Square Circle Triangle

2013 iAwards

The iAwards have become the premier technology awards platform in Australia delivering a comprehensive awards program which recognises the achievements and innovation made in ICT across all facets of the economy. National presentations are in August 2013 so stay tuned…

Read our submission summary

Visit the iAwards website

What is Screener™

Using Screener™, marketing departments and retail staff can use their existing web tools and resources to create, manage and measure digital signage in real-time.

Screener™ is a disruptive approach to traditional signage software. It’s a world-first app built by the BlocksGlobal® team delivering stable web content to digital signage in-store.

Whether a screen is online or offline; Screener™ turns cost-effective Android® devices — small to large — into 
a managed signage network.

Watch video

Benefits of Screener™

One supplier, one tool, quick response and 
measureable results. 

We provide users a single point of management for omni-channel digital marketing. From one location they are able to push content to touch screens or mobile devices.

Read more

Source: realityi.com

2013 is the year of Responsive Design. Here’s why:

+ If you want your website to be visually-appealing and functional across all screens and devices, the answer is to have a site coded with Responsive Design in mind.

+ If you want to update your site easily and let consumers access your content across all devices - then choosing a good CMS (content management system) that covers websites, mobile phones, tablets, and digital signage IS THE KEY.

SCT has perfected the art of Responsive Design and has served the big brand of Mirvac in their multi-channel marketing efforts. We have designed the line of Mirvac Retail sites, enabling a one-touch approach as each retail shopping centre implements their own marketing strategy.

Result:

Mirvac Retail has been a loyal Blocks client, for eight years and we understand their business and their busy marketing managers.

With this in mind, we delivered a responsive website enabling a one-touch
approach to multi-channel marketing across PCs, mobiles and tablets.

In Details:

+ Australia has among the highest rates of smartphone adoption in the world.

+ Current penetration is 52% - a significant increase from 2012 figures of 37%.*

+ The retail customer is now mobile - the closer they are to the till the more effective targeted marketing will be.

SCT has worked with the popular salon chain endota to take their business into mobile marketing success. We have designed the endota mobile app to help each of their local endota day spas promote their own products and services to salon customers on the-go.

Result:

endota reaches 14000+ users every month because of their mobile application.

In details:

With over 70 outlets across the franchise group, endota day spas can individually promote localised treatments and product while connecting with customers on-the-go.

Following on from development of our award-winning endota website,
it’s a completely client-managed mobile solution including the following features:

• geo look-up
• postcode search
• day spa menu
• localised promotions
• treatment menu
• booking enquiries
• spa galleryb

Clicks and mortar
 
There’s never been a greater opportunity for Australia’s retail sector to leverage digital technologies. Whether to build customer loyalty and engagment, improve instore customer experience or increase sales, the digital retail experience is rapidly expanding at home, on-the-go and in-store. With a focus on the retail revolution, here’s an update on some of our recent solutions…

endota Day Spas     
           
endota day spas can individually promote localised treatments and product to customers on-the-go.

VIEW ENDOTA MOBILE CASE STUDY

Balloon Over Melbourne     
              
Balloon Over Melbourne’s responsive website design has received unprecedented positive feedback as a site that provides visually stunning aesthetics and a functional user interface including easy flight booking across desktop, tablet and mobile.

VIEW BALLOONMAN CASE STUDY

Mirvac Retail
 
A responsive website enabling a one-touch approach to multi-channel marketing that allows Mirvac retail centres to tailor their marketing and better-reach customers.

VIEW MIRVAC RETAIL CASE STUDY

GWA Bunnings
 
Collaborating with bathroom manufacturer GWA, we’ve released a series of toilet selector kiosks for big-box retailer Bunnings.

The interactive units are equipped with the latest of GWA’s top selling product, inspiration gallery and instructional videos. The touch displays are fitted with sensor recognition to monitor vital engagement levels and conversion rates. The sensor is able to recognise passers-by and adjust content depending on their viewing situation.

