For advertisers, a new media frontier

Skip Krause is a salesman.

Speaking quickly and with a southern twinge acquired from his native Alabama, he’s selling a new advertising medium, swiping his finger across a six-foot-tall, 600-pound “iPad on steroids,” and delivering a rehearsed-yet-thoughtful mathematical computation of the machine’s value to businesses.

For $120,000 a year, he says, a four-and-a-half-foot advertisement of a company’s design will appear every two minutes on 20 “hyperscreens” in 17 locations. During an eight and a half hour day, this child-sized corporate portrait will appear 255 times per screen.

This is the premium price, which carries a base fee of $6,000 per year per screen for one of four “super banner” placements, but the burgeoning business offers less costly alternatives to maximize revenue and grant admen autonomy through this new canvas.

The screens are tentatively scheduled for placement at 16 welcome centers and visitors’ bureaus across the state. Stakeholders are working to have four additional screens installed at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans and if that is accomplished, “Realistically, you’re looking at 5 million people per year that are going to come in contact with those 20 hyperscreens,” Krause estimated.

The first screen will be launched Jan. 1 at the Interstate 10 Westbound Slidell Welcome Center through an agreement between the South Louisiana Economic Council and Louisiana Office of Tourism. Lafourche Parish Government has signed on to sponsor the manufacturing of the screen.

Once the power button is pushed and the minutes-long boot-up is complete, it will be the first time such technology is commercially deployed in the country, Krause said.

The premise behind the budding medium, a consumer-interactive advertising board, is simple: Coerce users into becoming a willing and captive audience as they explore offered perks on an inviting medium. Advertisers, at the very least, will achieve brand visibility through high-tech implementation.

The setting in which the screens will be initially launched is one where a majority of passers-by would need information on local establishments. The hyperscreens offer a bright alternative to brochures, and an advertiser’s information, geolocation, sale items and coupons that can be transmitted from the screens to a user’s cell phone via text message or computer via email.

Intel Core i5 processors power the hyperscreens, which support 1080p HD video, Adobe Flash and web 2.0 content, according to the manufacturer’s website. Hyperscreens, LLC, which is managed by Krause’s partner’s son, manufactures the screens and develops interactive applications. The screens need only a 110-volt outlet and about five square feet of space to operate.

Sales, based in Louisiana, could facilitate high-tech La. jobs

Officially, Krause is the executive vice president of Louisiana Interactive Technologies, not a salesman. But the job calls for extensive trumpeting of a business model and its regional benefits in what was once a foreign territory.

Krause, who recently with a Virginia-based partner incorporated into a Louisiana business, is pounding the pavement to sell and launch a concept that is still in its infancy. LIT’s website is not yet live, the 16 other locations haven’t been finalized and more than 70 advertising spaces on the first screen remain unsold.

But he’s not alone.

LIT has enlisted the assistance of the South Louisiana Economic Council and state Rep. Joe Harrison, who are helping the veteran-owned, start-up company forge relationships with businesses in the bayou region and beyond.

For its part in securing placement agreements with the state’s tourism office, SLEC collects 30 percent of the advertising revenue. “Our target for each screen is $8,000 a month. Basically, if we put 20 screens out and we hit our target, SLEC will get over 600 grand a year, so it’s not trivial,” Krause said. “You want to run economic development without tax revenue? Here’s how you do it.”

SLEC President Vic Lafont said the organization would not treat this as a traditional revenue stream, but instead the hyperscreen profits would be used to bargain with economic development organizations across the state. Someone with experience will need to coerce their advertisers in Shreveport, for example, into buying ad spaces.

“Thirty percent is fine, but I’ve got to share that with the people who are going to help populate this thing and get the right companies up there,” Lafont said.

Lafont stressed that his economic development organization didn’t join the effort for a share of the revenue stream. Lafont’s long-term vision, and what it will take to accomplish the goal, highlights the ambition and intrigue of LIT.

Currently, Hyperscreens LLC is based in St. Augustine, Fla. The headquarters will remain on the east coast, Krause said, but there is an opportunity to transplant the company’s manufacturing and distribution center to the bayou region.

For manufacturing, Hyperscreens currently has to have aluminum shipped from Michigan to Orlando, where it is fabricated and then shipped to St. Augustine.

The bayou region’s workforce has the skill-set to eliminate that extraneous transportation, the LIT executive said, and Louisiana’s central location to the rest of the country and proximity to road, rail and water transit, make it an alluring location.

The procurement of a manufacturing and distribution center would create jobs, both blue-collar for fabrication and white-collar for graphic design and programming.

In order for this dream to become a reality, however, LIT must reach beyond the state’s tourism centers. It needs a retail chain, such as Wal-Mart or Rouses, to kick-start growth in the state, pave the way for regional expansion and propagate enough demand.

Although the campaign to sell the benefits of screen placement to a retailer won’t start in earnest until next year, Krause said LIT has indeed made some headway with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., who has about 70 Supercenters throughout Louisiana.

Krause said Wal-Mart’s interest is in a slightly different application, more of a community directory of lawyers, hospitals and insurance salesmen than a tourism booster.

“The more of these units I can put out here, the better of a chance I can relocate that plant here,” said Lafont, who added that a job recruitment application could also pique Walmart’s interest. “That’s my endgame.”

Harrison, R-Gray, said he was particularly impressed by the ease with which the hyperscreens can track user clicks and the ability for businesses to track redeemed coupons.

