A Great Example of Digital Signage and Real Time Marketing

A few weeks back, like most of the Western world, we were engrossed in a great tweet reel focusing on Trump's mistaken use of the word "coffee" which saw him unsuspecting tweet “covfefe”. Here’s the original tweet, in the unlikely case you haven’t seen it:

Covfefe or Covfefe Gate as we like to call it (it took us four times to get spell check to stop changing that to coffee) bought hours of fun to many across what was otherwise a normal Wednesday morning.
 
Yet as marketers and content experts, it was the fusion between a simple tweet, real time marketing and digital signage that really caught our attention. 

The power of being in the moment

It wasn’t so long ago that real time marketing was heralded by brands as being the only way to do social media (Oreo dunk in the dark anyone?). Unfortunately it has lost its way a little since and real time social media reactions have fallen by to generic, curated content i.e. the same tweets day in, day out. It's so easy to have a tweet sent in the moment backfire that many brands think real time reactions are best forgotten.
 
So we were pleasantly surprised when we saw not only a great real time marketing case but one where digital signage came into play too. 

Digital signage + real time marketing = a powerful combination

As you can see above, the clever team at Eurostar saw the trend, created content around it and had this live on their digital signage displays by 3pm on the same day that the tweet went live. By this point, covfefe was trending across Twitter with memes and articles appearing by the dozen. 
 
Best case, Eurostar’s passengers (and thousands of potential travellers on Twitter as you can see from the retweets and comments) would think Eurostar a master of entertainment. Worst case, a confused passenger might think they had a made a typo but would get the premise anyway.
 
Here’s the thing; many forget that digital signage is unlike any other marketing medium. It has more in common with social media than it does a TV advert in that content can be changed just as easily as the guys have done here. Throw in a new slide, grab a quick image and you can be jumping on a global trend that will get people talking about your brand within minutes.

We’re not saying that brands should jump on every real time marketing opportunity without thought, simply that when it comes to digital signage the opportunity is there. So many of us leave displays running for months on end, without any thought to the people viewing them. Stale content is what gives digital signage a bad rap, but the tools and content management systems available today (like ScreenCloud) are focused on making it as easy as possible to always have fresh, relevant content in play. Isn’t it about time more brands began making use of it?