VIEW GWA BUNNINGS CASE STUDY

Bedshed
 
Best-practise web and touch-screen technology enhances the sales process, increases customer service and brand engagement while positioning Bedshed as a progressive retailer in a highly competitive sector.

VIEW BEDSHED CASE STUDY

Retail Evolution LAB
 
The Retail Evolution Lab showcases some of the latest in-store digital technology and explores the opportunities for technology to dramatically improve the customer experience in stores. Located in South Melbourne, the LAB has been developed by our global screen hardware partner AOPEN with retail designers RED Design Group, using software solutions including Blocks and Screener and SCT’s UI/UX design expertise. We’re proud and excited to be pioneering the future of retail.

Growth in the worldwide digital signage marketis forecast to exceed 40% in 2013, growing to US$7 billion. Retail is the largest vertical, accounting for 25% of equipment and software sales. IMS predicts that retail will maintain its dominance, reaching nearly US$2 billion in infrastructure sales by the end of 2015.

But the problem, according to AOPEN, is that many retailers don’t understand the hidden cost of buying a display and a software package.  AOPEN estimates that 80% of the total cost of ownership is actually the operational cost of maintaining the system and content creation.

OpenService was created as an end-to-end solution for the retail sector: from remote management, content creation and distribution, to analytics and social media engagement.

Blocks Global was seen as ideal partner for this initiative. After rigorous testing, its software was found to have features that were completely unique. More than just signage, it represents holistic business tools for retailers, covering display, analytics and specialist services such as m-commerce. The results are a better customer experience, cheaper cost of ownership and a new feed for big data analysis.

Stephen Borg, Global Director Strategy and Market Development at AOPEN says the Blocks platform is a welcome addition to the OpenService family complementing their existing relationships with software providers, system integrators, installation partners and specialist consultancies within the network. Blocks adds a point of difference as it is agency driven and very simple to use.

“Our vision for OpenService is to create value beyond signage as we know it today, by unifying end customer channels.  We want customers to think of digital signage like they would a new smart phone. They can just pay a monthly fee and use it, without worrying about how it works. Instead of shopping around for all the necessary components, customers can go to one provider and get everything in one place.

“After 12-months of rigorous testing and in store trials, the Blocks platform stood out as category leading technology making it quick and easy for our partners to deliver a seamless Digital-Out-of-Home experience to customers who may have limited to no technical experience,” says Borg

Blocks Global managing director Paul Wilson said the company is delighted to partner with AOPEN as a world leader in digital signage.

“Interactive web based digital signage gives retailers an opportunity to transform the way they support customers through a consistent and measurable shopping experience, which ultimately leads to more satisfied customers and an increase in sales for the retailer.

“We’re thrilled to be working with  AOPEN in their industry leading OpenService initiative. By combining  AOPEN’s hardware experience and Blocks Global’s software and design heritage, we can sasify a holistic, market-leading vision that has the possibility of reinventing the category.

“We believe our partnership with AOPEN OpenService is an exciting opportunity on a global scale for both companies and a win for an Australian based technology company.,” said Wilson.

Source: http://www.prlog.org/12112009-aopen-announces-new-digital-signage-software-partnership-with-blocks-global.html

From AOPEN:

“We see [Blocks] as an ideal partner to the OpenService initiative,” Aopen global strategy and market development director, Stephen Borg, said. “After rigorous testing, we found features that were completely unique.”

“More than just signage, it represents holistic business tools for retailers, covering display, analytics and specialist services such as mCommerce.”

Source: http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/457808/aopen_takes_blocks_global_platform_board/

Digital in-store programs attract shopper attention by combining divergent information channels to initiate relevant, engaging and influential communication with shoppers at the point of purchase.

