I discuss how AI technology is revolutionising the way we communicate across different languages. By using AI for translations, we can ensure messages are understood in various local dialects, enhancing clarity and effectiveness.

Enhancing Communication with AI-Driven Translations

Like many of us, I have been abroad this summer on holiday, and one of the issues I've always faced is when I'm in a country where I don't speak the local language, which is most of them, I don't really know what to order at the restaurant. Thankfully now, with my phone and AI, I can just take a photo of the menu and have a perfect translation. This can also be used on digital signage in environments where the people working there do not speak English as a first language. Historically, getting the nuance of translation right was really difficult. With AI, this is extremely simple, and we can even go towards local dialect. For example, regular Spanish is not the same as Mexican Spanish. And so we can be much more subtle and nuanced in the way that we communicate back to people in a way that they understand. Now, even if the business language is English, we have to be realistic. If you want your message to land, you're much more likely to do it in a language that people genuinely speak rather than speak a fair amount of, or maybe a bit of. So I think that we should be leading into this and acknowledging the reality of the workplace. Because it's no real extra effort, we should be translating content so that the message is landing clearer.

A recent ROI development: integrating with existing systems to pull content feeds that already live inside your business—FirstUp, Unily, OneDrive—and repurposing them to screens automatically based on rules and logic. Your comms team doesn't have to redesign content for each channel. This gives them back enormous amounts of time for more valuable work.

Enhancing Digital Signage with Seamless Integration

A more recent ROI development for digital signage is when we can integrate with existing systems and take feeds of content which already lives inside the business and repurpose that to screens. And that's one of the key parts of the ScreenCloud architecture. So let's say you're using a communications platform like FirstUp or Unily, or even just integrating with things like OneDrive, we can pull those files and those messages which you're already pushing out on those other channels and then repurpose them up onto screen based on rules or logic and filtering and tagging and things like that. So your comms team isn't having to take information from one source and then redesign it and push it out again on another, which often we are finding they have had to do historically. This really just gives them back a huge amount more time to focus on the more nuanced work that's more valuable.

Beyond immediate ROI from print savings, the elephant in the room is measuring productivity impact. A US communications company tested ScreenCloud on alternate floors for three months, then surveyed recall rates. Results were remarkable: recall jumped from 25-30% to 70-80%—but only for snackable content like events and deadlines, not complex storytelling like merger details.

Driving Productivity with Digital Signage Innovations

So I've talked extensively about immediate ROI of using modern digital signage. We've talked about reducing print costs and the time it takes to change those signs on the notice board. We've talked about reducing the burden on IT and automating more content up on the screens for the comms team. But the elephant in the room is clearly the impact of digital signage on driving change and productivity inside of a business. Now, unfortunately, as an industry, we don't really have standard ways of measuring this. Most people are doing it through pulse surveys, employee surveys, and looking for sentiment changes or any anecdotal evidence. We're trying to change that. And actually, I am hearing that there may even be a Google Analytics for Screens coming from the team at Google themselves. But obviously, we work very closely with our customers. We've heard multiple anecdotes of how screens are really driving change. So a very large US communications company was using ScreenCloud in their HQ and decided to initially install it on alternate floors. So some floors had ScreenCloud, some floors just had the notice boards as usual. And after three months, they did a survey based on the types of content that they had shown to see what the improvement on recall rates had been. The results were amazing. So recall rates were averaging, or most of this information, around 25% to 30% by default. When content was then shown on screen, it went up to 70% and 80%. But only for certain types of content. Some content had no impact at all. It was generally content that was more snackable and easy to remember. So it may be a big event or deadline coming up, or an announcement, or a bit of people updates and things like that. When it came to more nuanced storytelling about a recent merger, for example, it hadn't really improved things because probably that content was too complicated for people to pick up in that snackable way. We also worked with another customer recently who was using screens

A recent ROI development is integrating with existing business systems to pull content that already lives inside the organisation—FirstUp, Unily, OneDrive—and repurposing it to screens automatically. Your comms team isn't redesigning the same content for multiple channels. It gives them back significant time to focus on more valuable, nuanced work.

Optimising Digital Signage with Integration

A more recent ROI development for digital signage is when we can integrate with existing systems and take feeds of content which already lives inside the business and repurpose that to screens. And that's one of the key parts of the ScreenCloud architecture. So let's say you're using a communications platform like FirstUp or Unily, or even just integrating with things like OneDrive, we can pull those files and those messages which you're already pushing out on those other channels and then repurpose them up onto screen based on rules or logic and filtering and tagging and things like that. So your comms team isn't having to take information from one source and then redesign it and push it out again on another, which often we are finding they have had to do historically. This really just gives them back a huge amount more time to focus on the more nuanced work that's more valuable. ScreenCloud is a production of the Center for Digital Transformation and the Center for Digital Transformation and the Center for Digital Transformation for the U.S. Department of State. www.sccd.gov

Digital signage delivers immediate ROI by replacing print communication. Organisations save on print costs whilst eliminating the physical labour of updating 100+ noticeboards - a process that can take four hours for a single message change. You can push messages centrally, know they've been delivered, and manage everything from one person.

Optimising Communication with Digital Signage

So, when customers utilize digital science for their communication, they'll often see a correlating drop in print costs. Most of the communication going out historically has been printouts going up on notice boards. So this alone can be quite costly if they're doing it, you know, using a proper print company, or even just really spending loads of paper going out to all of their many, many locations. The other aspect of this is just the physical time. So if you have a large facility, some facilities have upwards of 100 notice boards, someone needs to go around and remove a piece of paper and add in a new one. And if there's any mistakes, they have to go back and do it all again. And we've heard that process taking upwards of four hours just to change one message. And then, of course, you're never quite sure when that's been completed, or if it's even been done at all, or if any have been missed. So there is a big ROI saving immediately by able to just push those messages out onto a screen, know that they've gone out, and have them all managed centrally by just one person.

Digital signage is vital during emergencies - chemical leaks, extreme weather, imminent danger. We've integrated with CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) and emergency providers to ensure fail-safe screen takeovers. Our Stream Deck integration even lets security teams broadcast alerts with a single button press.

Enhancing Safety with Digital Signage Solutions

So an extremely serious use case for digital signage is when there is an emergency situation. So that could be an imminent danger, extreme weather, or could be like a chemical leak, like a gas leak or something like that. So you need to take over those screens, warn the people in that environment what's going on, and then provide them information so that they can get to safety. This needs to be fail-safe. This needs to work all the time, every time. And so as a result, we've partnered with multiple emergency alert providers, because it won't just be the screens that are being utilized here. It will also be going over SMS and other alarm systems. There's an international standard called CAP, which is the Common Alerting Protocol, which we have integrated with and all of these other providers use as well, so that we can make sure that we're receiving the right information and pushing that out to screens quickly. In addition, we've also done integrations with things like a Stream Deck, which allows security teams to just hit a button and do a full cast takeover of ScreenCloud as well, which is quite an interesting innovation on top of our API. But yeah, sadly, this is one of the very important utilizations of screens. But because they're very big and very prominent in public spaces, it's an important part of getting out of an emergency situation, hopefully with everyone safe.

QuickPost lets comms teams publish messages to screens instantly without pre-planning. Just add a title, summary, image and link, and it automatically formats everything with company branding and QR codes. We're adding AI features soon to make this even faster and more powerful.

Effortless Messaging with QuickPost App

So comms teams usually have a content calendar and have planned out all of their creative work, but sometimes they just want to put a message up on the screen quickly. This is especially true if that content manager is local and maybe is running the facility and just wants to get a message out to colleagues that day. So the QuickPost app is a simple way to achieve that. You put just a title, summary, an image or video, a link, and it will repurpose into a really strong, screen-friendly format using the company's branding and turning links into QR codes and things like that. So it makes it very, very fast to publish content. And then that can be managed inside of ScreenCloud with expiry dates, et cetera. This is just the first version, and soon we'll be applying more AI-enhancing features to make this even easier and more powerful in the future. But now you can just get your message up to screen nice and easily.

