If someone asked you to name the best ad you’ve seen lately I bet you  could right? Great advertising stands out and it lives on through the  test of time. Visual ads, like those shown on TV or digital signage,  seem to last longer in our mind than print campaigns or great emails. As  a marketing method, that makes digital signage a great vertical through  which to channel your very best messages. In this guide, we look at  three ways you can use human brain psychology to better inform the  creation of your digital signage content.

In an article  on the rise of the “selfie” and instant photography, Elizabeth Kilroy,  chair of the New Media Narratives program at the International Center of  Photography School in New York said: “We live in this  Kinfolk-Airbnb-WeWork space, where there’s this homogenized modernity.  Everything is the same aesthetic. When people are original, they get  imitated really quickly.”

Many marketing and media channels feel less individualized as they  once might of and increasingly like an echo chamber. We follow the same  pages as our family, we view the same statuses as our friends and we  quickly find ourselves wrapped in a world that mirrors our own thoughts  and nothing else.

In digital signage, this could easily become the case. If everyone  shares their own Twitter feed, followed by a bit of news then every  digital sign you walk past looks pretty similar right? It’s why boring  news displays, left on loop for years, have never set the world on fire.

If a brand has an ad and it’s played across social media, web and TV  then while this breeds familiarity, it also gives the “glass eye” effect  where audiences zone out. The brain says “I’ve seen this before” and  begins to pay less and less attention.

Where individuality is so scarce, digital signage offers an  opportunity to do more with the displays and content choices available  to make something more personal and different. This could be choosing to  break “the rules” of just showing news and instead showing music videos  from specific eras. Or allowing customers to vote on what they want to  see and sharing those results on screen as a poll.

Similarly, why does your office display have to only show news and  health and safety updates? Why not share images, quotes from staff or  fun trivia that will make staff feel more engaged with the  communications around them?

Slack do this really well by allowing you to add custom loading  screen messages that add a touch of personality to your everyday comms.  Under their “Customize Your Team” feature you can create loading  messages with quotes, lyrics or anything you like. Simple things which  all add to the look and feel of your company culture and make the  display more individualized.

Appealing to the two different parts of the brain

Whether we know it or not, many “best practice” marketing tactics find their basis in psychology.

In 1994, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio published a book titled,  Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. This demonstrated  the importance of emotions to the two main systems of our brain; our  limbic system and neocortex, or our “inner” and “outer” brains (which is  a little easier to remember).

Our inner brain (limbic) is the emotional part of the brain and also  contains the “reptilian brain”. Whereas our outer brain (neocortex) is  the thinking brain; far more rational. The inner brain evolved first and  is the one responsible for making instinctual decisions; for example is  this dinosaur about to attack? If yes, then I’d better run. It kept us  safe in our most primeval lives, however has been taken over in later  evolutionary years by the outer brain which is what allows us to process  language, thought, logic and most importantly, control over all of the  above.

So how does all of this apply to marketing and digital signage in particular?

The truth is, all of our decisions have to go through both parts of  the brain; the logical and the emotional. Take an ad for a fancy car.  Our rational brain knows that a car is a car; they all do essentially  the same job of driving us from a to b. But the emotional part of our  brain feels the exhilaration of the person in the passenger seat that  the ad is depicting. We want to look that cool, we want to feel the wind  in our hair and we begin to believe that how we feel can be affected by  having that car.

That’s the basis of all advertising campaigns, at least the  successful ones. They have to be able to bypass the rational brain and  light up the limbic one which is where the magic really happens.

In terms of digital signage, studies show  that creating a brand personality where the brand is seen through the  eyes of very human traits - openness, compassion, conscientiousness and  so on, makes it more appealing to an audience.