“This hyperscreen system, what really intrigued me about it, is that here is a form of marketing that you can do and actually track who is stopping, who is looking at it, what restaurants they’re going to, what their issues are, and it’s cutting-edge technology,” he said.

Immediate goals and the advertising offerings

LIT intends to roll out the rest of the planned screens in the first quarter of next year. Krause said the agreement with Louisiana’s Office of Tourism for the Slidell location could be expanded and that the first phase of 20 screens placed in 17 locations would be under way if LIT can prove the pilot exhibit enhances tourism.

Lafont said the screens should naturally enhance tourism because they target, well, tourists.

“People come into this state on I-10 and they zip right through here and never come south on 90, unless you tell them what’s here,” the economic developer said. “You can do so much with a billboard, but if you stop at a welcoming center, we’re trying to divert some of that traffic our way.”

Jacques Berry, communications director with the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, said the Slidell location was chosen because it is the most frequently trafficked of the state’s 13 welcome centers.

“Our goal is to increase the level of service to the travelers, so with the manufacturer we’re going to monitor the use of it and the welcome center staff is going to monitor it as well to see if it’s a beneficial arrangement for travelers. If so, we’ll explore the option of putting them in other welcome centers.”

The state hasn’t determined any “hard and fast metrics,” such as a click rate, to gauge the success. Instead, tourism officials will rely on feedback from welcome center staffers.

“We haven’t spelled out what the details are going to be and what our presence is going to be,” Berry said. “We hope that it will be beneficial to travelers in terms of attractions and weather and things like that, and it looks like it should be able to provide that.”

If the state deems it a success, LIT would still need to fund the manufacturing of at least 19 more screens. The company is actively searching for sponsors, and is mulling over the prospects of applying for veteran-owned business grants or taking out loans to accomplish the goal.

More pressing, however, the company has to fill ad spaces before the Jan. 1 launch. In addition to one super banner ad, LIT must sell 12 banner ads, fill 18 coupon slots and sell at least 40 “premium” ad slots on each screen.

Krause said although the task is voluminous, advertisers should see the primary benefits of the high-tech medium: interactivity to an extent that almost resembles two-way communication.

Krause started his ad sales blitz last week and said the response has been positive. “Everybody thinks that the pricing is awesome. The initial reaction to everything is very positive. We don’t have any sales thus far, but these are the kinds of things that take a little bit of time.”

Advertisers will be able to utilize free system updates instantaneously. They can also alter their profiles remotely, and at any time. “To use an old fighter pilot’s slogan: Speed is life; more is better,” Krause said.

Once a super banner ad pops up on the screen, a user can peruse all of the company’s web-uploaded offerings, including coupons, geolocation and sellable goods.

The super banner placement allows a company to engage with the audience, but there are other features to the hyperscreens that allow companies to take a passive approach while the user freely browses directories, such as eateries or lodging establishments.

Features that permit companies to discern their services even further are embedded within the company profiles; this includes a business Twitter feed, a calendar of events and geolocation. The premium ad spaces cost $49.95 per month for a spot in the screen’s directory, Krause said.

The technology, which can be seen as an alternative to welcome center brochures, also circumvents coupon clipping for advertising businesses. The hyperscreens hold 18 spaces for companies to upload coupons, which can be transmitted to a user’s phone via text message or computer via email.

“Of course, people are going to come in with their smartphones; they hit this (prompt), they get all 18 coupons on their phone,” Krause said. “I don’t even have to look at them on the screen. Now I’m driving down the highway, and I’m scrolling through to see what I’ve got.”

LIT is trying to parlay its business model with an advantageous market following the BP Oil Spill last year. After the spill, which provoked the closure of commercial fishing areas and tainted the perception of the tourism and seafood markets, BP donated $30 million for seafood marketing and $30 million to revitalize tourism. “The hyperscreen becomes a perfect venue to do both,” Krause said.

Not all of his efforts have been positively received.

The 16-member, governor-appointed Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board manages the seafood money ($30 million over three years). Ewell Smith, executive director of the seafood promotion board, said LIT approached the board with information about the hyperscreens and one of the board’s industry members went to see a demonstration.

Krause said the demonstration received glowing reviews.

The board declined an LIT request for $1.9 million as part of a screen-sponsorship agreement, Smith said.

“We vetted it through both of our agencies and discussed it with our marketing committee, and the board said, ‘”No,’” Smith said. “We did not feel it was, at this point in time, the right fit.

“To be very candid, it’s old technology. People can get the information, or a video, off of a cell phone.”

However, LIT has already made headway in the tourism market. Lafourche Parish Government announced its screen-sponsorship agreement with LIT earlier this month.

For $35,000, paid out of its BP tourism fund, Lafourche has secured super banner advertisements on the first 20 screens over two years. The cost is 14.5 percent of the $240,000 market value, according to Krause, and it comes with an exclusivity agreement preventing other parishes from advertising tourism.

“It’s going to be great for Lafourche Parish to say we’re the first one to do this,” Parish Administrator Crystal Chiasson said. “(The price is low), basically because we tapped into the market. They need to get their product here and we need to get Lafourche Parish in.”

If the model happens to gain traction, it could be a boon for the parish, businessmen, an economic development organization and the region as a whole.

“The idea that my partner and I have created is not just the technology, which is really his son’s company’s creation, it’s the concept of how to turn it into a business that self-perpetuates,” Krause said.

Skip Krause, executive vice president of Louisiana Interactive Technologies, demonstrates a beta-model hyperscreen at LIT’s headquarters in Thibodaux. ERIC BESSON