On a screen near you...

There's a new way of making the most of your big screen - and paying Sky's fees! Phil Mellows reports.

Screenmedia, as it has become known, is already having a significant impact on high street venues. Avanti, the market leader, broadcasts both music video channels and silent entertainment to a bar's plasma screens and there is now plenty of evidence to suggest that it can both lift sales of advertised products and make people stay longer.

Until recently, though, it seemed that once again community pubs were being left out of a new way of boosting business.

Avanti has explicitly ruled out programming based around sport rather than music - and sport is the key to making the most of big screens across much of the tenanted and freetrade.

But the last few months have witnessed a breakthrough in the shape of Smartbox, which aims to bring relevant screenmedia to community pubs.

It has already been installed in around 500 outlets and the company aims to at least double that number in time for next summer's football World Cup. Smartbox is effectively a tailored TV channel for pubs that runs through a back-office PC Programmes are produced at the Smartbox headquarters in Sutton Coldfield and include sports and celebrity news and magazine-style content plus ad breaks.

Licensees can also promote events and make their own commercials for local businesses - keeping any ad revenue for themselves.

The Smartbox package includes plasma screens and the company insists that at least one screen be positioned behind the bar, a factor that is already proving to be a valuable sales tool. One licensee put bottles of Smirnoff either side of the screen and saw sales of the brand rise by 200 per cent!

Changing channels​

Smartbox is a spin-off from big screen supplier Vision Leisure Services (VLS). The company was set up in 1997 to focus on tenanted pubs and the freetrade and was instrumental in converting the trade from three-lens CRT systems to higher- quality, single-digital lens projectors.

It was a controversial move at the time as the projectors require frequent maintenance in a pub environment. But, convinced of the advantages, VLS established a close relationship with licensees to get the message across.

"We set out to educate the licensed trade," explains Smartbox managing director Kate Venables. "If they looked after their big screen equipment like they did their beer lines, it could give them a competitive edge.

"Then we recognised that we had all those screens out there and they were just showing sport. Why couldn't they be used for entertainment as well? If a licensee was finding they can't afford Sky, there might be a solution, a way of subsidising their costs. Perhaps they could show advertising on the screens and take a share of the ad revenue. We had that idea in 2003, and it's now evolved to become Smartbox."

The firm is currently working on what it calls Smartbox 3, which will deliver programming to pubs via broadband, rather than a CD. It will make possible real-time broadcasting, giving pubs up-to-date news and opening up many more opportunities to make use of big screens.

Smartbox's marketing and creative director Larry Logan, the man responsible for programme content, (pictured with Kate Venables)​, sees Smartbox as being positioned at "the opposite end to radio" in terms of media. That means there is no sound - and all the effort goes into creating arresting images.

"People aren't going to watch a whole feature so we have short bursts of three or four minutes, then some ads, all short and sweet," he explains.

Precisely which kind of programmes a pub shows, the mix of sports and entertainment and of national, regional and local programming, depends on the kind of customers pubs have. As Kate points out, the Smartbox audience is "tremendously diverse, from 18 to 80", and the company works closely with the licensee to determine the audience profile.

"We are still very sports-led," she adds. "It's what the audience wants and complements the sport the pub is showing on screen. Most of our customers are community pubs, they have a football ethos and we encourage that."

The first hour of Smartbox programming, from 10am to 11am, is devoted to Publican's Eye, a programme targeting licensees and their staff which can be used as a medium for news and information to help them with their business.

Social responsibility is also an issue that Smartbox takes seriously, and the channel has linked up with anti-drink spiking products Spikeys and Drinks Detective to promote awareness of that particular problem.

Further down the line, Larry sees Smartbox 3 becoming more interactive, enabling licensees to run text-to-win competitions, for instance, or customers to respond directly to local business ads by texting from their mobile. "Our imaginations are the only limit to what we might do in future," he says.

Vist www.smartboxvision.com for more information.