DSE 2011 … Day two impressions from the floor

February 25, 2011 by Dave Haynes

I am sitting in the  airport, heading home and thinking this could be one of those times when I am so bagged I actually can sleep on an airplane.

That and I have my little white sleepy-time pills.

I would love to report that Day Two was when my meetings were cleared off and it was poke around time. Big fail. I did eight meetings and had (I looked) all of 57 minutes to run madly around to even cover off each aisle. 

Some big booths I never did get to. Many smaller areas I just saw at a glance.

What I did learn …

The Harris deal was not bought. They earned it with a lot of love and water and feeding of the client relationship. They also know the ad-driven project is no slam dunk for all involved, but say a  realistic and cautious plan has been developed that should make this thing come off and prosper.

Part of the deal is a big lease to own arrangement. The deal was done the middle of last year and is already well on its way, with 560-plus stores on line so far. The rollout pace is such that Harris is tapping resources it’s government and military services to project-manage the deployment.

Real Digital Media has some big announcements coming up. The long chase and increasingly tough demands on reliability from another deal – that so far has not panned out – ironically teed them up nicely for a different deal that IS in the bag.

The news on that deal is embargoed until next week. It’s in the QSR sector.

Sharp did a booth tour for me. They know they are late in the game but believe they have sales and service models that make them competitive in DS deals.

One VERY clever thing they are doing is thin, angular chrome inserts between the bezels on tiled LCD walls. The chrome reflects the image on the LCD and at a distance makes the seams virtually go away. Not perfect, but not bad.

The show itself looked quite slow on Thursday afternoon. Getting back  to the east coast the same day requires bolting the show by noon or so, an ha was no doubt in play.

I had different opinions on traffic and quality verse quantity of buyers. One thing a senior CEO-type said was the people looking around are FAR higher up the learning curve than in past years.

Good show, all in all. Thanks to Angelo, Chris, Gerri and Richard for their hospitality and help.