Some statistics:

• ·         People think digital signage is more attention-grabbing (63 percent) and more entertaining (48 percent) than most other mediums. (OXT Study, 2007)
• ·         Seventy-four percent of respondents noticed the monitors at the point of sale (POS). The awareness rate for digital in-store is thus 23 percent higher than the average benchmark of other POS media analyses. (Nielsen, 2009)

So how does digital in-store do this? Technology makes it possible. Today’s computing and playback devices are smarter, faster, cheaper, greener and better built than ever. As confidence grows and risk shrinks regarding the viability of the digital in-store concept, adoption will naturally increase and give us even more component options in the future. And that’s just hardware.

Find out more about Blocks empowering Android tablets hardware.

Where the real magic happens is in the software, where we are able to integrate with inventory databases, and adjust content based on geography, weather, time of day, day of the week, you name it. It’s where we can offer control of a digital device’s content to shoppers via their mobile device, allow them to tie in their social persona and really capitalize on the inroads to those three critical functions: relevance, engagement and influence.

Check out an easy-to-use content management system for digital signage using Blocks Technology.

As technological advances continue to push the most capable devices closer to commodity, developers, designers and integrators of retail applications are witnessing the creation of a very unique opportunity. Utilizing current technology and the modern trend of “self-publishing” (such as Facebook and Twitter), brands have more access to the attitudinal, anecdotal and factual sales conversion and marketing effectiveness intelligence than ever before. Two-way communication between digital devices has changed the way those informational transactions are delivered and received. As the customer side of the informational ecosystem drives faster response times, nearly instant transfer of information constructs the framework for businesses to be on the receiving end of these transactions as well as the distribution – making the path to purchase more interactive and information-rich than ever before.

To know more about creating your own digital retail signage in-store, contact SCT.com.au

Source: digitalsignagetoday.com

Here are five tech products that are sure to become big in the industry of DOOH Australia:

1. Smaller Signage
In the past years, we have noticed that digital media are becoming bigger, with the similar trend in mobile devices. In this year’s DSE, the large signage and giant video wall trend was still present, but the smaller and more intimate signage trend was also notable. Consumers are now comfortable with iPad and other tablet, according to Iles Guran, founder and CEO of Armodilo, one of many providers of iPad and other tablet-based kiosks that displayed their products at the show. At retail locations, customers prefer using a device that offers a little more privacy than a large video wall.

2. Digital Signage for Outdoors
There are a lot of risks when a digital signage is placed outside, this include weather and vandalism. But even a perfect sunny day sometimes could be the downfall to how effective a digital sign will be. In this year’s DSE, another trend was more high-brightness digital media, such as those by DynaScan Technology Inc. The newly released DS55LX3 offers a very bright and radiant 1,500-nit display. The company’s brightest sign can reach 5,000 nits. DynaScan marketing manager Scott Pickus says their high-brightness displays are great for areas with a lot of sunshine or even when signs are directly facing the sun, such as on college campuses, at coffeehouses and restaurants.

3. See-through Signage
Another interesting breakthrough seen at last year’s DSE and again this year is the use of transparent or slightly translucent digital signage. In every use, a product is placed behind a clear glass LCD enclosure while the glass, acting as a clear digital screen, is programmed to point out different product attributes and play animations. The Samil CTS ClearView 224, seen in the DSE, is a digital signage LCD display that showcased a Samsung Galaxy Note phablet while displaying facts about the device on the screen in front of it.

4. Gesture-tracking Digital Signage
More and more companies are using gesture-tracking technology which was revolutionised by Microsoft Kinect. For the germaphobes, or digital media installations found in hospitals, where sanitation is always a huge concern, such technology allows no-touch interaction. It is also a plus for outdoor installations which are exposed to risks of elements and vandalism. Digital retail display with this technology can now be enclosed to protect it from harm and damage.

5. From HD to Ultra-HD
The debut of ultra-HD 4K and 8K digital media screens generated a lot of excitement in last year’s event. No longer was 1080p HD the ultimate, end-all resolution you could have on your digital displays, but the minimum resolution would soon become 3,840 x 2,160 for ultra-HD. However, adoption makes take a while in the consumer market, but the digital signage industry and digital media appear likely to be among the first adopters of Ultra-HD.

