The New Voice of Business: Electronic Message Centers

In this fast-paced world, outdoor signage systems must meet the needs of increasingly mobile viewers. Electronic message centers (EMCs) have gained popularity with businesses because they quickly inform passersby about a client’s identity, location and focus.

To better serve a mobile society, businesses use EMCs to communicate a sales message to passersby traveling near the point of purchase. Additionally, many businesses see these signs as a community service and include local messages as part of public-announcement alerts.

Most major LED sign manufacturers have acknowledged increased growth in this sign category. Thus, to learn firsthand how electronic advertising has changed clients’ outdoor efforts, ST talked with two sign-project-integration companies, Millennium Visual Systems (Chestnut Ridge, NY), an LED-display manufacturer, and La Crosse Sign Co. Inc. (La Crosse, WI), a sign-system value-added reseller, about their most recent EDS projects.Millennium Visual Systems

Paul Fuchsel, president of La Crosse Sign Co., said, "Beyond the usual reasons of [EMCs’] lower cost and energy efficiency is the practical necessity of how we use electronic-message signage because of the transient society we are evolving into."

Fair-ly uptown

Millennium Visual Systems (MVS) is a project integrator/value-added reseller that specializes in providing EMC solutions for various business needs. A recent MVS LED client, Fairway, is one of Manhattan’s largest, upscale, gourmet supermarkets, with additional sites in Queens and Brooklyn, NY.

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MVS initially helped Fairway upgrade its old, incandescent sign near Fairway’s highly visible, uptown location at 125th St. on the West Side.

"Fairway’s old sign had seen better days," said MVS President Dave Goldberg. "Its former incandescent display was at least 13 years old and wasn’t in good shape." MVS suggested a state-of-the-art, EMC replacement. The ensuing three-year project included the initial presentation, negotiations, engineering, financing, manufacturing, installation, training and follow-through.

Goldberg said Fairway executives were swayed by LEDs’ energy and cost savings in reduced maintenance and bulb replacements.

"Furthermore," Goldberg said, "an LED message center dramatically increases the daylight visibility of the sign’s presence. It also allows them to support the community by participating in the Amber Alert system with timely emergency messages."

|2335| (Dallas) manufactured Fairway’s double-faced, 10-ft.-high x 56-ft.-wide LED display, which overlooks north and south traffic flow. Goldberg said, "We positioned the display directly over Fairway’s building, on top of a billboard on the roof of the building. You can’t miss it."BillBoard Video, Inc

MVS trained Fairway’s staff to regularly maintain and manage content. The EMC board splits content between the supermarket’s brand-awareness efforts, its product advertising, community messages and a series of "quipsical and occasionally provocative" social messages, according to Randi Glickberg, a Fairway spokesperson.

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"We use the message center to offer social commentary, and it has definitely caught the public’s attention", Glickberg continued. "It’s all done in a friendly spirit of trying to get people to think. Our messages range from commenting on personalities, politicians and current events."

One of Fairway’s first messages parodied Donald Trump’s TV program The Apprentice. The show’s tagline, "You’re fired!," inspired Fairway to run the message, "Donald Trump, You Should Fire Your Hairdresser." Another message quoted Ben Franklin, "Beer is proof that God exists, and he wants us to be happy."

Glickberg said the company carefully alternates "quipsical" messages with their product-awareness messages. "People definitely read them," she said. "When we have commentary about one of the two major political parties or a remark on a strong social issue, we receive many e-mail responses regarding our messages. Using our new EMC to present our commentaries provides us with an opportunity to stay immediately involved with our surrounding community."

Banking on EMCs

The popular ascent of EMCs has spread from major urban areas to the greater metropolitan regions of the U.S. heartland to achieve the same purpose — so that businesses can communicate more effectively with their customers.

La Crosse Sign Co. has been working with the surrounding business community for the past 88 years. The company manufactures, installs and services custom commercial and electric signs throughout the Midwest. The company has been selling EMCs, in addition to their existing, sign-product inventory, since the mid-1990s.

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EMCs comprise approximately 10% of La Crosse’s sales. Fuchsel said, "The interest in EMC usage is a growing phenomenon, and we have seen our annual percentage of sales in this sign format double each of the last three years. Not only are EMC signs popular because of their low-end cost and maintenance, but also because they’re better understood by the customers who buy them."

La Crosse Sign Co. sales rep Tom Woodard agreed. He observed that more companies are using EMCs to advertise their business services and build a greater rapport between the client and the local community.

Woodward cited a Daktronics Inc. full-color, 3-ft. 7-in.-tall x 9-ft.-long, 20mm-pitch Galaxy EMC, with a 48 x 144-pixel resolution, which was sold to the State Bank of Arcadia, WI. The sign package comprises a single-face cabinet with an internally illuminated, vinyl decorated, 4-ft.-tall x 11-ft.-long, polycarbonate, pan-face ID, which included the bank’s name and logo, and, directly below that, the EMC. The sign was installed on a free-standing, double-pole structure that faces the intersection of the two, major, Arcadia highways.Daktronics Inc.

The sign has made a major difference in alerting the community about the State Bank of Arcadia’s range of services, which include community-related events.

Kris Kabus, an Arcadia branch manager, noted, "The bank now offers such Dept. of Motor Vehicle services as license-plate renewal. Any time I put that DMV message on our EMC board, we see a definite increase in customer activities related to our DMV services. With such definite and consistent customer traffic, we know people are paying attention to our message center."

The local community quickly noticed the sign, Kabus said. "People immediately began to bring their calendar activities to us, and we began to sponsor community events, including school plays and concerts, church fundraisers and local, nursing-home activities."

A double winner

While businesses haven’t scientifically monitored how EMCs split their message text between advertising and community service, anecdotal evidence suggests EDC centers have become a double winner, which has increased their efficacy as a critical media tool in building customer interest in a client’s business.

Similarly, automated time-and-temperature, or "Double T," signs had immediately impacted the increasingly mobile, consumer culture of the early 1950s. Today’s EMCs continue to connect people to the world around them with more specific, community information. No doubt the sign’s importance as a public-announcement service will shine as brightly as the messages streaming across its sign face.