ISE 2025 Sixteen:Nine Digital Signage Mixer Sponsor Profile: Reach Media Network

January 30, 2025 by Dave Haynes

It is just a few more sleeps before the 2025 edition of Integrated Systems Europe starts in Barcelona, with the digital signage community kicking things off on the eve of the giant trade show with a Sixteen:Nine networking mixer.

The sold out event – that took all of two hours – happens because of great sponsors who help cover the considerable costs of the evening, including tapas and an open bar.

As always, if you have registered but cannot make it because of changed plans, please let me know, as I have a waiting list of people who would love to come. If you are planning to just show up and sweet talk your way in, please don’t. Same with bringing plus ones or a full posse of your colleagues and friends.

I’d love to wave everyone in, but there is a hard cap on capacity and the food and bev arrangements are based on a fixed and capped number.

I like to thank and recognize the sponsors who put on this event by running company profiles. Here’s a conversation with CEO & Co-Founder Darren Wercinski and EVP of Sales and Marketing Kiersten Gibson from digital signage software and hardware provider REACH Media Network, based in Minnesota.

Your CMS 2.0 recently launched last year – tell me more about your new platform?

KG – Thanks for having us, Dave! Earlier this summer, we began onboarding new customers and select beta user groups into CMS 2.0. This fall, we added an opt-in, opt-out functionality so it’s very easy for existing customers to toggle back and forth.

One of the biggest benefits we’ve seen with CMS 2.0 has been our self-serve platform for our basic functionalities. We continue to pride ourselves on our customer success, service, and onboarding, but it’s great that users can interact with an in-app messaging platform on some basic functions and get the tools needed. In addition, we have a chatbot in CMS 2.0 that has been successful in getting even quicker responses from our team.

Finally, our admin panel is something that we’ve grown. Our permission roles, security, and emergency alert integrations are housed there. It’s very easy for our customers to view their digital signage network from one simple platform.

You also launched your own private-label player device, the DS3. How has that been going?

DW –  The response from our clients has been outstanding! The DS3 provides customers a robust, commercial-grade Windows player with a price point of only $199/each. We’ve always offered our clients a good, better, best strategy based on players, and we still sell a lot of BrightSign Media players, a great partner of ours. The landscape of the industry requires us to accommodate multiple price points for clients. The DS3 really allows us to do that, and clients love that it’s preloaded with our software so it’s a plug-and-play experience for them. All in all, super successful launch in 2024 for the DS3.

What did you see as a growing trend last year and what impact it will have on your goals in 2025?

KG – I’d say the biggest impact on our growth boils down to educating end users and clients on what will add the most value to their digital signage network to expand to other solutions and use cases. That has been a huge success in 2024 and continues to be a big growth opportunity going into 2025.

For example, one of the top solutions we’ve seen as a good expansion opportunity is within our resellers and channel integrator’s customers are KPI production boards. If a client is going to use Microsoft, as an example, we can infer they might be interested in using Power BI. Understanding that they can manage multiple use cases and solutions from one central platform and seamlessly integrate multiple softwares and tools (most that are built-in and self-serve) has been a huge win for us. No matter the industry, utilizing and expanding your digital signage network in meaningful ways proves to be effective.

What are you most proud of coming out of 2024?

DW – I was super proud of how our team battled hard to make 2024 a strong overall year, with a more challenging overall economy. I’m also extremely proud of our team for launching CMS 2.0. That was almost a two-year project in the making and now the fun starts by migrating clients over. Additionally, I was impressed with our overall retention rate, which is a huge deal at REACH. Client retention in 2024 increased to 96% and that’s up from 94% in 2023. It’s a credit to the entire team for being laser-focused on supporting our clients every day.

First time at ISE, what attracted you to attend and what are you hoping to get out of it?

DW – We’ve been doing more international business over the last couple of years and it’s important to meet our clients and industry partners in-person. Kiersten has been talking about the ISE show for several years. This year, we wanted to get a feel for the show and increase our brand exposure as a sponsor at the 16:9 Digital Signage Mixer. Overall, I think it’s going to be a great experience.

Fun fact – we took a company incentive trip to Barcelona about 10 years ago and I’m looking at a picture of the group in my office right now.  I’m actually wearing the same REACH fleece jacket right now and plan to show it off in Europe again. The challenge is out: spot me in my never out-of-style jacket, throw in a compliment and I’ll buy you a beer or two!

How has your brand and collaboration strategies continued to evolve your growth in the industry?

KG – For us, it’s getting our name out there and people knowing who REACH is. There’s been different perceptions of who we are and where we fit in the industry over the years. I think collaboration opportunities continue to help our brand and provide more tailored, turnkey experience as we are engaged with so many different types of customers and projects. We’ve learned a lot in terms of collaborating and partnering with integrators, local distributors, and some of our manufacturing partners.

KG, you are on the Board of Directors for the Digital Signage Federation (DSF) and a big advocate for the industry. Any shameless plug you want to give our readers as to why they should join the DSF and some of the benefits?

KG – Well, I’ll say there are some pretty cool people that I’ve met over the past three to four years now. What you put into DSF is what you get out of it. The first year we upped our membership for REACH and saw a lot of benefits from a marketing and collaboration perspective. We showcased not only our product but also a social perspective of what’s going on within REACH. Education is huge and keeping up with the trends. Things are moving very, very fast in the industry. Utilizing the education benefits that DSF provides and learning from federation members via the networking events has been an enlightening experience.

The 2025 Mixer Sponsors …