Outdoor LED display: moving closer from commercial attributes to social attributes?

"The name, case number, amount owed, and address of the person subject to execution for breach of trust..." Many citizens saw such a special scene on the streets of Fuzhou recently. On the huge LED display in the downtown area, what was scrolling was not an advertisement, but the names of dozens of persons subject to execution for breach of trust and related information. The exposure of "old people" on street display screens is one of Fujian's innovative measures to build a credit system and improve the credit system. (Excerpted from Page 6 of "People's Daily" on November 27, 2015)

This article published by People's Daily pointed out: Since this year, Fujian Province has relied on civilized websites and used outdoor LED displays to publish more than 3,000 pieces of punishment information for dishonest persons and units, involving more than 300,000 exposed companies and individuals. Published more than 1,000 pieces of various "trustworthy likes" information such as civilized units, civilized industries, civilized schools, moral models, most beautiful grassroots figures, and good people around the province. The use of outdoor LED displays to publish the "red and black lists" has built a "punishment network" for the city's dishonest people and plays an important role in building a credit system in Fujian Province.

In people's minds, the biggest function of outdoor LED display is the broadcast of commercial advertising information, and it is a typical "spokesperson" for outdoor advertising. However, with the improvement of the level of urban construction, city managers are increasingly using outdoor LED displays to expose many adverse phenomena in social management, playing roles such as "urban civilized persuader", "urban bad habits broadcaster", "social management supervisor", etc., thus realizing the gorgeous transformation of outdoor LED displays from purely commercial to social welfare attributes, which has "epoch-making" significance in improving the diversified development of outdoor LED displays.

Currently, first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are strictly regulating the outdoor LED display advertising market. The approval of outdoor LED displays will become more and more stringent, and the installation locations will shift from the previous "everywhere" type to the "zoned operation" type (purely commercial areas). Such changes will have a certain impact on the development of outdoor LED displays. But as mentioned above, while emphasizing commerciality, LED displays also strengthen the attribute of broadcasting social welfare and benefiting the people. To a certain extent, they can reduce the time process for approval of outdoor displays. With their irreplaceable advantages, LED displays will become more popular in the field of outdoor displays.

As early as 2014, in order to actively respond to Guangdong Province’s strategic deployment of building a culturally powerful province, Southern Newspaper Media Group teamed up with Guangxin Holdings Group, Yuexiu Group and other units to create an outdoor new media project with public welfare characteristics - "Southern Newspaper LED Network", aiming to establish Focusing on Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the LED broadcast network covers 21 prefecture-level central business districts and transportation circles in Guangdong Province. It has taken the lead in forming an LED media communication model of "public welfare information + news information + advertising information" in the country. This has broken the pure commercial advertising information playback model of outdoor LED displays.

In major, medium and small cities across the country, public service advertisements such as "Stressing Civility and Building New Trends" and slogans such as cultivating and practicing socialist core values ​​are widely publicized through outdoor LED displays. This not only increases public awareness and helps curb the occurrence of uncivilized behaviors in the city, but also creates good new urban trends and builds a beautiful landscape for urban construction.

In foreign countries, there are many cases of using outdoor LED displays to carry out public welfare and participate in social construction:

United States: Many outdoor LED display operators in the United States also cooperate with relevant governments and public welfare organizations, playing an important role in participating in social events and protecting the public. During Hurricane Sandy in the United States in November 2012, the Federal Management Agency (FEMA) used digital screens to broadcast emergency weather warnings in ten states. Each update, from production to playback, takes less than 15 minutes. After the Boston Marathon bombing in the United States in April 2013, local and national security departments began to use outdoor LED displays to warn and inform the public. Police posted a photo of the suspect on a screen and warned the public to stay indoors during the city-wide manhunt.

(Picture: The outdoor LED screen announced the wanted warrant and photos of the "Boston bombing" suspects, and attached the FBI phone number)

UK: In order to call on the public to contribute to African women's entrepreneurship, the British public welfare organization Microloan used outdoor LED displays to hold A special outdoor donation event: The public welfare organization Microloan displays an image of an African woman made up of coins on an outdoor LED screen. When passers-by pass by the large screen and follow the instructions to send text messages to donate, some coins will float out of the display, piecing together the original incomplete image of the woman bit by bit, thereby achieving the purpose of donation.

Thailand: In order to raise the public’s awareness of child protection and effectively protect children from illegal abuse, the Child Protection Agency (CPCR) and Leo Burnett produced and placed a series of outdoor public service advertisements “CHILD ABUSE” on outdoor LED displays and outdoor brands in various centers in Bangkok, and included a reporting hotline in the advertisement. After the campaign was launched, CPCR received more than 300 phone calls every day. At present, this method has become the most effective preventive measure, which has effectively improved the prevention of child sexual abuse.

The contradiction between the rapidly improving urban diversified landscape and low-quality outdoor advertising has become a "stumbling block" on the development of outdoor display screens. The single function of playing purely commercial advertisements has also led to strong resistance among the audience. Facing the development trends and problems under the new situation, outdoor LED media operating companies should effectively avoid the single advertising function and commercial attributes of the display screen in the future development path, and should realize the transformation from a commercial role to a comprehensive social benefit role and become a public carrier for the audience to obtain social information. At the same time, outdoor LED display manufacturers also need to carry out technological innovation, such as ensuring that products used in outdoor advertising have automatic brightness adjustment systems and multi-level grayscale correction technology to reduce the negative impact of light pollution on outdoor LED displays from the technical source.

First of all, outdoor display manufacturers must make their products better integrated into the urban environment. After determining the location, the overall design should be carried out based on the comprehensive conditions such as its regional characteristics, surrounding environment impression, and attached carrier characteristics, so that the outdoor display screen becomes an integral part of the landscape and reduces the problems that arise due to the installation of outdoor display screens at multiple levels such as city approval, planning, management, and operation.

Secondly, combined with the different characteristics of the audiences in various regions, outdoor LED media operators should also appropriately add social information that is close to the people and convenient for the people in the broadcast content, so that the outdoor display screen is not only a simple advertising carrier, but also a good platform for the audience to obtain information and participate in social interaction.

Thirdly, in line with the current development trend of "Internet +", enterprises should step up efforts to establish integrated networks based on the characteristics of outdoor display screens with many points and wide distribution, and associate them with the Internet, mobile Internet, and big data to achieve network simulcast and real-time information sharing, and achieve the dissemination effect of rapid information transmission. In light of the new situation, display screen manufacturing companies must be market-oriented, explore the new attributes of outdoor LED displays under the requirements of the new era, and produce outdoor products that adapt to market changes and needs, and are in line with urban development and management, so as to become standard information products acceptable to the public, not just an advertising terminal.