Technology: Big screening

Plasma screens aren't just good for watching sports, you can use them to advertise products and promotions. Phil Mellows takes a screen test.

Plasma screen technology is steadily transforming the way pubs deliver entertainment and marketing messages across a large swathe of the industry. It's not just trendy high street venues - community and sports-led houses are investing in the sharper, brighter big screens.

And now firm evidence is emerging that, with the right content, these screens can both boost business and a pub's image among its customer base.

Programme provider Avanti Screenmedia, the company that grew out of Diageo's Translucis, the pioneer in the market, has commissioned £2m of independent research, principally to demonstrate the medium's effectiveness to potential advertisers. But the results are also interesting from the trade's point of view.

Among the mainly young customers interviewed, 23 per cent said screens showing Avanti programming encouraged them to visit the bar more often and 27 per cent said it meant they stayed longer.

Two-thirds of the sample said the screens "improved the atmosphere" and 78 per cent expected plasma screens to be a feature of bars and clubs into the future.

Sales of drinks promoted on-screen rose by 33 per cent more than they did where only traditional point-of-sale was used, suggesting plasma is particularly useful when a licensee wants to push a profitable line.

It all depends on what you put on the screens, though, as the Avanti research makes clear. Perhaps the key message to come through is the popularity of music videos.

A year ago Avanti launched MVN - Music Video Network - to add to its existing Magnetic programming. While Magnetic is pure "eye candy" a silent mix of action, lifestyle, comedy and visual arts, plus advertising - MVN, now in about 250 outlets, offers four music video channels, each tailored to a different audience, mood or time of day.

While research from bars with Magentic was good, MVN bars scored better on almost every count, says Lance Clatworthy, Avanti's head of research.

It isn't just that people will watch the videos themselves. They also take more notice of the messages in-between. In one test a dummy message was screened for 15 seconds, eight times an hour, and customers were asked if they'd seen it.

While only 16 per cent of those watching Magnetic recognised it, the figure shot up to 29 per cent for MVN.

"It shows people are engaging more with the screens when there are music videos," says Lance. "They will say that it's not just ads, that the bar is giving them something."

Avanti's service is focused on the younger end of the market - in a week about 2.6 million of them visit bars that feature programming - and that determines the content.

But plasma screens are appearing in more community pubs with an older age profile, especially those that show sport, and although Avanti has no intention of broadening its audience beyond the under-35s, its latest venture - launched earlier this month - promises a much more flexible range of uses for plasma screens.

Dubbed MVN Genie, the multiple channel system currently being pioneered in SFI's Litten Tree pubs offers not only a choice of silent programming and music videos but live sports coverage and the opportunity for flesh-and-blood DJs to step in and select music videos from the 1,500 tracks in the MVN library. It also includes ads, of course, and can be branded to fit the outlet.

Avanti sales and marketing director Paul Walsh boldly describes Genie as "a complete bar audio-visual service".

"If a bar shows a lot of sport it is not commercially viable for us," he says. "You can't usually sell ads around sport. But a multiple channel enables a bar to switch over to sport for the big football matches and do it all with one package.

"You have pubs now that switch between sport and a music channel like MTV, but you can't show promotions and you have no control over the ambience.

"We can look at the strategy of the brand or bar, tailor the music to different day-parts and give the programming a distinct identity."

And Genie, he adds, has the potential to build on more services in the future, such as pre-match football programmes and on-screen quizzes with mobile phone answering.

"It will become something that can really be used to sell a retail brand to its customers," says Paul.

Kind of content that people say make them visit and stay longer​

• Music videos:​ 33 per cent
• Sexy people:​ 18 per cent
• Drinks promos:​ 13 per cent
• Texting to screen:​ 11 per cent
• Cool and funny ads:​ 9 per cent
• Comedy clips:​ 7 per cent
• Future event ads:​ 7 per cent
• Live footage of bar:​ 6 per cent

That figures...​

• 23 per cent of people would visit a bar more if it had plasma screens
• 27 per cent would stay longer when they were there
• 31 per cent of people in the bar look at the screen in any 30 second period
• 79 per cent are aware of what's on the screen
• Sales of products promoted on-screen rise on average 33 per cent
• 2 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds were not happy with the screens
• 55 per cent said the screens weren't just ads, they gave something back.

Taking the research further​

Avanti's research not only interviewed customers in bars, it used focus groups and sophisticated techniques such as cameras on screens to see the viewers and infra-red traffic counters to measure how many people entered and left the bar and at what times.

EPoS data also came in useful, of course, to determine whether an ad for a product has really improved sales.

As well as demonstrating the effectiveness of different kinds of plasma screen content, it also gave an insight into the kind of promotions that worked best, something even pubs without screens could learn from.

Promotions were shown to drive people into an outlet and increase the length of time spent there but the results suggested it was possible to improve their appeal.

Here's some of the conclusions drawn by Avanti:

• Promotions work best on big brands but they can also encourage people to try new drinks
• Bars could improve advance commmunication of what promotions are on
• Promotions need to fit with the venue's personality - buy-one-get-one-frees don't work in a style bar
• People like to start the evening in a bar with promotions before moving on
• A-boards can attract customers but in the bar it's moving images that catch the eye.

Case study​

Plasma screens are an integral part of SFI Group's revitalisation of its Litten Tree branded bars and the chain is pioneering Avanti Screenmedia's new MVN Genie entertainment system.

The screens deliver bespoke entertainment which includes music, imaging, live sports, promotional messages, third party advertising and a live DJ interface.

The MVN channel is tailored to the Litten Tree's audience through the day and DJs in the evening can select tunes from the system's music video library.

For events such as hen hights or 70s-themed parties the bar's manager can play a specially-composed schedule of music and live feeds from Sky are available for the big match.

The screens also show a new set of promotional messages, advertising Litten Tree's products and services, while SFI gets income through Avanti for other ads shown.

"Litten Tree is many things to many different people," comments SFI director of marketing Martyn Parry.