Animated Lighting
Solutions : For Contractors
Do you own or work for a landscaping, electrical, events, or other company that has the potential to sell exciting lighting displays to commercial businesses? If so, this article is directed at you. Read these tips on how to find these opportunities and contact us for information on partnership opportunities.
By Paul Smith, Animated Lighting
There are entities in any market that want to attract attention and excitement to make their facility noteworthy in the community. A computerized light display (we call them animated lighting shows) is a novel and proven effective way to do this. Attention means visitors, and visitors mean business!
Animated Lighting has been involved with hundreds of commercial projects over the past 12 years. Each one is exciting and many times challenging based on a variety of factors. If you're thinking about tackling a commercial project, I've pulled together some hints that should make things easier to understand and provide insight so you can be assured a successful installation and a happy customer.
First, let's consider who might be an ideal customer for an animated lighting show, both from a need and available budget standpoint. Some options include:
They have a need to attract business at night on a year-round basis. An animated lighting show employing RGB Pixel lighting has real appeal plus it can change with the time of the year.
They want to entertain the members of their community. An animated lighting show brings back memories and is exciting to their residents and visitors.
Similar to a retirement community where they want to entertain their patients and visitors, children's hospitals use lighting to dance to not only holiday music but also nursery rhymes.
We get calls from these businesses no matter what the economic climate. They need to attract attention to their venue to make sales. One proven way to stand out from the crowd is an animated lighting show. This category is one that has interest all year round.
Many of these sites also install the new RGB Pixel lighting on a year-round basis. Depending on the time of year they tailor an animated lighting show:
Casinos are all about "WOW" and RGB Pixel lighting has led to interest in providing architectural lighting that has animation. For special events such as Christmas, an animated lighting show combining traditional holiday lighting with their architectural lighting creates real excitement and drama.
Many communities create a "drive thru light park" or a "Winter Wonderland" out of an existing facility but it has become stale with age. An animated lighting show with plenty of new design elements is a big draw to bring people back to the area. Money for the community coffers is generated from admission fees, corporate sponsorships of displays, and state monies for travel and tourism.
For many smaller communities, this is where city hall, the county courthouse and all of the older, yet prominent businesses are located. An animated lighting show consists of animating their existing or city-owned Christmas tree and dozens of street lamps or utility poles. You can help them tremendously by offering some creative ideas like outlining the buildings in lights, adding design items to the existing street lamp poles (wreaths, snowflakes, etc.) and synchronizing all the lights to local music to bring people downtown.
Most zoos want to attract visitors multiple times per year but they don't know how to generate the buzz. An animated lighting show for various events combined with corporate sponsorships is a needed addition to attract the crowds and create excitement. Because the same hardware can be used for each event (just the musical content changes), many zoos have moved to purchasing hardware and leaving it up year-round.
Many amusement parks are adding animated lighting shows to their rides (roller coasters, etc) to enhance the experience. DMX-controlled fixtures are also used in many cases to add extra pop. Most amusement parks stop operating their rides at the end of October but now open at Christmas for a "Winter Wonderland" display. In these cases multiple animated lighting shows are a great way to attract even more visitors.
Selling these customers animated lighting displays for the Christmas season is pretty easy but don't forget to add design items like stars, snowflakes and wreaths to provide a more dramatic display. Putting out decorations from the local big box store only gets them an ordinary looking display. They need larger, heavy duty design items that will last many seasons. New decorations combined with an animated lighting show gives them something to draw people in, talk about and tell their friends so more want to see what the excitement is all about.
All of these potential customers can also be sold patriotic displays. Having an animated lighting show synchronized to patriotic songs is an alternative to spending the money for an expensive fireworks display. The biggest advantage is it can be used multiple times a year (Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Founders Day, the town's birthday, etc.) Most customers never stop to think when the fireworks are shot their short term investment is gone forever.
Now you finally have the customer interested and you're not real sure what to do next. Confirm the customer really has the money to spend on a project, figure out the final decision maker and start pulling together all the information needed to get a yes. Here are a few hints:
Hopefully things will go off without a hitch but they probably won't. Anticipate the following challenges and plan for them to happen:
Be sure to include installation of design pieces (stars, snowflakes, wreaths, etc.), maintenance during the season and possibly removal and storage of everything at the end of the season.
Here's another rule of thumb: animated lighting show controllers and sequencing/programming typically run a little less than 20% of the total project. The lighting and design items can run this up to 40-50% of the total project.
Finally, make sure you include being compensated for the time invested in this huge project.
Nothing beats experience and we've gained it by being in the field, talking to the customers, working through the unexpected problems and leaving with a smile on everyone's face. Time is the biggest enemy and the customer doesn't care whose fault it is when a problem needs to be addressed. The show must go on and everyone will look to you to make sure it happens.
Detailed planning makes a huge difference as well as a deep workforce to tap into. Something is going to go wrong, we can guarantee it. Prepare for the worst and be pleasantly surprised when things go as planned.
Do you have an opportunity to tackle a commercial project but don't know where to begin or worried it might be too big for the time and resources you have available? Contact us and let's figure out how to impress this customer together.
