Technology in Pharmacy Business with Scott Carpenter

The Digital Future for Customer Communications is here now!

October 29, 2021

Play episode

In this episode of the Pharmacy View Podcast, Host Scott Carpenter, EVBC talks to Bruce Maton and Clarence Ho from Mediumcast, a company that helps clients create interactive digital experiences for real world customers. This day and age is characterized by an ever-increasing need for digital communication, and in this episode, the host and his two guests explore how Mediumcast is positioned to help with just that.

Having had the humble beginnings of started-in-our-garage, Bruce and Clarence soon understood the importance of engaging the audience. While television and radio symbolises ‘broadcast’ and one’s own playlist serves as a ‘narrowcast’, the duo worked towards building Mediumcast as the one in between broadcast and narrowcast. In doing so, they developed a platform that helps store owners and proprietors of both brick and mortar and online stores to engage more effectively with their audience.

On how the platform works, they share that their next level detection devices set up across a retail store help with the collection of vital data including; customer demographic, when they shop, how long they were in the store for; which sections they spent the most time in, and data that helps businesses cater much more efficiently to the needs of the customers. What their platform does is bridge the gap for store owners when it comes to analytics by using AI to determine who comes to the store, when they come in, and what they do. All of this, they add, is automated so business owners can get the digital content of their choice either from their designer or their social media or even their suppliers (say promotional products) and schedule that in a playlist to be displayed across one or many screens.

Digital signage, the duo shares, influences the behavior of the consumers. And while the founders foresee much evolution in the way the platform functions, more data would mean a more mature system and they want potential users to know that they work with audience detection and not identification.

Topics Covered

Conceptualization of Mediumcast
Application of Mediumcast in the Retail and Pharmacy Sector
Advantages of Digital Communication Over Print Communication
Mediumcast as a Cloud-Based Platform
Examples of Success
Focus on Ensuring Security of the Customers
Services Provided by Mediumcast

Key Quotes (Time Stamps)

“Retail has a number of great applications because you want to communicate what you do in store; you can influence purchases.” (2:58 – 3:06)

“And then your full circle of understanding your audience is audience analytics. We have some pretty great AI technology that we use so we can see who’s in the store, when they came in, and the kind of demographics.” (3:07 – 3:24)

“We never capture the identity which is audience recognition. We just do audience detection.” (3:38 – 3:33)

“If you did have print advertising such catalogues or paper-based posters or flyers, it would be really hard to change that messaging on the flyer during the day…whereas with digital signage, that can be done instantly and can be deployed to different screens. (8:48 – 9:07)

“As the system matures on site, we can get smarter about which playlist to play.” (10:40 – 10:45)

“He also said that it did make a real difference to the actual income of the pharmacy. I quote that he says, ‘After fifteen months of installing the service, sales of retail products have increased by 400 percent.’ So, that’s quite a lot I think.” (11:54 – 12:06)

“We have actually found that about 45% of the consumers in retail state that the digital signage would influence them to buy the advertised product instead of the product that they go in to buy.” (14:07 – 14:18)

“If the consumer is prompted in their mind that they need this product and they see an alternative, it is likely that they are going to grab it or try it.” (14:35 – 14:43)

Social Media Clips