Sovereign Bank - New York Branches

They're not terribly memorable, but for the sake of completeness a quick entry on the digital signage installations in Sovereign Bank's 15 or-so NYC branches. Frankly, while the screens themselves are attractively integrated into the surrounding millwork, due to their placement within the branch--on the back of greeter station, facing a tiny, never-occupied waiting area--I doubt that the vast majority of customers who visit many of these branches have no idea they even exist!

Note to any/all bank marketers considering (or consultants recommending) deploying a digital signage system: Spend a day monitoring traffic patterns in one of your busy branches, and you'll find that 85-90% of visitors head from the door right to the teller counter. Of the remaining 10-15% customers who come to see a CSR, whether to buy a product or for service, only 2-3% will be required to wait (generally during the lunch hour, or late in the day). That means of the 300 or-so customers who enter a busy branch, 6-9 per day will spend so much as a minute in the waiting area. In other words, from a marketing standpoint, this is not exactly valuable real estate...

It's unclear who made the recommendation to install these displays where they are, nor is it clear that Sovereign has deployed digital signage elsewhere in its 800+ branch network (these were inherited in the Independence Community Bank acquisition). OpenEye Displays manages the network using software from 3M Digital Signage, and content is likely created by Sovereign's in-house ad-agency, 601.

(Photo taken from OpenEye website)