What About Branded Frames?
Wireless digital picture frames are mostly thought of as products for the home, and sometimes the office, these days. But, as wireless frames and wireless delivery of content both get more common, we should see variations on the model, including the recognition that wireless photo frames can make great revenue sources and marketing tools.
One of the ways to realize these possibilities is through branded frames. Branded frames would be tied to a specific company, organization, or idea and would come wrapped in a custom casing and pre-subscribed to content feeds related to the branding.
Most of us wirelesspictureframe.com folks are based in New England. The Red Sox are huge up here. Imagine, if you will, a Red Sox-branded digital picture frame. This frame would carry a premium price (generating revenue both for the frame maker and for the Red Sox to keep paying those $100 million dollar salaries) and would come pre-subscribed to all kinds of great content related to the Red Sox.
Imagine this frame updating itself every night and in the morning showing:
- The score of last night’s game
- The box score
- Choice photos from the game
- The Red Sox’s standing in their division and overall
- A photo or fact from that day in Red Sox history
- And, most importantly, how the Sox are stacking up against the hated Yankees
Wouldn’t that be a great gift for the die-hard Red Sox fan (or, depending on where you live, the Cowboys, Knicks, or Florida Gators fan) in your life?
To make the presentation complete, the frame could be wrapped in a plastic housing that might carry the red, white, and blue colors of the Sox, as well as their logo.
It’s easy to imagine this kind of product being a hit in the not-too-distant future. Sports teams, both pro and college, are one obvious market. But similar frames could also be offered by non-profits (especially those in the arts) as a thank you premium for larger donations. Other industries could follow suit.
It’s possible that we’ll see a branded-frame offered as a promotional item before a commercial one. Wouldn’t this be a great promo item from a camera company, a publisher, an architect, a stock photo library, or a landscaper? Some smart marketing company will probably see this opportunity and start offering it to clients.
It’s possible that the marketing application will come first because there are a few things that need to be in place before this is a solid consumer offering:
- More Users. For branded frames to be sold in retail locations, we’ll likely need more than the 1.7 million frames sold in 2006. The space is growing by leaps and bounds (Pandigital alone expects to sell 2.6 million in 2007) and should reach a tipping point soon.
- Lower Prices. There will probably be a premium for the branding and content for these products. The price of the frame needs to be low enough that the branding premium doesn’t push the final price beyond the consumers’ comfort level.
- An Infrastructure Partner. Each company that wants to offer a branded frame could roll their own solution, but a robust infrastructure and process provided by a content partner expert in this area will make the offering more sustainable and more likely to catch on.
These obstacles should come tumbling down in the next 12-18 months.
As long as these branded frames let consumers do all the things that non-branded frames do, and add these great features on top of that, there could be some very happy present recipients in coming years.
