Cellphone retailer Cellucity has gone for the ultra high-end look and feel with its new store in Jabulani Mall, Soweto, in a move which will see it tapping into this vibrant and burgeoning market. A feature of the store's up-market look is the SMART Digital Signage Solution which brings a vibrant and dynamic advertising medium to this new outlet.

"This store is positioned as a hi-tech, clinical zone where we assure our customers that they are dealing with the latest in technology and a leading brand which they can be confident in," explains Chris Henschel, Cellucity's business development manager.

Several elegant 32-inch LCD wall-mounted monitors are positioned around the gleaming new shop interior, running a series of dynamic advertisements. This does away with static, backlit box posters which, while effective, are laborious to change and cannot be updated as easily as the new system.

"The beauty of this new medium is that it allows us to change our marketing messages quickly and uniformly and in a co-ordinated fashion to ensure the same messages, specials or adverts are displayed in all our stores simultaneously," Henschel says.

The backbone of this SMART Digital Signage Solution is a series of LCD monitors that are networked through Cellucity's local area network (LAN), to the central headquarters based at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. This centrally controlled system allows the staff of the head office to update or change the information and adverts on display in any store, at any time, anywhere in the country. "If needs be, we could have the same product being advertised in three regions with uniquely different regional specials or pricing," explains Henschel.

This allows freedom and flexibility to change advertising in each and every store almost instantaneously without the staff at each store having to intervene.

"In a market which is as fast-paced as this one, and where our product pricing changes regularly, we can now assure our marketing messages are constantly correct and that we are delivering the right information on time... every time!"

Central media manager software is provided free with the LCD monitors and since the system is centrally controlled, it requires a once-off investment in hardware with no ongoing monthly costs or licence fees. Production costs and wastage on posters are also eliminated using this system.

"Ultimately it will pay for itself in less than two years," Henschel concludes.

Cellucity elected to purchase the SMART Digital Signage Solution from leading touch-screen and LCD monitor distributor Tactile Technologies. Henschel chose this system because "it is a cutting-edge solution that is in keeping with Cellucity's image as a leading cellular communications provider".

For more info on Cellucity, Vodacom's top retailer, go www.cellucity.co.za.

For more information on SMART solutions, contact Mauro Mercuri on telephone: +27 (0)21 551 2992, e-mail: mauro@tactiletech.co.za.

Also visit www.tactiletechnologies.co.za and www.elotouch.com.