Driving the Auto Dealership

Car dealers, like most everybody, are down lately. This darn recession isn't going away anytime soon, and a significant chunk of their market has been taken away from them. Still a lot of people out there buying cars, but not enough to go around and keep everyone fat and happy.

Competition is fierce for the attention, for the interest, for the "mindshare" of the buyers that are there. Your product has to be good, your people have to be good, and your dealership has to look even better.

Window Video Systems (WVS) by Looknglas take the dealership experience to a whole new level. Light up your windows with your product images in color and motion. Remind customers of your features and benefits. Entice them with your offers and promos. Affirm them in their decision to consider and buy your cars. These days, it's not just about good product or salesmanship, it's about the experience. Digital Windows, Digital Banners, Digital Posters, even Digital Mannequins and Digital Salespeople can and will add to the intrigue and excitement of the sales environment. There are few products more technologically sophisticated than a new car; Window paint, posters, and floppy inflatable men don't do the product justice.

Window Video Systems in Auto Dealerships make for a more enjoyable, and successful, sales environment. With some studies showing Digital Signage increasing point of purchase sales by as much as 170%, Widow Video Systems are an investment that can provide significant Return on Investment and increased profitabiity.

Selling WVS: Know Your Market, Know Your Strengths

We have get inquiries from all over the world about our Window Video Systems: Digital Mannequin, Digital Windows, Digital Banners. Everybody loves WVS. Some think it's alchemy; some think anyone can do it. Some think the world will beat a path to their door if they can just secure the rights to market our proprietary systems in their country, region or niche.

WVS will transform messaging and display in the retail space in particular, but other venues as well. But understanding the strengths and limitations of WVS, where it works well and where it won't is essential to making money with WVS.

Remember, it's hardware, content, proper installation, and method. It's knowing the value and potential for Return on Investment that wins the game and makes money.

Launching a new media is not for the weak of heart.

Everybody likes what they see, but not many really understand exactly how it will benefit them, and when you are selling WVS, it's up to you to demonstrate that. Fortunately, the data on how Digital Signage affects sales, is starting to come in. Walmart reported across the board increases in all segments of their lines. And I don't even think they are as effective in their method as they could be (like not incorporating WVS!) It isn't hard to imagine how better display and motion-enhanced, changing sales and promo messages can have a huge impact on the selling/buying environment in retail.

So before you contact us, know your market, your segment, and how you plan to use WVS to make a profit for your clients. There is more to the potential than just a hardware sale.

Going Green

"Green"!

It's a critical watchword for many corporations these days. The drive towards eco-conscious business practices and investment in green technologies, and practices, such as recycling and replacement of equipment in favor of more environmentally friendly systems is more intense than ever.

Most signage today is still in the form of replace-able hard copy. That is, posters and banners made of either paper or vinyl (petroleum based products) and designed to be discarded and replaced. That's a lot of oil for the vinyl, and that's a lot of trees for the paper.

Window Video Systems are Green Signage. WVS is the ultimate "replace-able" or re-usable signage. In fact, you don't replace anything except a lightbulb on an infrequent basis. The rest of the system does away with posters and banners as it puts signage images directly onto windows and glass panes. Once installed, the system need never be replaced, allowing constant new messages without any need for banners or posters or waste.

LCD screens are not particularly green, except that they are recyclable. But they require a good deal of energy to produce, and especially, to recycle. Hopefully they are not merely thrown out. But if they are discarded, LCDs in the landfill are not a good thing for the environment.

So in Signage and Display, let's go green. Let's eliminate as much paper and vinyl (petroleum product) waste as possible, with Green Signage from Looknglas.

Go green with Window Video Systems from Looknglas. The Window Of Opportunity is here.

Digital Banner Great for Large In-Store Messaging

Change. Didn't someone win election to the most powerful office in the world recently on that premise?

Change truly is powerful. The ability to change, add to, alter, and enhance your message is extremely powerful.

This is the essential power of Window Video Systems (WVS) particularly, the Digital Banner. The advantages are:

Size
Attraction
Changing Message
Control
Impact
Affordability

The Digital Banner enlivens an entire room or store. Everyone in the store can see what the store wants them to know. Essential to a delivery system like this is to use it to message effectively to promote buying. Retailers will need to become more comfortable with using their signage more assertively in this way. But Digital Banners, Digital Posters, Digital Mannequins and Digital Window Displays will completely transform retail in-store display and marketing. There is no better time or place to message to customers than at the point of purchase.

The Window of Opportunity is here.

How Window Video Systems Work

We're getting more and more questions about Window Video Systems (WVS), (especially Digital Mannequin,) and how they work.

