LV's new Cosmopolitan casino takes wildly different content approach to digital signs

February 27, 2011 by Dave Haynes

There was lots of chatter last week in the digital signage community last week about the new Cosmopolitan casino in Las Vegas. The place is very cool, very expensive, and loaded with digital video.

The LED boards outside are beautifully crisp and well-positioned. The digital walls in the lobby are stunning. There are large screens embedded, even, in the the elevator car walls. And the screens that are sprinkled around the gaming floor run content that is wildly different than anything else I have seen.

It’s that last thing that continues to intrigue me. The material, apparently contracted to and developed by Digital Kitchen in Chicago, is purely ambient. There is nothing approaching promotional material. There are no calls to action. There are no ties at all to what one can spend money on at the Cosmo.

Instead, it is jellyfish, and glowing, shifting colors, and monochromatic CGI micro-movies that look overhead as people move around an urban landscape.

It is the sort of thing that would break the heart of the typical beverage manager who wants to yell “$2 Michelobs!” from the slot bank monitors.

But I think, and this is based on asking smart content guys like Preset partner Pat Hellberg, the whole idea was differentiation. Just about any other casino uses its screens to promote, promote, promote. And there is no programming strategy. People can come to the Cosmo and feel a little different. It is hardly serene, but it is definitely different.

I shot some video, and that’s me jabbering away in the background …