BlocksGlobal is a leading provider of easy-to-use content management system for digital media geared for the retail environment. BlocksGlobal is associated with DOOH Australia, Touch display technology, and digital retail display.

With the increasing popularity of digital billboards, the challenge now is how to take full advantage of digital billboard messaging and stand out in a crowd — and not seem flat, stale and boring — especially among other digital billboards. The key is conditional content.

Conditional content is a powerful selling point for digital billboard operators, giving them the opportunity to help their clients make the best use of their advertising dollars and offer a tool that is not available on every digital billboard. 

How it Works

Conditional content is a remarkable tool that lets advertisers use RSS feeds to trigger promotions or messages created in advance to be run in a specific situation. Conditional ads can be based on weather conditions, sports scores, stock quotes — even tweets. They work like an if-then statement. For example, if the Bulls win, then the billboard will display a message congratulating the team and promoting a $1 draft beer special.

Impulse Purchases by Temperature

Fast food chains have created innovative campaigns tailored to the current temperature. When temperatures soar above a certain degree, they advertise their ice cream, and when temperatures dip below a certain level, they advertise hot coffee.

Conditional content can also be tailored to upcoming weather forecasts. What better time for a retailer to advertise their stock of snow blowers, shovels, snow tires or winter coats than when a snowstorm is approaching?

Dayparting and Social Media

Imagine a coffee shop with a surplus of donuts in the afternoon. The shop sends out a quick tweet about half-price donuts, and a billboard message is automatically generated to advertise the special. Because Twitter followers can be spread out over a wide geographic area, having the ability to communicate with potential customers already in transit and near their location is invaluable.

If you are exploring how to incorporate conditional content into your business as a digital retail signage, it is important to understand exactly what features are available with the software and how many pre-designed campaigns are allowed in your digital out of home advertising. Whatever you do, do not leave this remarkable tool in the digital advertising arsenal on the table.

For more help in digital retail advertising, contact BlocksGlobal.

Dayparting refers to offering time-appropriate messages based on the changing interests or demographics of the audience throughout the course of a day. Dayparting dramatically improves message relevance, which in turn improves ROI. Digital Signage by its very nature can respond to changing demographics much better than print.

Dayparting can add value to all users of digital signage but is especially valuable for restaurants (including quick-service restaurants), malls, retailers, hotels, financial institutions and pharmacies.

Here are the steps to consider for your dayparting messaging strategy:

Step One - Just like the networks do, you need to answer these critical questions:

• Who is my audience at a certain day and time?

• How does the audience change throughout the day?

• How many different “demographic groups” of customers are there in a day?

• Is there a difference between weekdays and weekends?

• Whether you’re a quick-service restaurant, a hotel, grocery store or a bank, you know your customers, and who tends to visit when. Identifying your customers is key to relevant messaging.

Step Two - Once you have identified who is visiting when, determine what you want to say to this audience.

• What products and services are most appealing to this group at this time of day?
• What behaviour are you trying to create or change?
• Accept who the demographic is, and what messages they are likely to respond to. For example, the networks know and accept that kids watch TV Saturday mornings. They don’t try to change this fact — they leverage it.

Step Three - Once you know who is visiting when, and what you want to say to them, the next step is the creation and scheduling of compelling content.

• Your digital signage partner should be able to help here, with experience creating content that creates the desired response. Once you have the content in place, don’t be afraid to tweak dayparts. Should the breakfast feature boards turn into the lunch features at 10 or 10:30? A small change to dayparting can have a big impact on the desired results (and ROI).

• Make sure your digital signage technology can easily support ongoing tweaking to dates and times, and provides the analytics to measure the impact of changes.

