Volvo Instore Media System
Background
Traditionally, the aftersales department at Volvo Car BeLux communicated their offers and promo’s by printing posters or developing POS-material to be sent out and placed at the Volvo dealerships. As this was both time-consuming, pricy and not very dynamic, I was asked to come up with a better way of transmitting these messages to local dealership-visitors. This was the kickoff for the project which resulted in a national digital signage solution rolled out to Volvo dealerships called Volvo Instore Media System (VIMS).
For the backbone of VIMS, we chose SCALA for its scalability, integration and content management possibilties.
The Volvo Instore Media System consists of 3 pillars: Central Volvo HQ content, local Volvo-dealer content and interactive content via the Volvo Showroom Touch application.
Volvo HQ Content
I started a monthly editorial meeting with every Volvo business unit to distill the messaging they thought relevant for the coming period, which I then briefed to the creative agencies to come up with the necessary deliverables. The video’s / stills were then uploaded to Scala to automatically start/stop the messaging according to the digital content plan. Content was categorized and uploaded according to the location: Showroom, waiting room or reception desk.
Volvo dealer content via web interface
We developed an easy to use web GUI which was connected to SCALA via API. This platform provided the ability for Volvo-dealers to manage the time/date to start or turn off any specific screen in their dealership, consult what content is foreseen (local or Volvo HQ-content) on any screen at any specific moment, add local content tot the content that is foreseen by Volvo HQ or get help.
Volvo Showroom Touch App
To make the user experience at the dealerships more dynamic, we developed a touch application designed for big screens. In this app, users were able to do the following things: consult extra content about the different Volvo-models, configure a Volvo of their choice, get to know the Volvo innovations and safety systems, consult the dealer’s inventory of official Volvo Selekt used cars and new Volvo stock cars:
To not have to choose between a screen having to diffuse 1-way content OR 2-way content, we chose to use touchscreens together with a proximity sensor in a smart way so the screen could easily switch between both types of content:
Here’s how this looked in real life:
