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Since beginning this column last fall, I’ve attempted to point to trends, analysis and reports that gauge the development of digital signage and identify the strengths and opportunities for this emerging medium.

I’m not alone on this mission. An excellent white paper from Profitable Channels makes a strong case for digital signage networks as an effective advertising medium with the ability to compensate for deficiencies in television advertising manifested in increasingly fragmented audiences, digital video recording and its accompanying commercial zapping, and the lack of certainty in measuring audience metrics.

The white paper presents highlights of a larger in-depth report entitled Adding Out-of-Home Digital Advertising Networks to the Marketing and Media Mix by Profitable Channels partner Stephen Diorio.

The white paper makes a strong case that marketers should take digital advertising seriously. It’s in the best interest of their companies, the white paper contends, to make sure their agency partners are considering digital advertising networks as part of the marketing/media mix. Additionally, it recommends marketers should be setting aside a portion of their marketing budgets for this emerging new medium.

According to the white paper, emerging digital advertising networks offer five advantages over traditional media offerings, including:
measurable sales impact
proximity to the sale
better ways to target media
greater relevance to the product being sold
tighter integration with local selling efforts

Many marketers have begun to recognize those benefits. The white paper points out that as of August 2006, 37 of the 50 largest supermarket chains are rolling out, piloting or planning for in-store digital signage networks and that more than 4,000 big-box retail stores display in-store video advertising. Further evidence supporting that marketers see the value of digital ad networks comes in the form of budget allocation.

Referencing research from Veronis Suhler Stevenson, Carat Media and others, the document asserts that by 2011 up to $40 billion of traditional media spending will be shifted into new media. Obviously, a large portion of this will be devoted to Internet advertising and other new media, but digital advertising networks stand to benefit as well.

This reallocation of media spending reflects a shift in consumer attention away from traditional newspaper and broadcast media to the Internet and new digital media, including cell phones, video games, podcasting, and out-of-home digital advertising networks, the white paper says.

It is important to note that the report lumps cinema into the overall digital media networks category without distinguishing between commercials and still ads projected on-screen by digital projectors and digital signage in and around motion picture theaters to promote films. Equally important to understand is that the former is likely to be significantly larger than the latter at this point. Regardless, the white paper identifies the overall strength of digital advertising networks, of which digital signage is an important part, and the likelihood that they will only continue to grow.

Perhaps best of all, the white paper identifies five separate research organizations that have found consumers like digital advertising networks. All show these networks have value to, acceptance by and positive response from consumers.

If you only have time to read one report this summer, spend it reading Adding Out-of-Home Digital Advertising Networks to the Marketing and Media Mix by Stephen Diorio.

The Shanghai Girls is a term for a particular style of advertising from the 1920s and 1930s that depicted very modern, beautiful women from Shanghai, China. These posters advertised a wide variety of products, including cigarettes, gum, batteries, perfume, medicine and many others. Shanghai experienced a population boom in the 1920s, when thousands of Russians and Jewish immigrants fled the Soviet Union after World War I. By the early 1930s, Shanghai had become the worlds fifth largest city, and was the residence of approximately 100,000 foreigners. The eyes of the world were on the city, and Shanghai became known as the news capital of China due to an increased world interest in the Far East and mounting concern regarding the Wests relations with Japan. The intrigue regarding this distant land may have influenced the incredible popularity of the Shanghai Girls ads of the early 20th century. Shanghai was also known to be a pioneer in the fashion industry, and the Shanghai Girls were considered to be glamorous fashion icons.

Though Shanghai is almost as far east as one could travel, the city boasted cutting-edge technology and a decidedly Western appearance. Around 1900, there was an immense push in Shanghai to modernize everything. Amenities and advancements born in the West such as elevators, air conditioning, neon lighting and department stores, popped up in Shanghai almost immediately. In 1882, Shanghai was the first city in China to install electric street lighting. The Easts fascination with the West (and vice versa) was perfectly complemented in the Shanghai Girls advertisements. The Shanghai Girls flawlessly melded the delicate, painstaking beauty of the East with the trendy, progressive advancements and desires of the West.

When a region seeks to modernize, its not unusual for the media to become more provocative in an effort to revise social stigmas and taboos. The Shanghai Girls were a good example of this common trend. The Shanghai Girls advertisements featured beautiful Asian women in vivid, colorful detail. Though the ads were meant to promote products, the ads themselves were works of art. The ads and other paraphernalia were generally reproduced from hand-painted artwork that was signed by the artist who created it. In addition to the beauty of the pieces, advertisers made the most of the motto sex sells, by sometimes featuring the ladies in revealing outfits. Revealing at that time sometimes meant featuring women in a short, form-fitting chi-pao, or classic Asian one-piece dress. Other ads presented women in even more alluring and provocative clothing.

The challenge to old-fashioned expectations of women didnt end with the clothing they wore in the advertisements. The women of Shanghai wanted to modernize not only their look, but their freedoms as well. Women were depicted in roles previously unfamiliar in Chinese culture, such as playing a European game of billiards. Until this point, women featured in Chinese paintings appeared in artwork for the sole purpose of being admired by men. In a sense, the women of older paintings suffered a decrease in social status simply by appearing in them. While the Shanghai Girls certainly used their sexual prowess to garner attention, it was on their terms. Instead of being only a pretty face with no real sense of purpose, these modern ladies held the subtle power to mesmerize a multitude of nations.

Carl Crow, a Missouri writer born in 1884, started the first Western advertising agency in Shanghai, which he managed for 19 years of his life. Crow is mostly credited with spearheading the marketing phenomenon of the Shanghai Girls. Crow was also the founding editor of the Shanghai Evening Post, and wrote 13 books during his lifetime. The Shanghai he met upon his arrival in 1911 was not the same Shanghai when he left 25 years later. The enormous economic boom had transformed the city immensely and Crow had transformed its role in advertising.

Advertising paraphernalia featuring the Shanghai Girls is very popular and collectable. One will find that the women who appear in older Shanghai advertisements from the turn of the 20th century are not nearly as captivating as the ones in the 20s and 30s. Additionally, the artwork is not nearly as vibrant and charismatic as its contemporary counterparts. Both original and reproduction advertising products, postcards and posters featuring the Shanghai Girls remain in high demand, even almost 100 years later.