Toronto’s BIG Digital Goes After High Demand-Low Supply Short Term Business

April 30, 2015 by Dave Haynes

If you have sold digital signage solutions at all, you have undoubtedly come across clients – particularly brands, their field marketing agencies, and events companies – who didn’t want to buy your stuff. They wanted to rent it.

Because they didn’t need it for long. Or they didn’t want to store it.

I always had to say, “Nope, we don’t do that. Sorry.” And point them at AV companies that do trade shows, conferences and other short-term work. Who tend to charge a FORTUNE, and don’t really have what brands want or need.

In what appears to be a pretty cagey little move, the guys who built and eventually sold Onestop Media to the Canadian out of home advertising firm Pattison have started a new company called BIG Digital. It’s self-described as a technology-based digital activation and engagement rental company.

The guys behind it are Mike Girgis and Jake Neiman, as well as longtime DDC-Cineplex guy Jeff Wismer.

Says a release:

BIG offers full service solutions that utilize its high-impact displays, experiential technologies, and cutting edge event-based audience analytics. With creative, strategy, equipment rentals, and logistics in-house, BIG’s turn-key approach takes the stress out of sourcing and executing technology-based experiential campaigns and activations.

“BIG Digital offers a system and model that work for today’s marketers and brands. BIG provides tools to immerse audiences in powerful digital experiences. We spent more than a year working with top industry partners to create seamless, stress-free solutions that ensure our partners’ digital campaigns and programs reflect their market leadership,” says Girgis.

The company has been doing stuff for more than a year, but quietly. BIG Digital’s “Parade” of fully brand-able and modular digital and interactive video walls are available for rent across Canada. All display solutions include real-time campaign and audience intelligence.

It seems pretty clever to me, as renting a screen is just one of MANY things to figure out. For brand activation companies, having someone else sweating the details and execution on the digital piece is probably very attractive.

In most of digital signage, there is way more supply than demand. This is one of those rare circumstances where there is probably more demand than supply.