DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY
Looking your best
D
igital screens are such an integral part of the gaming experience today – simulating mechanical slots and increasingly table games too, announcing jackpots to the world,
displaying rules for novice players – that it’s difficult to imagine a casino without them. And now, they’re becoming commonplace off the gaming floor too, replacing signs, posters and other printed material in public places, displaying multimedia content that can be instantaneously changed, and providing opportunities for interaction that were barely possible with static signage.
Like most sectors serving a consumer market,
casino operators are using screens to entertain and inform customers, deliver commercial messaging, and develop revenue. The potential of screen media – often called “digital signage” or “digital out-of-home” – is limited largely by operators’ imagination. But rather than just rolling out a screen network because it’s what everyone else is doing, and hoping some fairy dust will rub off on the bottom line, it’s essential to rigorously define the business
rationale for digital displays: how they will contribute to broader objectives, whether hard ones like profitability or softer ones like customer satisfaction, and how that contribution will be measured.
For screens can serve a plethora of purposes (although rarely all of them at the same time), and it is a careful definition of purpose that enables other key decisions such as the kind of content that should be shown on-screen, the technology necessary to support this, and the optimal relationships with suppliers.
Meeting with those suppliers, as well as other
users, and learning from their experience will be high on the agenda for many of the casino industry visitors to Screenmedia Expo Europe in May (see box). But before we draw up a shopping list let’s consider the general advantages that screens have over printed signage.
Most obviously, they are changeable: they can show moving video, or a rotation of still pictures. What is shown can be altered instantly, or automatically varied according to a set schedule.
They can provide
audio as well as visuals (technically possible with static signage, but very rarely done). And they can provide opportunities for interaction with customers, either through the screen itself– these days, generally using a touch-sensitive surface – or through the
38 APRIL 2011 Sell, sell, sell In the casino environment, perhaps the
simplest way to gain ROI from screens is by using them to cross-sell and upsell. Promoting the venue as a whole is pointless: by definition, the customer has already made the decision to visit, and their experience will have far more impact on their perception of the casino than any amount of self-aggrandisement. However, now that they are on-site, screens can be a powerful way to nudge them into sampling elements of the offer that they may not have considered, such as dining options, entertainment, retail, spa, and so on.
This requires a deep understanding of the
customer and their journey, both through the physical premises and through the day. For example, the patron sitting at a restaurant table is unlikely to be interested in an entertainment event that starts in five minutes, but may be tempted by the dessert special – unless it is breakfast-time, in which case information on events later in the day could well be appropriate, because they are probably still in day-planning mood.
The lady customer in the hair salon is
probably not a prime target for sports betting promotions, but will very likely consider spa treatments. The person waiting to check in to the hotel might pay for a room upgrade; but the very same message will be wasted on the
As one of the world’s biggest events for users of screen technology draws close, we look at the benefits to casinos of replacing old- fashioned signs with digital displays
consumer’s own mobile device. (Again, the latter is technically feasible with conventional signs, but because the sign can’t change in real time, in effect it’s little more than a lead-in to an experience which primarily takes place on the handset.)
Those, then, are the broad reasons for
screens’ technical superiority over signs as a means of communication. But how, in practice, do they provide a commercial edge?
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