Experiential designer and developer Pearl Media is feeding the digital signage beast in Chelsea Market.
Pearl’s Chelsea Market Feed powered by The Huffington Post has featured interactive experiences for computer maker HP and automaker Porsche since its launch this past summer in New York City’s Chelsea Market, as well as adding to the customer experience and the Market’s ambiance.
Chelsea Market is one of the most highly trafficked destinations in NYC,” with more than 30,000 daily visitors, according to Pearl, and the Chelsea Market Feed was installed to offer relevant digital signage content to visitors and tenants, which range from Google to the Oxygen Network.
“Our goal is to enhance this premier location by marrying the most sophisticated technology with the highest-quality content and provide even greater value for consumers that visit Chelsea Market as well as our clients,” Pearl Media CEO Josh Cohen said in announcing the Feed’s launch.
Just last month, Pearl partnered with HP to promote its latest computer, the Sprout, with an interactive digital experience designed to give shoppers a 360-degree look at the new machine.
“This gives HP a way to break through the clutter of commerce, culture and cuisine at Chelsea Market, while also adding value to the customer experience,” Cohen said in an announcement of that project.
But that’s not the only machine to get featured on the Feed. Porsche also took its turn in the spotlight in Chelsea Market:
The Feed — which runs on Planar Systems 55-inch touchscreens, NEC Display 55-inch standard and 46-inch ultra-narrow bezel displays, and Samsung 75-inch screens, powered by a NUC i5 running Four Winds Interactive software — is drawing enthusiastic engagement, with more than 1,200 consumers viewing more than 4,000 hotspots for the HP campaign alone, according to Cohen.
The Chelsea Market location is trendy and hipster-ish, with almost a retro or lo-fi fashion aesthetic, so fitting something high-tech like the Chelsea Market Feed into that ambience was a huge consideration, Cohen said in an email.
“Ultimately the Chelsea Market audience is an extremely tech-savvy demographic that is highly attractive from an advertiser’s perspective,” he said. “Implementing a technologically advanced system like the Feed into the Market really addressed their needs and wants. As far as the Market’s aesthetic, the design and interface was carefully built to enhance the industrial feel.”
Chelsea Market seems similar to other hip tourist destinations such as the Pike Place market in Seattle or Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, but Pearl is “looking more to match the demographic than the venue,” Cohen said.
“A lot of gourmet food halls might be geared to provide similar experiences, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they attract the same consumer,” he said. “From our preliminary research into Chelsea Market we’ve set our sights on the 30-plus crowd with an affinity for technology making over $100K annually. This narrow target is quite elusive from traditional advertising, and we believe the Feed speaks to these people in a new way.”
But it’s not just advertising that the Feed brings to Chelsea Market, according to Cohen.
“The Feed is ultimately bringing an enhanced retail experience to both consumers and tenants,” he said. “[The] key partnership with The Huffington Post allows us to create culturally relevant content, akin to articles our targets share over social media. This content combined with dedicated Market/neighborhood promotions, live social media feeds and an interactive wayfinding system provide valuable new ways to communicate with consumers.” Digital SignageToday, Christopher Hall