Case Study: Smart Notice boards

October 29, 2020

by Anvesh Mantena

Anvesh Mantena is Co-Founder & COO of Intelisa with over a decades experience as a digital technology consultant across global markets like US, Japan, Germany & India.

Executive Summary:

The trend for integrated townships with private living, high security, and advanced amenities has been on a steep rise over the last couple of decades. It perfectly combines privacy of space with a taste of community and built-in amenities, and has created a one-stop destination to family living.

Privacy is an integral part of a township. The residents do not want to be disturbed by salesman at their doors, or pesky marketing material that filter through barriers. However, from the viewpoint of brands, these customers need to be reached in order to communicate offerings.

This is evident from the fact that these Housing societies receive an average of 20 requests every day for access!

Intelisa, the next-gen digital signage solution, in partnership with a prominent media agency created an innovative WIN-WIN solution for such housing societies as well as marketers by deploying large LED TV’s at strategic locations across societies. These screens were divided into two parts, with one part controlled by the media agency to run advertisements and marketing material (ads), while the other part managed by the township as a smart notice board for internal communication.

This greatly reduced the operational effort required by society for internal Communication by 80%. The communication on screens has 85% higher engagement and retention compared to posters on notice boards. This automatically brought high viewership for ads that were running in parallel.

Business Scenario and Challenges:

Let us take one housing society in which we deployed our solution – With 14 blocks and 2000 family residents, there is evidently a continuous stream of communication and the management of the same. It is a mini-city in itself with a lot of planning, be it for maintenance, day-to-day essentials, events, celebration, etc. A management team is generally constituted who is responsible for making the choices on a lot of these daily activities and these have to be communicated effectively to all the residents. Here were the challenges the management team used to face:

  • Everyday, on an average, there is at least 1 notice that needs to be communicated to all residents.  The old method of having a person reach every house to communicate the message is unviable with 2000 units.
  • With the plethora of email that people receive on a daily basis, these society emails are lost in the clamour.
  • Social messaging chats like WhatsApp can only accommodate 256 people so having multiple different WhatsApp groups makes it difficult to manage.
  • Physical Notice board at lift lobbies were an option. However, this involved operational challenges of physically putting up the notices and monitoring them, as well as a lot of printing involved.

While all this was internal communication, there were external factors as well. On an average, the society received at least 20 requests from various prominent brands for distributing product promotions, for door-to-door marketing access, for placing posters on notice boards, and so on.  The advent of COVID-19 has forced societies to follow a strict check on people entering and leaving society.

How Intelisa Helped:

Intelisa in partnership with a popular media house in Hyderabad developed a unique offering to address multiple challenges of the township.  Large 55 inch UHD digital screens were placed strategically across key places throughout the township. Intelisa’ s technology split these screens in a 60-40 ratio, where 60% was offered to partner media agency to run external ads/promotions while 40% was offered to the Society management to run Internal communication messages.

Each party had a unique login without any interference with each other All the advertisement request were now routed to the media house there by reducing the burden on the society, Intelisa’s capability allowed the Media agency to:

  • Run hyperlocal advertisement all from their office in regular time slots
  • Update ads with a click of a few buttons in real-time
  • Preview the content playing on each of the screens in real-time
  • Screen status reporting (ON/OFF) as well as quickly troubleshoot in case of issues.
  • Directly email customers with details on their ads total screen time and its repetition frequency.

Similarly, the society passed a resolution to keep all internal communication on these new digital notice boards, thereby reducing the operational challenges of having to print notices or having to send door to door messages. Intelisa’s capability allowed society to:

  • Schedule notices in the form of PDF files
  • Live preview the content playing on the screen, add/modify/delete notices with a click of a few buttons.
  • Run engaging content like event photos, competitions, video messages, etc.
  • Earn additional revenue for all the advertisements that are routed through the media agency by society.

Results, Return on Investment and Future Plans:

Intelisa’s Digital signage solution offering has built an opportunity for marketers to reach out to the customer closer to their homes, in a non-pervasive way and in the process also has enabled housing society to adopt the digital platform for internal communication and reduce operations overhead creating a WIN-WIN situation for all the stakeholders.
The following are the key benefits for each of the stakeholders:

Housing Society:

  • Increase in revenue from advertising income for the society.
  • Increased awareness of maintenance updates and participation in community events. As per the society, participation in events has increased by at least 50% percent, after the introduction of digital notice boards.
  • Printing for notices completely eliminated (>95%), which is one step closer to making the society eco-friendly and resulting in a cost-saving of at least 10% on monthly stationary expenses.
  • Avoid access to external people moving inside the society for marketing purposes, thereby ensuring higher security compliance which includes Covid safety protocols.
  • Increase access to bulk marketing deals offered exclusively for the society from hyperlocal brands.

Marketing Agency:

  • Access to a targeted set of audience, as close to the home as possible.
  • 70-90% ad slot utilization, on any day with a lot of request from SME and hyperlocal companies.
  • Ability to add/delete/modify marketing content from their office in real time without any other operational overhead.
  • Very high viewership estimated to be at least 40% of the residents on a daily basis. Given that these notice board were the key means for internal communication, almost every resident would pause to take note of the screen communication.
  • Real-time reports to track and monitor campaigns on various different screens.
  • Run all kinds of media be it video, images, document, or directly stream from the Internet.
  • Transparent reporting on total screen time as well as advertisement  repetition frequency across all the screens

COVID-19 has only accelerated the Returns for the marketing agencies with more and more brands trying to look for media as close to the consumer’s home as possible. With the success of this model, the agency is already in talks with more societies to replicate and expand.

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