Ziris Canvas review from Screen EXPO 2009

Having been at the forefront of out of home media development for over 10 years, events such as Screen Expo provide a valuable way of benchmarking the health and evolution of this emerging & innovative media space. Encouragingly, even in these difficult financial times, the digital out-of-home sector’s commitment to innovation was clearly evidenced this year, as demonstrated by the considerable investment in new thinking & innovation by exhibitors.

One of the most significant developments at the show this year related to screen usage. Often it is said (and rightly so) that what you put on a screen is critical to the success of any digital network, but rarely in the past has the screen itself been a focal point for attracting viewers and for contributing value to the overall viewer proposition.

Sony Professional, who were showcasing their new Ziris Canvas solution, seemed to have identified this. On their stand at several meters in diameter was a unique installation that was both instantly appealing and visually impactful. Here, Sony had combined multiple high definition screens and co-operatively placed them next to each other, in a variety of aspects and different angles to create what I can only describe as a digital artwork.

Across the entire digital canvas, highly engaging content ran seamlessly through these screens, which when coupled with the high definition screens themselves, created a visual proposition that combined both screen and screen content harmoniously. I also noticed that the screens did not have to fit flush and therefore any number of them could be angled in three dimensions to ‘wrap around’ columns, concave or convex walls and so forth.

Quite often in out of home environments, it is screen content that has to work especially hard to gain viewer attention. In most instances, the screens themselves provide little visual impact or viewer value. Not so with Ziris Canvas. If the advertising mantra of “the medium is the message” still rings true today, then Ziris Canvas provides a considerable helping hand to the core message by providing additional visual impact which works hand in hand with on-screen content, bridging the traditional gap between form (the screen) and function (the content). This helps the viewer understand more precisely the interrelationship between the screen, the proposition and the environment.

Until recently, the technology to deliver a seamless high quality multi-screen presentation was either complex, difficult to deliver or both. Consequently very few screen deployments have any real sense of joined up thinking. Given that Ziris Canvas joins many of these dots, it’s no surprise to me that it has been nominated in the “Digital Media Innovative Equipment” category at the European POPAI Awards to be held in Paris in June.

Ziris Canvas provides an example of an innovative way network developers, retailers and brands can enhance their thinking into why screen media matters, from how it is perceived by viewers to how it is delivered in the built environment. Today, it’s not just about designing relevant, accessible and meaningful content but about how content and “the medium of screens” are best designed together to create a much more playful, creative and meaningful proposition that should ultimately lead to enhanced viewer value which in turn should act as an additional commercial driver for digital out of home stakeholders.

Chris Heap

Chris has been involved in the creation, deployment, management and measurement of DOOH networks (audio, visual and hybrid) for over 10 years and can claim to have worked on some of the largest or path-finding retail deployments in the UK for a number of leading traditional & digital out of home media businesses.

Chris currently runs the Imperative Group, independent marketing services, new product development & insight agency which specialises in early stage digital network development. He holds a BA in Consumer Psychology, is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and sits on POPAIdigital’s UK steering group and the Advocacy Committee of POPAI U.S.