Emergency alerting is one of the most serious use cases for digital signage. We've integrated with the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and emergency alert providers to enable fail-safe screen takeovers during crises. When seconds matter, screens are vital for getting people to safety.

Ensuring Safety with Emergency Digital Signage

Digital signage lives in public spaces where you're competing for attention, so you need to earn the eyeballs. Think about what your audience needs - practical information that helps them excel - then balance that with your company messages. Get this right and your communications become genuinely effective.

Balancing Content for Effective Digital Signage

So when you're thinking about your content calendar for digital signage, most comms teams will think about what the company objectives are and the information the company wants its employees and teams to see. So that is very much company objectives. However, this is a form of entertainment, and it is in a public space where people could look and do other things rather than look at the screen. So you need to earn the eyeballs. You need to think about the audience needs and what's the information that they want to see. Now, it might not necessarily just be entertainment, although, again, there's nothing wrong with that if it's in a break room, for example. But it might be information that is specifically useful to them. So examples would be more information about maybe management training or job opportunities, or how to change rotor shift schedules, or who's even running the shift. Information which is practical and useful for them to get their job done better and also to excel at the company. And then you need to balance that out with the needs of what the company wants its team to understand and see. If you get that balance right, you earn the eyeballs, and you will get your message across in a much more meaningful way. We call this internally broccoli and ice cream. So you want to eat the broccoli, you've got to give it an ice cream incentive. Some of our product team hate that analogy, but it kind of seems to land. So, you know, if you're giving out lots of broccoli, don't forget to also reward some ice cream too.

When planning digital signage content, you need to balance company objectives with what your audience actually wants to see. I call this 'broccoli and ice cream' - if you're serving up lots of corporate messages, you've got to reward people with content they genuinely find useful or entertaining.

Optimising Digital Signage Content for Employee Engagement

So when you're thinking about your content calendar for digital signage, most comms teams will think about what the company objectives are and the information the company wants its employees and teams to see. So that is very much company objectives. However, this is a form of entertainment, and it is in a public space where people could look and do other things rather than look at the screen. So you need to earn the eyeballs. You need to think about the audience needs and what's the information that they want to see. Now, it might not necessarily just be entertainment, although, again, there's nothing wrong with that if it's in a break room, for example. But it might be information that is specifically useful to them. So examples would be more information about maybe management training or job opportunities, or how to change rotor shift schedules, or who's even running the shift. Information which is practical and useful for them to get their job done better and also to excel at the company. And then you need to balance that out with the needs of what the company wants its team to understand and see. If you get that balance right, you earn the eyeballs, and you will get your message across in a much more meaningful way. We call this internally broccoli and ice cream. So you kind of want to eat the broccoli, you've got to give it an ice cream incentive. Some of our product team hate that analogy, but it kind of seems to land. So, you know, if you're giving out lots of broccoli, don't forget to also reward some ice cream too.

I share insights from a decade in digital signage about the surprising reality of corporate communications teams. Even in 100,000-person organisations, comms teams are typically just 5-7 people managing all channels. Understanding their resource constraints is crucial - we focus on content repurposing and automation to make digital signage effortless rather than another burden.

Streamlining Digital Signage in Large Organisations

So one of the observations that I've made working over the last decade in digital signage is that almost irregardless of how big a company is, the communications team is usually centralized and very small. I've very rarely seen a communications team bigger than, say, five, seven people. And they are responsible for all communication across every channel, all across the business. So they're usually very under-resourced. They don't often have design resource in-house. They may have agencies that they can use. And they're usually flat out, trying to put everything out from whatever the C-level is asking them to do to whatever else they need to do in their content calendar. And so I find that because digital signage is normally a new communication channel for them, that one of their fears is, oh, we're already so busy, can we actually take on this challenge as well, which is a really reasonable thing for them to be worried about. And so we go out of our way to show that, actually, we can repurpose a ton of the content they're already making and just try and make it as automated as possible for them. But yeah, sometimes 100,000-person company still has a comms team of only five. And we need to remember that as an industry when we're talking about screens that communicate.

