ISP Gets A Digital Makeover

That thought was definitely in mind when International Specialty Products, a global specialty chemicals company, opted to make its lobby and trade-show booth signage in a word, more dynamic. With displays of all stripes, from simple monitors to enormous LCDs, having grown leaps and bounds in past years in terms of technology and affordability, there was no reason for International Specialty Products to project "we're outdated" to clients, visitors and passersby any longer.

The company, which has more than 3,000 employees all over the world, had for more than a decade a static, backlit box in its corporate lobby. That communication tool contained company history, news of major acquisitions and other updates--which had to be constantly updated inside the "lightbox."

"Our first problem was dealing with material that was not versatile but stagnant," said Lisa Porter, International Specialty Products' advertising communications manager. "We needed something that could be updated on the fly and could continually change to draw attention."

Porter consulted Marc Wolfe, CEO of ProActive, an Oakland, N.J., solution provider. Wolfe presented International Security Products with a wide range of vendor options; it partners with everyone from Apple, Canon and Xerox to APC, Hewlett-Packard and Sony for a range of peripherals and other integrated solutions.

In the end, Wolfe and Porter determined that displays from NEC Display Solutions -- specifically seven 46-inch NEC MultiSync LCD4620 units for its headquarters and nine 40-inch LCD 4020 units for its trade-show booths -- were the glove fits International Security Products needed for its headquarters and its trade-show booth signage.

"Our concern was making a change that was going to be this visual--that we were going to be taking to trade shows," Porter said. "... Compared to all the other companies we looked at, NEC's [screens] were far superior. ... At a trade show, a competitor actually came up to us and said, 'I want your booth.'"

Of course, simply mounting a screen, connecting a few cables and switching "on" doesn't constitute an overall solution. One of Wolfe's aesthetic suggestions was to surround the corporate LCDs with stone to match the rest of the lobby. A major problem before, Porter explained, was that International Specialty Products' darkly colored lobby walls limited the impact of the lightbox and didn't attract any attention.

Wolfe took four of the LCD4620 units and combined them into a 1 x 4 tiled configuration to run separate content on individual screens or sync them all up as one big screen. He also recommended software by Omnivex to allow International Specialty Products' graphics specialists an easy way to update the signage's content.

"It's an extremely durable design. That's one of our strengths," said Jean McLaughlin, senior product line manager at NEC. "Also, the biggest threat to a product's lifetime is heat. The 20 series has an additional thermal layer that helps keep the panel cool, and the airflow mechanisms themselves are large enough that you don't have any clogs."

They didn't come cheap, Porter admitted, "but we were confident that the digital screens would pay for themselves after using them at a couple of trade shows."

"Clients realize a price-value relationship with displays," Wolfe said. "NEC was there right at the beginning, bringing in demo screens and showing how price alone was less of a critical point. I knew their reliability was there. Some people try to lead with 'we're the lowest price.' But I can't sell just based on lowest price. I need a client for a long period of time and don't want to be just a box-pusher. It has to be more than just a big screen."