Ecast adds interactive cocktail MixMaster
October 21, 2008 by Dave Haynes
Digital jukebox network operator Ecast has about 10,000 interactive touchscreen music stations in bars and clubs across the U.S.
In the past year it has really seemed to be juicing up its offer, and this week announced a pretty interesting new feature intended to keep peopler around the station and bring them back.
In addition to providing on-the-spot suggestions that drive on-premise drink sales, reports a press release, Ecast MixMaster displays real-time, user-generated drink ratings and offers advertisers various sponsorship opportunities. MixMaster capitalizes on the unique strengths of the Ecast network and Studio Q, the company’s creative services team, blending information, themed music playlists and advertising into an engaging interactive application that gets consumers actively participating at the point of purchase.
MixMaster displays tempting cocktail images along with their associated drink recipes in the gin, rum, tequila, vodka, whiskey and seasonal cocktail categories. Consumers can touch on and then browse drinks in any of the main spirits categories, check out the Featured Drink recipe, or link to the Hall of Fame — a real-time rating of most popular drinks as generated by bar patrons. The enticing looks and intuitive interface of MixMaster are a hallmark of Ecast’s award-winning creative services team, Studio Q.
“Ecast MixMaster gives consumers the ideal tool for answering the question of ‘what do I want to drink tonight’,” said Jim Pothier, director of ad sales, Ecast. “Spirits brands have the opportunity to get their product top of mind and effect a purchasing decision just steps away from the bar. It doesn’t get better than that.”
Adding to the richness of the MixMaster feature, Ecast also turned to their music library to develop themed playlists related to each spirit category that include song choices from every music genre.
Nice. The service means patrons spend more time around the screens ordering music, learning about sponsor brands, and coming up with high margin cocktail orders for the premise. And alll very trackable.
The only knock against this is the Ecast stations are just one screen, and therefore the audience is relatively small when compared to the overall footfall of the bar or club night to night.In this model, that may not6 matter all that much, though.
Ecast is, in many respects, more of a Web service than digital signage, with the interactive screens behaving very much like a browser, to the point of ads being served by online ad giant DoubleClick.
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