I explain how ScreenCloud partners with employee communication platforms rather than competing with them. We extend their content to digital screens, reaching deskless and frontline workers who lack access to email and apps. By 'second-lifing' content and using QR codes to drive engagement, we amplify the reach and effectiveness of existing communication tools.

Enhancing Communication with Digital Signage

Does ScreenCloud compete with employee communication platforms? The answer is no. We partner with them. They're producing content and pushing out to digital channels like email and employee apps, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. We add the digital signage component to that platform. So we're taking feeds of it, and we're pushing it up to screen so everyone can see it, like those deskless and frontline workers who might not have access to those other channels. But we're also second-lifing that content, giving it more exposure so people are understanding that message, and then we're driving traffic back into those products via QR codes so people can consume the whole thing. So we're very much a partner and definitely not a competitor.

I discuss why digital signage matters for office-based knowledge workers. Whilst laptop and phone screens dominate their attention, internal communications often gets lost in the noise. Environmental screens can increase information recall rates by 3-4 times, cutting through digital clutter to ensure key messages land effectively.

Boosting Office Communication with Digital Signage

For office-based desk workers or knowledge workers, screens on the walls are simply not as important as the screens in front of them, their laptop or their phone. However, the communication channels on those devices are pretty noisy, and internal communications often gets lost in the mix. So having content pushed out onto screens in their environment is a great way of cutting through the noise and making sure that these key messages are heard and understood. We've seen that recall rates of information can go up three or four times when also amplified on screens and not solely left to platforms on their laptop or on their phone.

I argue that screens currently rank below email, video conferencing, and instant messaging in corporate communications because they're not being used properly. As luminous boxes that tap into subconscious cognition, strategically-deployed screens should be fundamental communication tools.

Maximising the Impact of Digital Screens in Communication

Are screens as important as email to most companies? The answer is no. Email is probably at the top, video conferencing number two, maybe number three would be instant messaging on Slack or Teams, etc. Screens are probably the slightly awkward cousin you have to invite to Christmas of the communication mix, and that's because they're not being used properly. However, they are big, bright, luminous boxes which attract our attention and tap into our subconscious cognition. So done right, screens should be a fundamental part of the communication mix, but it does mean you need to do them correctly and really think about your strategy and what you're trying to communicate to your audience when and where. And that's what we're trying to achieve with these videos so that one day screens are as important as email.

I examine communication challenges for deskless workers, where only 5-10% have IT logins. Companies email managers hoping messages get printed or passed on, creating inconsistent delivery with 4-hour update delays. Digital signage provides a reliable, centrally-controlled alternative.

Enhancing Communication with Digital Signage Solutions

We know that companies with a lot of deskless and frontline workers overwhelmingly rely on email, word-of-mouth, and printed notice boards as their primary forms of communication. Now, the problem here is that most of those workers don't have an IT login, only 5% to 10%, which means they don't have an email address, and they don't have access to those company information tools. So we're emailing people who don't have an email address, but what we're actually doing is emailing their line manager and hoping that that message is passed on through word-of-mouth or is printed out and stuck on the notice board. The issue here is that that is extremely inconsistent in how it's delivered. Sometimes it's delivered brilliantly, sometimes maybe not at all. And if you want to update that message, it can be up to four hours for a printed piece of material to be switched over, again, if it's even switched over at all. Now, when information is out of date, it's not trusted, so it's no longer a source of truth. With digital signage, we have an opportunity to have a natural digital communication channel in the work environment in front of those deskless and frontline workers, which we know we can control centrally, but also give a little bit of local power as well. So this is just a more natural way of communicating in these environments and something that we should be embracing more. Thank you.

