EnVu lighting up malls floors, bankrolled by Stratacache

September 20, 2010 by Dave Haynes

Two distinct impressions.

1 – I’ve never seen anyone but little kids pay more more than fleeting attention to interactive floor projections when I have seen them in malls and mega-casinos.

2 – Chris Riegel is no dummy.

So when I read this morning DailyDOOH that EnVu (which I did know about) was bankrolled by Stratacache, I was pretty surprised.

As Adrian reports, Envu was founded quietly last May as a new wholly-owned subsidiary of STRATACACHE, New York-based enVu will be officially launched tomorrow, ready to show off and attract advertisers to its first product which is called enSpire.

Using immersive gestural interactive projection technology to display digital advertising on the floor while engaging consumers within key retail locations in the Top 20 DMAs across the U.S., enSpire has ALREADY been installed in 85 malls, with plans to be in 170 malls by the end of October, and 215 by mid-2011. Four major real estate companies owning malls are already on board.

enVu is headed by CEO Benjamin Mathieu, former CEO of course of Neo Advertising Canada (recently sold to Traffic), and earlier with BroadSign (all based in Montreal).

Another former BroadSign guy, Jimmy Abraham, is running ops and has been the one running all over the US getting this network lit up.

As Ken Goldberg points out in a post this morning, the medium has its challenges but he applauds the company for placing a bet on the medium.

I know Stratacache CEO Chris Riegel fairly well, and he is the utter antithesis of the rainbows and unicorns type that thinks making money from DOOH is a breeze. If he’s bankrolling this, it is spreadsheeted and modeled like you wouldn’t believe. Costs have come down and capabilities up since Reactrix had a failed run at this, which helps a lot.

But the biggest difference will have to be developing creative that gets adults noticing, stopping and engaging. That’s the real make or break dynamic to this whole thing.

pic - old Reactrix install


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