Contrary to what design firms, marketing agencies and Über-creative professionals want you to believe, content creation for digital signage does not have to be expensive, hard or time-consuming. Gone are the days of specialists sequestered in secret locations using incomprehensible tools creating magical images that appear on a LCD screen.  For today’s digital signage ecosystem—impactful content creation should be easy and accessible to everyone that needs it.

That does not mean agencies and creative professionals are no longer needed—quite the contrary.   As more of us mere mortals seek to create our own content, a guide is needed to put us on the correct path. Agencies and creative professionals should do what they do best; developing an overall strategy, brand identity and templates to serves as a communication road map.  With a communication road map in hand and easy-to-use content development platform (such as Flypaper), mere mortals are empowered to have greater control of content for their digital signage network.

To get the most out of a digital signage investment (whether it is one screen or one thousand screens), agencies and their clients must truly collaborate. Agencies will argue they already collaborate with their clients. However, at the end of the day it is agency employees doing all of the work and handing a digital file and usually very large bill to the client.  That is not collaboration, but rather an approval and payment process.

What should the agencies and creative professionals do? What should the clients and digital signage owners and operators do?

As part of the communication road map, the agencies and creative professional should create a work flow that relies on pre-built templates into which media assets such as images, videos, graphics and text are placed. This eliminates the need to re-invent the wheel every time something is needed. It is simply a matter of placing elements into pre-defined locations with pre-defined functionality.  The template should be constructed in a way the client is able to use them. This accelerates the content creation work flow and allows anyone to build great looking content.

Additional, it removes the delays and reduces costs to update and maintain content.  Agencies are not needed for to make small changes, such as the price and picture of product featured in the weekly special.  Clients are able to take control and rapidly change messaging and content (without compromising the brand identity) to take advantage of changing localized conditions. For instance, clients can run a special on bananas to sell them before they rot in the store and have to be thrown out.

So what should you do for your digital signage content strategy?  First, look for an agency that understands that needs of digital signage networks and is willing to offer a balanced approach to content creation. For some agencies this means specifically giving up the content maintenance revenue—after all charging hundred of dollars for something that takes only a few minutes is very addicting.