If you can read this... you can rent an apartment!

Fellow consultant and blogger Dave Haynes published an article yesterday about a local (Toronto) digital signage company that is getting into the apartment rental market.

The idea may not be as strange as it sounds and I agree with David on these points:

• The content needs to be big, bold and simple.  If the picture on his blog is reflective of the final product, I can see a lot of problems.  There is way too much text and it looks tiny. I guess we're not targeting most 50+ tenants with these signs because you probably need to walk right up to the screen to read what's being displayed.  There is no way someone driving by be able to read this screen.
  
• The application may be better served with a large format LED or other type of high impact outdoor screen.  I would also be really concerned about issues with the sun washing out the image or with  reflections making the thing unreadable from some angles.  There are many outdoor applications that use smaller size screens (I am thinking here of the Tim Hortons drive-throughs for example) but you're inches away from these things, the content is high impact and the screens are BRIGHT.
  
• There is a definite risk of vandalism.  The screens look encased in some type of weatherproof case which is good but I shudder at the thought of some hooligan taking a baseball bat to this thing. Never mind the graffiti and assorted other indignities this will certainly face.  Better hope they have a webcam pointed at the screen.  They may need it as a deterrent (or for evidence gathering).
  

I looked at the company's other products and they seem to have a good business based on restaurant menu boards.  Their installations look very well executed and quite professional.  I suspect they come at this from a  web site design background and found a way to re-purpose their material for digital signage use.  It also makes lots of sense sense to leverage their content management system to support their digital signage installations.  It's a nice extension of the business.

I am more concerned with seeing what is better suited as a wall mounted digital concierge board used as a digital sign to increase the drive-by (or in this case, probably walk-by) rental business. Seems to me this application would be better served by using more visually effective content with a tie-in to MMS or Bluetooth to push out info about the rental units available.

It's certainly interesting and it gets me thinking about other untapped opportunities like adding cross-property promotions...  Perhaps integrate local business advertising to help promote the area or even partner with the city and push useful information as part of the loop.  Lots of opportunities there when you think about it.

Criticism aside, I wish these folks well and hope this works out for them.  It's always good to see people take digital signage into new directions and test new opportunities.