In the broad strokes, WVS is rear projection (but not always.) Window glass will not hold a projected image. When you shine a light, it goes right through the glass. So a treatment or special pane or screen is required, which will hold your projected image.

Many factors can and will affect the Digital Window displays, so the correct specifications are critical. The type of screen, size, brightness, components, install and integration, ambient lighting, content and marketing message, are all factors. And that doesn't even scratch the surface.

It is always exciting to see a window light up like a giant lcd screen (without the associated cost,) and convey advertising and marketing messages effectively. "Effectively" is the key word here.

People want a widget; a silver bullet that does everything and solves everything, and costs next to nothing. WVS are not widgets. They must be tailored to each situation and use.

Looknglas makes the medium affordable and easy to use. Entry level systems are comparable in price to large LCDs.

Customers don't go to your business to watch headlines, weather, or even music videos. Looknglas Window Video Systems, designed to convey images and messages that produce traffic, sales, and profit, are a bargain compared with most commercial LCDs. Customers have TVs at home, and they have mobile phones; they can get all that stuff there. What they want to know is what they should buy from you and why, so you have to illustrate that and convince them to buy. That's what WVS and Digital Mannequin do.

Looknglas approaches your install from the standpoint of making your WVS install do what you want it to. We pay close attention to the technical implementation, but we also prioritize the effectiveness of the content. Without the focus on effective use for marketing and sales promotion, any system will become another piece of technology that underperforms. Gadgets are cool. Results are cooler.

Window Video Systems by Looknglas: The Window of opportunity is here.

Retail Window Displays

OK, I admit it: Messaging is my personal hobby horse.

But it's so totally justified, because I just don't see people doing a good job with it. Either they don't create compelling messages, or they don't know how to target, or they don't target correctly, or they don't understand their own target, or they don't know how to motivate the target.... ad nauseum. There are so many ways to message poorly.

But rather than talk in generalities, let's focus on one very important thing: How to message effectively with large-screen lcd, or better yet, with Window Video Systems (WVS).

To define even further, let's talk about clothing retailer's need to display and message to people passing by their mall store. What people do now is dress up mannequins and place them in the window, and perhaps add posters, signs, or an lcd. The posters/signs might give pricing or promo info about specific product, but it can only do that in a blanket way, (Everything 20% Off!) or a specific way (Shoe Sale). But you can only do so much, usually one thing, at a time. And then you have to live with it for a while or replace and reprint constantly. And the LCD is usually used simply for ambience like music videos or fashion-show looking loops.

What the customer wants to know is, "what do you have for me, why is it better for me, and how do I get it (for less)?

Window Video Systems, displaying the Digital Mannequin, allow the store to display clothing on a "live" looking model, front and back, with pricing or promo offer, along with any other important product info (i.e., "It's Green! Made with only Organic Recycled Hemp, Domestically Grown, with a Negative-One Carbon Footprint, Endorsed by Al Gore!")

Ok, sorry for the sarcasm, but you get the point: that's a lot of very specific messaging AND display info that you can get out of one system in a very short period of time. And THEN, Digital Mannequin enables the store to go to the next ensemble and do it all again with new information. Or not. They could just repeat. Or go to a different type of info, or mini-campaign.

The advantages are numerous:

1. Better display capability
A. life-size,
B. multiple poses,
C. multiple views,
D. multiple ensembles with multiple articles
E. different or changing backgrounds
F. different presentations - stills, motion, video
AND

2. Better Messaging capability
A. multiple messages,
B. multiple offers,
C. variable appearances - colors, size, motion
D. faster changes in messages/campaigns - even to the day or days, or daypart,
E. no changing out of posters,
F. no waste

That's a LOT of improvement in your messaging! That's a lot of flexibility and potency with which to improve your message to your target customers!

And to think you can do that for a comparable price to a large LCD? Fuggedaboutit! Who do I call?!

Call Looknglas. We'll hook you up.

The Window of Opportunity is here.

Talk to your Customers

Sure you should engage customers when they come into your business environment. But I'm talking about before they enter. That is what signage is for.

Digital Signage, and particularly, Window Video Systems, allow you to engage them before they ever enter your store or business. You can prep them, educate them, lure them, promote to them, compliment them, entice them, display to them, invite them, incent them, empower them, offer them something, give them another step towards engaging with your product or business, ask them a question, give them an answer, show them something new, remind them of something they should do, promise them something, and most importantly, sell them. That is the point of advertising, marketing, and signage, is it not? Sell them something. Use your entire window space, empowered and illuminated by a Window Video System, to sell them. They just might appreciate that you did something new and different. They just might go and tell other people about your Window Video System, or your Digital Mannequin, that got their attention, and brought them in to buy.

