Sitting at my local car dealership the other morning, waiting in the lounge area for my car maintenance to be finished, I couldn’t help but notice how everyone’s eyes were on their phone, or computer (myself included) vs watching what was running on the lounge TV screen. I believe something related to science and space was on and as much as I might find that topic interesting at another time, it’s not really where my mind was at, at 8 am in the morning. I wasn’t engaged.  In contemplation of this, I confirmed a few truths. One, for lack of something better to do or watch, it’s obviously so much better to be viewing something of your own and on your own terms, that you’re actually interested in when you’re in a “waiting” environment. Two, without compelling content to “engage” you, there’s absolutely no point in having a TV in any waiting area because it’s wasted real estate space unless someone is actually watching. Given a choice, between reading old magazines on a coffee table or watching relevant and engaging content on a well-positioned TV, it’s an easy answer for guests in a wait environment. It’s time to turn wait times into an informative and engaging experience.

If engagement is missing, your screens are failing to deliver.

Unfortunately, this scenario of utter lack of engagement is everywhere. If you go out into the world each day, you’re bound to see digital signage failures everywhere.  With multiple things to get done each day, we each in our own way want to find the path that’s most efficient with as little interruptions as possible. There’s so much digital signage everywhere that it mostly blends into the background. When you fill up at the gas station, do you stay outside your car and watch the small screen above the pump, or do you like me, get back into your car and wait for the fill up to finish?  At the doctor’s office, while you wait for what seems like longer and longer periods of time these days, do you spend those precious moments watching what’s running on the waiting room TV screen, or do you check back into social media, send some work emails, or fire off a few texts in order to multi-task? Ask yourself this, at what point is any piece of content on any of these screens going to make you look up and “watch”? If you do watch, what will you absorb and take away that’s relevant and informative, or at the very least, entertaining?

We’re conditioned these days to ignore a lot of “outside noise” because let’s face it, there are distractions and interruptions everywhere and digital signage is no exception. I don’t need, nor want more background “noise” unless it’s giving me something back that I find relatable, and enjoyable. Network programmers and media managers of these screens have got to start understanding that having a captive audience sitting in front of their screens is a powerful tool that needs to be taken seriously and approached with a mindset of offering something of value. How and what you communicate on your TV screens contributes to whether the waiting room experience is enjoyable or downright agonizing.