad is then sent to one of our media players and then sent via the internet to our screens. All of this is controlled from our offices using a powerful internet tool, which gives full control over the number of times an ad is played and on which screens. You can see where this al-lows for some pretty detailed targeting options.”
Location Location Location:“This is exactly what we mean by “Life Pattern Marketing”. Currently, our screens are set up in 50 “high traffic” loca-tions island-wide, placed where we know people must be. Nowadays, you might be lucky to catch someone at home for any extended period of time, so imagine the amount of viewership that one of our screens that we have in the IRD [gets]. We can map the places with the most traffic, health clubs, ATMs, fast food restaurants. The possibilities are exciting to say the least.”
so tHey’re basicaLLy smaLL biLLboards?“No they are not. The difference lies in the content. You can catch a person’s attention with flashing images but what will keep their attention is our content. We have original content that we create as well as content from third parties. Just recently we had the Crime Stop pro-gramme running on the screens, so we want to get to a point where people will use our screens as a way of keeping abreast of certain things, even when just standing in line.”
you mentioned a “caLL to action”:“This is a particularly exciting feature of our Digital Sig-nage Advertising Network. We have partnered with a company called CoreTalk Caribbean that provides the services of “intelligent SMS messaging”. You are able to run a particular promotion on a particular set of screens with a particular code to text in, or a voucher of some sort. A person can text in about a product that they are interested in and the company can respond in kind. What we’ve done is enable dialogue between the advertiser and the consumer; we’ve created the opportunity for instant feedback.”
sounds expensive …:“Absolutely not, comparing the cost of rotation to the traditional forms of advertising, we are way below market value. Add that to the level of customization and the speed of business, this is by far the most cost-effective method
of reaching out to consumers at this time. As such, the Digital Advertising offered by IML, makes available for the first time, the opportunity for a small business owner to access effective advertising at an affordable rate.”
imL is associated witH tHe anbeLL Group of companies, wHat drew you to tHe company?“I have a great respect for Andrew (Pairman) who is an excellent young businessman and a visionary. He always likes to be on the cusp of innovation using technology to spearhead his businesses. With all of the research that went into the initial stages of the company, it was an ex-cellent opportunity to be a part of this new innovation.
tHe future?“We are having an Initial Public Offering in about 10 weeks time, and we are confident that we will raise enough capi-tal to expand the business to the level where we can safe-ly say that we are providing the best possible value to our advertisers, and offering them the best returns on their advertising dollar.”
yourmoney ezine
You can catch a person’s attention with flashing images but what will keep their attention is our content. “
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Dominic azanbusiness Lounge
Outlines How Intelligent Multimedia is Revolutionizing Advertising
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is free the new sell?
very day I hear from one source or the other how the internet age has changed the way business is done. One thing that I could not imagine that the internet would change was what I thought to be the inviolable tenet of doing business. A product must
be sold to make any form of money from it, doesn’t it? Well, according to these numbers, the non-profit Mozilla Corpo-ration which distributes the free open source web browser known as Firefox, made US$72 million last year in revenue. That statement alone brought a furrow to my forehead and the word Google to my lips.
After some thought, I realized that free-to-air transmissions such as local channels and radio, had been offering a free ser-vice and using advertising revenue as their lifeblood for years, but that was not what had struck me. TV stations regularly struggle and survive with barely any breathing room, while radio does OK. But the proliferation of cable TV and MP3 players does lend credence to my initial thought, that if you wanted to have a worthwhile business, you had better find something to sell and find out whom to sell it to…quick.
But the internet age has forced evolution down our throats and with Microsoft turning blue from suffocation for the past 10 years and Google getting fatter by the second, it seems that giving away is the new selling. Take heed, evolution is a slow process and the rest of the business world isn’t quite ready as yet, but see how Microsoft’s reluctance to embrace open source code has enabled Mozilla Firefox to notch up a sizable net presence and has allowed Bing to be nothing more than a prefix to a winning row of numbers. Mozilla makes money because of the Google toolbar that it has in-tegrated into its browser, and Google shares the money gen-erated from entry through Firefox. Sweet deal huh?
Microsoft’s adamancy that people should pay for their prod-ucts through bundles or whatever else they conjured up, led to people accepting the competition in an effort to shun the big evil corporation and by the time Microsoft caught on it was already too late. Normally, a large company would un-dersell a competitor using its cash reserves as a buffer until the competitor dies, but in this case, how would a company like Microsoft undersell open source when open source costs absolutely nothing? A large company will run out of money if it does not see profits, while open source can con-tinue forever through contributions from a bottomless well of employees.
Truth be told, everything on the internet moves a lot faster than it does in real life, so how long would it take before the concept of open source in regular old business takes hold. Imagine a business landscape where the needs of the consumer have to be considered above all, simply because he does not need to buy. Imagine indeed.
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Open source is software that is al-lowed in source code form which developers can study, change and improve the software in a very public collaborative manner. It is reported that Open Source soft-ware has save consumers US$60
billion per year.
The Impact of The Volcanic Eruption from icelanD to the worlD:
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speciAL report
tourismMillions of travelers are still stranded and struggling to get home on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. A worst case scenario sees about 160,000 visi-tors cancelling their trips to US cities including New York, costing the city $250,000. The hidden costs incurred by disrupted travel plans now measure in the billions of dollars. Hoteliers, tour operators, event and seminar or-ganizers are all lamenting. Conversely, tourist visits to the site of the volcano has risen by about 20 percent.
sportsManchester City fans were less than happy that their match referee for last weekend’s derby was unavoidably ab-sent from the match due to the no-fly order. Teams in the UEFA Champions League semifinals have been told to proceed with the matches, but have to travel by train; a fact which might affect travelling fans. Apart from the inconvenience of ground travel, the impact on sports has been relatively minimal.
Land and sea traveLFor Intra-European modes of travel, the lack of flight options has seen a boost in land and sea travel. One train company in particular, Eurostar, has announced that it has 30,000 standard class seats available for 89 pounds one way, and will run at least 28 additional trains. Demand and supply.
air traveLAirlines have been hard hit by the eruption, with British Airways al-ready asking Britain and the Euro-pean Union for compensation after airspace was closed due to concerns. The International Air Transport As-sociation (IATA) has called for the resumption of air travel, stating that airlines were losing US$200 million daily since the eruption. Flight bans came as a result of fear that ash a mixture of glass, sand and rock could seriously damage planes.
countriesBeleaguered European country Greece saw the flight delays affect its bonds, as the value fell after representatives from the European Central Bank, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund could not make meet-ings in Athens.
Farmers in Kenya are steps away from panic as they watch their produce, which have been loaded onto planes, remain on the tarmac because of no-fly instructions. Cold storage facilities are full and farmers have begun throw-ing away produce, losing an estimated US$3 million daily.
On April 15, the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in Iceland spewing tons of ash into the atmosphere. This has had far-reaching effects for Europe and the rest of the world.
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