You have what your customer wants. Use the Looknglas systems to help them buy from you.

The Window of Opportunity is here.

Digital Mannequin - Tonic for Retail Display

The Digital Mannequin, exclusive product concept of Looknglas Window Video Systems, will put the retail industry on its ear. The Digital Mannequin is a projected window front display that allows the retailer to put a live looking model right on the window, modeling clothes, accessories, etc.
The Youtube videos above illustrate it pretty well. What they don't illustrate is how easy the product is for the retailer. There is no training involved, and installation is done in one day. The retailer only need supply the video or still photography. Well, actually, they don't because Looknglas can provide video and production services as well. So the retailer really doesn't have to do anything.
Brainchild of Darren Porter, video genie and Grand Poobah of DGP Films and Raging Nation Productions, and myself, Ed Personius, mad scientist marketing/advertising innovator, we formed Looknglas and created the Digital Mannequin out of the Window Video System product. Digital Mannequin lets clothing retailers finally put their goods on the front window in a way that absolutely stops shoppers in their tracks, and allows the store to display more product with pricing or promo messaging that will literally drag the shoppers into the store. Sheer genius!

Granted, Digital Mannequin in Victoria's Secret makes us a little nervous. Ok, maybe really nervous, but we trust their good judgement and honorable intentions. And hey, malls can use some sizzle. A lot of sizzle, which is good, because Digital Mannequin is a sizzling product.

The Ultimate Retail Signage and Window Display

The video below illustrates what Window Video Systems, and Projected Digital Signage can look like in your business. The video is compliments of my partner and video genie, Darren Porter, who is a videographer, producer, and all around radical creative dude-guy.

Talking to your customers and potential customers about the best of what you have to offer is the essence of signage and marketing itself. You have to do it, and you have to do it well. Window Video Systems help you do that better.

Digital Window Display
Digital Banner
Digital Poster
Digital Mannequin

Get 'em. You can definitely afford it, and you probably can't afford not to. In retail, it's time to step up. You improve or die. This should be a no-brainer.

The Window of Opportunity is Here.

LCDs - TV on the Ceiling. So What?

That is what the customer thinks when they see an LCD in your business. I have no doubt about this, because I make it a point to observe people when an LCD is present in a retail business. Most people ignore them. Even in lobbies and waiting rooms, usually they are ignored.

That is because someone is failing to make them relevant or useful to the customer!

Dick Morris is famous for his line to Bill Clinton when running for the presidency: "It's the economy stupid!"

Well, I have a modified take on that, which is the key to selling and buying digital signage, whether DOOH or in-house.

It's not the hardware; IT'S THE CONTENT AND USAGE!

Technological hardware will never achieve anything or solve anything or improve anything if you don't use it effectively. This is what's wrong with so many lcd installations. We just pitched a company who has edgy, hip, imagery, product, and branding, but they haven't even integrated their retail store lcd deployment, and they aren't using them for messaging.

LCDs as a medium have to work that much harder to overcome the unspoken but manifest bias in customer's minds that they are just TVs (and not even as good as the one at home.) Much better to jolt that viewer with a Window Video System (WVS) and then message them into doing what you want them to do. Ideally that should be something sales-related, or at the very least, something trackable. But always lean toward selling. Otherwise you run the risk of lapsing into that grey area where business justifications start to veer away from dollars, sense, and profit.

LCDs - Problems with DS

So much of Digital Signage (DS) is focused on LCD screens, and LED types of boards. Much of the implementation is kinda clunky. It seems that the DS Industry is dominated by techies, and even the people who plan advertising campaigns are often not real swift at creating compelling ads or playlists.

Further, many retailers have installed LCD screens, but are merely streaming television or just a limited playlist loop. I think of a restaurant chain here in Southern California with a beach theme; they play surf videos non-stop. Neat-o. (But I thought they wanted to sell more burgers?!!!) Many clothing chains have LCD screens playing music videos. As if that has something to do with selling clothes.

I don't know; I guess I'm not sophisticated enough to realize how useful that is. From my point of view, I would rather spend 5 minutes selling than 5 weeks entertaining. I think, ideally, the retailers would too, but the ad industry and their own in-house marketing people probably have them bamboozled into thinking they have to do this.

Or then there's "Walmart TV". Large LCD's hanging in Walmart stores playing who knows what. Sound on, blah blah blah, some fake tv show. I have never observed anyone standing there watching those things. I think it's because the content is pretty useless relative to making a buying decision right now.

So Looknglas works with clients to create and mnanage content designed to sell, to cement their relationship with their customers, to motivate them to buy something else, RIGHT NOW. Or to cross pollinate with the client's web-based strategies. Or to get the customer to use their mobile phone to get a promotional benefit, offer, coupon, whatever.