Although most of today’s digital signage technologies allow the use of calendaring tools to schedule and play content based on times of day or days of the week, all software is not created equal. Be sure you choose a digital signage partner that has the flexibility to meet your specific needs for dayparting. This is one of the “essential” capabilities for digital signage and shouldn’t be overlooked.

For easier, no-tech-knowledge-required digital signage content management system, go for BlocksGlobal.com

Source:

digitalsignagetoday.com

By Gary Davies

The business world has evolved to become more consumer-centric. Brands are doing their best on not just to reach out to their market – but to engage them, as well. More than ever, businesses are connecting to people via various media in order to play a key role in people’s lifestyles. They have moved into web, online marketing, mobile, and retail signage.

Digital agencies have also adjusted to the changing times and are now offering full scale solutions to handle brands and their success. Check out the top 3 digital service categories to tap for your business brought to you by Square Circle Triangle:

Agency Services:

With in-house talent we deliver strategic design, development, online marketing and digital creative services.

• Web Design and Development

• Website Development Process

• UX/UI

• Brand Consulting and Design

• Consulting Services

Managed Services:

A model of continuous improvement provides maintenance and upgrades, content and refinement, support, SEO, SEO, and analytics to business.

• Search Engine Optimisation

• Search Engine Marketing

• Website Analytics

Technology Solutions:

Our technology is creating a retail revolution – Blocks is a platform for dynamic, client-managed content creation and multi-device distribution.

• Digital Signage

• Screen Media

• Backend Programming

Contact Square Circle Triangle to enquire about our Agency, Managed, and Technology solutions for Australian brands.

OpenSign has a lot of advantages for digital signage users:

• Responsive Design - adjusts to most screen sizes including mobile

• Built-in Analytics for measuring ROI

• Android-based: No licensing fees included

• Great service and support from AOPEN

Speak to BlocksGlobal to know more about OpenSign.

Here we discuss how we can deliver the best of web and e-commerce in-store, right at the point of purchase.

• 63 percent of adults find that advertising on digital signage “catches their attention.”
• 62 percent of adults remember seeing digital signage in the past 12 months.
• 58 percent of people find digital signage more unique than traditional advertising.
• 44 percent of people pay more attention to digital signage than traditional billboards.

As the convergence of advertising and technology continues, digital signage will grow in importance as a must-have component of many integrated marketing campaigns. Although some digital signage trends sound like Star Trek technology, we bet you’ll see the following widely embraced over the next few years:

Interactive Digital Signage.

Color this trend a result of the Internet generation. Because of the way we interact with smartphones and tablet computers today, consumers want digital signage to respond to them. Interactive digital signage lets users shape their engagements through touch screens, gestures, mobile interfaces and other means. This way, they control the messages they receive, helping you market to them based on their interests and needs.

Live Video. Consumers, bombarded by advertising messages, are more likely drawn to live video versus canned content. By including live video feeds as part of your digital signage, you could hold viewers’ interest longer. This stimulating way of engaging consumers could mean they spend more time at your location, which could result in increased sales.

Augmented Reality.

What if your customers could experience using your product without ever touching it? That’s the genius of augmented reality technology, a way of enhancing the physical, real world with computer-generated sensory experiences, such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. This innovation could supercharge ecommerce and speed up buying decisions.

Source: marketingtango.com

A good read about the “integrated retail channel strategy” and how a Google Store can utilise this to draw consumers online, offline, or both. See how digital retail technology plays an important role for boutique tech stores.

BRANDED ENVIRONMENTS: ARE BOUTIQUE STORES THE FUTURE OF TECH RETAIL? Source: info.hoodbe.com

There’s been a lot of buzz this past week about Google and whether they will be opening their own retail stores sometime later this year. In our view a Google store makes a lot of sense.

Google’s Nexus tablets and low-cost Chromebooks are reasons enough for retail stores. Add in the Android Marketplace, Google Play, Google+, Google Now, plus an ever-tightening cross-integration of products and services, and the broader Google brand narrative starts to come into focus.