I argue for balancing centralised corporate content with local contributions in digital signage. Whilst leadership messages are important, one-way communication feels like propaganda; allocating 25-30% of schedules to local voices creates more authentic engagement.

Balanced Content Strategy for Effective Digital Signage

Red alert, red alert, corporate propaganda coming your way. That's how most workers think about communication when it comes from head office and just broadcasts out on the screen, via email, on the company app. It's just top-down flow of information. Most comms is centralized, and for a very good reason. The leadership of the company wants people to stay on the same page and be getting those updates. There's nothing wrong with that. But if that traffic is flowing one way, especially in this modern world where people want to have more of a say, more of a voice, it doesn't really reflect on the environment or the voices locally of the people in front of those screens. So we need to consider a balance in the way that we're scheduling content. Of course, we need the centralized content. Maybe that's two thirds, three quarters of it. But we need to partition an amount of the calendar and the schedule to allow for local management and even local members of the team to also contribute content to those screens so it feels more reflective of the world as they see it. And even a way to pass content and information back upstream, maybe through a QR code to a feedback form or something like that. If it's all one-way traffic, people are going to be potentially even put off or angry about it, and it won't reflect the reality of their world.

I discuss digital signage's unique advantage over other channels: knowing precisely where your audience is when they see your message. Unlike emails or notifications, screens provide guaranteed location context, enabling highly targeted calls-to-action.

Maximising Impact with Strategic Digital Signage

There are so many things about screens which set them apart from every other digital channel. And I think one of the most important ones there is that you know exactly where the audience is going to be when they see that message, because you physically placed the screen up on that wall. Right, now this is different to say, sending an email or even sending a notification as you're doing some kind of sophisticated tracking and push. You have no idea at what point that email will be read. Maybe it's read at home, maybe it's read at work or the commute or something like that. But when someone sees that message on that screen, you know that they are there. Now that gives you a unique context, which you just don't get through other digital channels. And that really should be considered in how you're planning out your content. So if you want to trigger a specific action to happen in this environment, this is your opportunity to do so. You know that they are there, you know the time that they are there, and then you can really trigger what you want to happen next. And that is quite unusual in digital to have that opportunity. So think about that more when you're planning out your content.

I explore how audience mindset shifts throughout the day and week, and why this matters for digital signage messaging. Morning audiences think about work tasks whilst evening audiences focus on home life, requiring different content strategies for the same physical location.

Optimising Screen Messaging for Audience Mindset

So when you think about the screens and the various locations they're in, you also need to consider the likely traffic flows going in front of those screens. What we mean here is if you just take a typical day, a screen may be in a break room. Now, that break room at some points is going to swell with activity, maybe just before the working day or a shift begins, and then other times it may be completely empty or very, very sparsely used. There's also differences. It may be that as the traffic's coming in in the morning, what's the mindset of that audience as that traffic swell occurs? They're thinking about what they're about to work on. So the messaging that you put out in front of them should probably be related to something they're actually going to be able to action immediately in the working day. Now, as they come back into that break room after the shift or at the end of the day, their mindset has shifted. They're now thinking about going home and their family and things like that. There may be still messages that you want to get in there, maybe a message of praise, a reward, or opportunities that they may have internally, like a management training program or other job opportunities, or if they're enrolling in benefits that might impact their family, maybe that's something that they want to talk to their family about. So screens in the same location, even to the same audience, but the traffic and the time of day is obviously quite important, and then the mindset of that traffic is important too. Now, that expands out further as you think about the week. Is Monday different to Friday or the weekend? Or even do you have traffic flows during the night? Do you have a night shift or a cleaning team who's coming in and possibly seeing those screens as well? Have you considered what message you'd like to put in front of them? And if it's more in a commercial setting, you've got the traffic flows of your team setting up the store or location, or the actual customers