As such a visual medium, digital signage is a great vehicle through  which to achieve this. Here are a couple of ways you can appeal to the  inner brain:

Using digital signage to reduce your customer’s pain

Domino’s pizza is a great example of a brand who know how to learn  and solve customer pain points. In a research exercise they realized  that the worst part of the customer journey was not that the customer  didn’t have pizza; it was the unknown of where it was or how long it  would be until it arrived. So they built a pizza tracker app that told  the customer if their pizza was being made, in the oven or on its way.

Digital signage creates a great way to do the same job in a store, restaurant, coffee shop, airport lounge or even office. Digital media helps minimize wait time  — or at least helps customers perceive that their wait is shorter. Set  up a screen and share the average waiting time your customer can expect  and you already reduce their perception (and pain point) of how bad they  think it might be.

How often do you truly feel surprised by a brand campaign? What was  once the “go to” technique for ad agencies has long since tailored off.  Probably because, consumers got a little “surprised out”.

According to the Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT) of surprise, there are three ways you can surprise your audience.

Interactant variables — issues like race, sex, socioeconomic status, age and appearance.

Environmental variables — time, surroundings, proxemics, setting, etc.

Social norm variables — biological influences, behavioral patterns, social norms, cultural norms.

Out of the three, the latter is probably the most applicable to  digital signage and marketing and the least likely to offend. After all,  we can easily map out the behavior and the social norms of our  customers and then subvert this into a really great digital signage  display.

For example, say you play your standard social media feed playlist  one afternoon but then cut it short with an “important service  announcement” message. By social norms, your audience are probably going  to expect something serious about the weather, an emergency or some  health and safety issue. Then, rather than conform to norms why not  announce your top doughnut of the day.

This mixes a traditional media format with something unexpected, but would undoubtedly make audiences sit up and take notice.

In the same way Domino’s’ efforts to reduce customer pain was so  effective, you can also use the A to Z technique to help get customers  closer to where they need to be. If a customer starts at A and wants to  get to Z, everything in between has a sense of “pain” attributed to it.  This obviously isn’t physical, but it’s the way the brain connects the  starting point with the desired outcome.

In digital signage, the goal is to get the customer as close to Z, as  quickly as possible. For example, if the customer walks into the store  and wants to buy an outfit to wear to a wedding what can you do to get  them there more quickly? Perhaps you can use a digital signpost to share  the route to your wedding section, you can prompt visitors with a  message that you have a wedding specialist on hand and you could even  offer a 10% discount on any wedding outfits as you know the customer  will only be wearing them once. All of which, show a great understanding  of your audience and the journey they face when moving from A to Z.

Using anchoring to connect customers with your digital signs

Anchoring is a psychological technique which can be used to get  customers more interested in your digital signage. Rather than just  being passive viewers, anchoring ensures they engage with what is on  screen which can be used to your advantage as it increases recognition  and improves memory retention.

One example is to have a video or presentation which firstly presents  a product or service and asks the audience how much they think it is  worth. This engages the customers as they answer the question, even if  just in their head. If you then show a series of resulting slides or  information they will pay attention, waiting for it to confirm or  subvert what they thought. The technique works because they hold onto  that information throughout the rest of the series.

If at the end of the series, the real price is revealed and it’s  lower than the information the customer has been holding onto, it’s a  winning situation. The customer cannot doubt that the product or service  is cheaper than it should be - after all, they said themselves it  should be more expensive.

This psychological technique can be used in a variety of ways across  almost any use case - to increase social media following, to engage  staff with company figures and to increase interest around specific menu  items.

You don’t really have to know much about psychology to be able to  apply the concepts to your digital signage. Yet understanding the way  the human brain works can lead to seriously effective creative displays.  When you know how the mind of your customer works, you can easily  choose and create content which appeals much more than static displays  alone. Start testing yours today with a free trial of ScreenCloud.  

How to use psychology principles surrounding the human brain, individuality, content and anchoring to improve digital signage design and marketing.

Come with us inside the human brain - we promise it makes for an interesting read.

How To Make Your Digital Signage Stand Out Using Psychology

How To Make Your Digital Signage Stand Out Using Psychology

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