A retail store is a perfect place for Google to connect the dots between it’s vast array of products and services, and to give consumers a hands-on opportunity to experience the Google digital lifestyle.

This is precisely what Apple did. Steve Jobs opened the first Apple store when other major consumer electronics retailers were closing theirs down (remember Gateway?). At a very basic level, he reasoned that if someone visits an Apple store to purchase an iPhone, the odds are that they will discover and want to buy another Apple product. But it went way beyond that. Jobs believed that a proprietary store was a great way to build awareness and invite people into the Apple digital lifestyle. The Apple Store is the one place where everything about Apple and the benefits of Apple hardware, software and services comes together in one cohesive branded experience.

Google needs to create a store that’s defined not just by the right product assortment, fixtures and décor, but by a broader narrative that captures the essence of the Google digital lifestyle and how that benefits consumers in their daily lives. The experience needs to be inspired by customer insights, then translated into personalized interactions that not only satisfy customers needs, but surprises and delights them in ways that make them want to share the experience with friends so the Google store experience “goes viral” in the same way Apple’s stores have.

What we’re seeing with the impending Google store is part of a broader trend toward ‘integrated retail’. It used to be that retail was divided between two worlds – bricks-and-mortar and ecommerce. Consumers today are both online and offline, and sometimes both – online while shopping offline. Online they are sharing, friend validating, researching, learning and developing a point of view. Offline there is touching, brand comparing and brand associating.

As Google’s product line expands to include both hardware and cloud based services, an integrated retail channel strategy including bricks-and-mortar stores makes sense.

The retail experience of going to the store and buying products that you want or need is no longer the same. The intense and fast advancement in technology has made a great impact in consumer behaviour. Consumers are now smarter, they rely on information more than persuasion to make their purchase. But that does not mean that persuading a customer to buy is no longer necessary. Consumers expect more from their retail experience. Apart from being informed, they also want to be entertained and be more engaged to the brand. Ultimately, what they are looking for is value for their hard-earned money. A discerning market and increase in competition also make it harder to build brand loyalty. Retail sellers have to keep up with these changes or risk losing the interest of their consumers. The only way to survive is to adjust to the evolving market behaviour and OpenSign has the solution for you.

OpenSign offers digital retail signage solutions to make your brand’s retail marketing more dynamic. With a digital out of home medium, retailers can help their clients and customers to make informed choices with their purchase. It can also capture customer data and retail patterns allowing retailers to get in-depth understanding of buying patterns, know what their market really wants and needs and use such information to provide better service to their consumers. A digital retail signage is an innovative way of promoting promos and service. It is a great way to compliment and enhance traditional retail marketing techniques.

Interactive and digital out of home devices are the future of retail marketing. Retailers cannot risk getting left behind. With OpenSign, you will have the capacity to manage and update your own content even if you do not have the design and technical experience. Retailers can have the full control of the content of their digital signage and OpenSign makes sure that you can easily translate your ideas into tangible content. You can modify content at real-time and you can do it essentially anywhere in the world as long as you have Internet access. OpenSign also provides consumer data that you can use and study for product and service improvements as well as future marketing plans.

As consumer behaviour changes with technology, retailers cannot rely on traditional marketing techniques. With OpenSign, retailers can confidently try innovative retail marketing techniques that allow them to better serve their consumers as well as continuing to solidify the consumer’s loyalty to their brand.

Web-based content delivered to touch-screens instore.

Operates in online and offline mode.

OpenSign™ is an interactive digital marketing and signage platform built for retailers to tackle the frustrations and costs of operating and maintaining a digital signage network. Extend your online conversations to in-store by unifying the web, mobile assets, and the retail floor to create new highly targeted experiences for shoppers.

OpenSign allows store owners to:

+ Actively manage content without design experience
+ Eliminate costly print errors
+ Utilize real-time offers and promotions
+ Create once, publish to many screens