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A retail store in Berlin has devised a new way to attract shoppers (particularly of the male variety) by using rear projector technologies to broadcast lifelike digital images of women modeling lingerie in its storefront windows.
In neighboring France, meanwhile, Adidas has opened a high-tech retail center on Paris' Champs-Elysees, where consumers can digitally custom-build their own running shoes and then model their digital kicks in a virtual mirror.
To the south, in Madrid, Spain, a billboard enables nearby cellphone users to broadcast their own SMS messages for public viewing.
Slide Show: Scenes From the Digital Signage Summit
Those are just a few examples of the emerging and diverse digital-signage applications highlighted at this month's digital signage summit at NEC Display Solutions of America's headquarters in Itasca, Ill.
The event attracted a mix of companies involved in digital signage, including VARs (of both the AV and IT ilk), systems integrators, display-mounting companies, software vendors, networking companies and advertising agencies--a group that collectively illustrated the complexities of creating, deploying and selling advanced digital-signage systems.
While the virtual lingerie models, by far, turned the most heads at the event, it was the discussions about the business models for digital-signage solution providers that stole the show.
Behind all the glitz and glam of futuristic digital-signage systems, attendees were talking about the deployments that are gaining traction today and about the challenges they're facing in acquiring the right skills--or the right partners--to deploy such systems.
While sexy illustrations of retail signage typically get most of the publicity, other uses of digital signs promise more growth. For example, while the market for retail signage is expected to grow from $1.4 billion in 2006 to $2.8 billion in 2011, indoor signage is expected to skyrocket from $704 million in 2006 to $7.2 billion in 2011, according to market-research firm DisplaySearch.
"Someone is going to sell, deploy and service all that," said Alan Brawn, principal of Brawn Consulting, at the event.
Corporate communication and education are two areas, in particular, where digital signage is making inroads, he said.
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