Because of this lack of focus in the use of LCD's, Looknglas now offers integration and management of existing LCD's. A chain with standalone LCDs in their stores can now have a network that runs company-designed playlists, updated as often as everyday, with new, fresh selling messages.

So now companies can leverage their existing investment into something a lot more powerful and effective. A few low cost digital control devices installed, and Voila! Instant retail POP network prodding customers to buy more. Yeah!!! Use technology to make more sales and more money?! What a concept!

Looknglas - Window Video Systems, and LCD System integrators. The Window Of Opportunity is Here.

Why Retail Needs Window Video Systems II

"I am told that the clinical definition of insanity is the tendency to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results."

Whoever said this, might have been having a prescient moment, contemplating the current state of retail in the US. What seems to pass for creativity in display is video screens playing music videos. Many clothing retailers have perfectly good product, some of it really good, that goes unsold because they cannot attract enough customers.

Yet retailers continue to do the same old things, display-wise, over and over again, while watching their sales go down, and their competition (online retailers) eat their lunch.

Many are targeting a "younger demo", but the problem is that younger demo is extremely distracted, and putting your clothes on mannequins in the store window or interior simply does not attract attention to the product when your prospective customers are busy texting or talking or surfing on their smart phone.

HELLOOOHHH! Something bigger, better, more interesting and attention grabbing is due. Like yesterday.

Window Video Systems bridge this technology chasm between retail clothier's product and the technology-fascinated target audience. WVS brings the product to life, a la the Digital Mannequin. Digital Mannequin puts the clothes front and center, and displays them on moving "live" models so you can actually have an idea what they will look like on YOU.

Displaying clothing by hanging it on a rack, or even in the window, or putting it on a dummy, just won't cut it. It will not attract the eye, because, again, the target is already distracted, and the mall environment is already crowded with many of the same such displays. Your clothing cannot compete for attention all by itself!

Retailers need not limit themselves anymore, since Window Video Systems can provide all the flexibility they could want and then some. The Digital Mannequin provides superior "real life" display of the product, while simultaneously allowing the retailer to create sizzle with a myriad of potential effects, such as different backgrounds, the model moving, changing poses, acting natural, pricing, promos, and offers displayed alongside the model, etc., etc., etc. The potential for much more diverse types of messaging is there.

More importantly, the potential to completely transform retail store marketing and messaging into a strategy for producing direct and trackable sales results, just went through the roof.

Looknglas Window Video Systems exists to help retailers design their own cutting edge strategy for more effective POP display and Direct Response store marketing.

Digital Signage - The Wave is Building

When I'm surfing, it's a lot harder to catch a wave that is not yet ready to break. The key to catching a lot of waves is to get in position and paddle hard right before the wave is ready to break. If you try to catch the wave before it's about to break, you'll do a lot of paddling, and not much catching. If you try to catch it after it's already broken, the energy from the breaking crest and all the whitewater will knock you down, roll over you, and leave you behind.

You have to catch the wave just before it crests.

Digital Signage is a wave that's building, and almost ready to crest. It's almost ready to break. Looknglas, a company devoted to Window Video Systems, and rear projection, is positioning and "paddling hard" (to continue the metaphor.)

Window Video Systems are our proprietary term for what we do: We make video and moving messages appear directly on windows.

Ordinarily, if you were to try to project an image on a window, the light would simply pass through the glass and no one would notice. We treat the glass so that the glass holds the image in bright, hi-contrast, and we use various technologies to manage the projection system. In essence, you don't want a display system you have to turn on and off. Ours does that by itself. And as a retailer, you don't really want to have to become a Digital Signage manager; we do that for you. And you don't want to have to render video, or convert images, or create new moving images, you just want the thing to do what you want it to do. We provide the creative and production and management services to make Window Video Systems work. That might sound expensive, but it's really not. We have distilled the technology and methodology down to a tight, no-hassle system and service. Kind of like having a website built, updated and managed/hosted for you. Yeah, all that costs, something, but when you use it right---it's very worth it.

Looknglas Window Video Systems far outstrip posters, banners, and window paint. They are far superior to LCD screens. How? We can go much larger, and we become more inexpensive the larger we go, in contrast to LCD. We also are superior in that we provide the full array of service to make the system work well for the client/business.

Window Video Systems represent a completely new medium that will be with us for a long time to come. These systems allow for a much more accurate and comprehensive display of product, as well as sales or even educational messaging that changes and updates ongoing. Business has no category for window video systems, but they will learn to love them. This is a wave that will roll for a long time, and it's gonna be one heck of a ride.