BenQ Reinvents Commercial Digital Signage. Ok, Sure, Uh-huh, Pffft.

November 7, 2014 by Dave Haynes

So one of the things I said to the crowd of architects, public space designers, creative producers and graphic designers who were at Xlab yesterday was that it was in their interest to try to stay current on emerging technologies and be sufficiently equipped to look past the hype and bullshit.

And there, in my inbox today, was Exhibit A.

BenQ Reinvents Commercial Digital Signage

BenQ America Corp., an internationally renowned provider of visual display solutions, today announced that it is now shipping its revolutionary series of digital signage solutions. Consisting of three main product lines, the D Series dual-side, BH Series bar-type, and TL Series transparent display models are tailor-made for commercial installations looking to increase the impact of their advertising efforts and public information points. Allowing the flexibility to place screen-based content in narrow spaces, deliver highly interactive user experiences, and provide front-and-back imaging capabilities, the ten new innovative panels are spearheading a new generation of eye-catching screens that use brightness, installation flexibility, and incredible image quality to wow viewers in any retail or public space. 

“Public spaces are in need of striking solutions that can engage, inform, and entertain viewers in order to break away from today’s crowded multimedia surroundings,” said Bob Wudeck, Associate Vice President, Strategy and Business Development at BenQ America Corp. “By putting research and development at the center of our innovation process, we’ve developed a groundbreaking family of digital signage products that use interactivity, stunning aesthetics, and new display possibilities to genuinely capture the attention of viewers. The results are new interactive experiences that can effectively deliver high quality content in any setting.”

The bold bits are my doing …

So what’s reinventing digital signage here are:

• back to back LED-lit displays
• skinny, odd-shaped displays
• transparent displays

All of which have been on the market in various configurations for years, in the case of the transparent boxes and the sawed-in-half LCDs. LG was doing the latter in 2008. The back to backs that are super-skinny are a more recent thing, but I saw these months ago from Viewsonic, and I am not sure that company was first at it.

Now this is, of course, some goofball PR agency that knows precious little about this sector and was contracted to do what we used to call in the newspaper trade “whipped air.” The miracle of puffing up nothing much. But someone at BenQ approved this.

Hype is an unfortunate part of business marketing, but it just looks bad when it is sooooo empty.

Here’s the better way – tell your resellers and target end-users what’s new and better, and why they should give a crap. I can’t imagine there are many people, who know anything about digital signage, who’d even bother reading past the headline, other than out of bemused curiosity. Your technical offer, your price points, your warranties, something … is probably pretty good and worth a look.

But you’re not going to get it from the people who buy in any real volumes. They’ve got really well-developed BS filters.