We had the opportunity to interview Don Pierson from Flypaper, a company that provides digital signage Software for agencies, developers and businesses to quickly create, share, collaborate, edit, reuse and track digital signage content without any programming.
Don Pierson is the founder and president at Flypaper where he is responsible for delivering rich, interactive e-learning, digital signage, and marketing content to corporate clients. Pierson has two decades of experience in the interactive communications industry. In 2003, he founded Interactive Alchemy and as CEO drove a successful services business that fulfilled the communication and training needs of marquee clients including MetLife and United Airlines. Using the proceeds from the success of Interactive Alchemy, Pierson created a collaborative development tool called Catalyst. By 2006, Pierson identified a broader applicability for the Catalyst solution, and set out to develop what is now Flypaper. He holds a BA in management from Arizona State University, with honors.
As a bonus we’ve managed receive a promotion for our readers… so read the interview for the promotion – you will not be dissapointed!!
| Advertise Me: | For our own records, how did you first come across or hear about the digitalsignageblog.com? |
| Flypaper: | We found your blog while looking for industry news. |
| Advertise Me: | Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your company? |
| Flypaper: | Flypaper Studio, Inc. is the leading Flash Content Creation Platform that empowers programmers and non-programmers alike to create, edit, share, track and reuse high-impact Flash and video content. It’s a real problem-solver for the Digital Signage space especially because it allows anyone to edit and manipulate high-quality Flash content without touching programming code. Output from the application rivals the interactivity and quality of custom Flash and After Effects development, but in a fraction of time and cost typically associated with such projects. Plus it’s usable by a much broader group of people; you don’t have to have a specialized skill set. |
| Advertise Me: | How did the company Flypaper start and what was the inspiration behind the business? |
| Flypaper: | Flypaper Studio initially started as Interactive Alchemy, a services organization that created Web-based marketing and training content for Fortune 1000 clients. Interactive Alchemy was founded in 2003 and within two years, the Flypaper™ solution began to emerge in response to evolving customer needs for faster development cycles, a simple, “do-it-yourself” option, and the ability to easily edit and reuse Flash content. The company also identified a clear and common denominator among every client: a desire to create, repurpose, and track Flash content projects across the entire organization, as well as between developers and their clients. Today, the company is focused on the Flypaper Flash Content Creation Platform that effectively fills that gap by putting the power to easily create, edit, reuse and track Flash and Motion Graphics into the hands of end users. |
| Advertise Me: | What’s the story behind the company name? |
| Flypaper: | Digital Signage content created with Flypaper really “sticks!” J |
| Advertise Me: | What type of product does Flypaper sell? |
| Flypaper: | see above |
| Advertise Me: | Which industries is Flypaper targeting? |
| Flypaper: | Flypaper works primarily with Digital Signage companies and eLearning professionals. |
| Advertise Me: | How easy is it to share the content created from Flypaper? |
| Flypaper: | Extremely easy. Flypaper content can be shared in a variety of ways through the platform. The entire creation and workflow process can be facilitated via sharing portions of the creation of the project across specialized team members. In addition, since the 3.2 release earlier this year, teams can now own specific portions of a project and then merge the entire project at the end. |
| Advertise Me: | What are the benefits of using this technology over traditional software tools such as Flash? |
| Flypaper: | Cost and ease of use – hands down. Using Flypaper instead of traditional Flash (which entails hiring developers) costs drastically more upfront and in the long run. Because Flypaper is editable and reusable, companies don’t need to hire a Flash developer every time they need to redo something, or even to make a small edit.
Additionally Flypaper brings a level of very high-end content to the digital signage industry that wasn’t available before. |
| Advertise Me: | How easy is it to use the application? |
| Flypaper: | Flypaper is extremely easy to learn and use. Customers have said they can learn the application and develop a piece of digital signage content in a matter of hours. |
| Advertise Me: | Is there a limitation or compatibility issues with using Flypaper with traditional digital signage applications? |
| Flypaper: | No. Flypaper outputs all the standard media types. On occasion we’ve worked with scheduling and player software providers to tweak their non-standard implementations, but the effort required has been minor. |
| Advertise Me: | Are there stock images, videos or templates that the application comes with? |
| Flypaper: | Yes, users can start new content from scratch, or jump-start projects by selecting from one of hundreds of professionally designed templates available from the Flybrary (our proprietary library of templates and components). These can be edited and changed very easily. Everything is drag and drop.
Additionally, new templates and components are added all the time and can be found through a simple keyword search from within the application. |
| Advertise Me: | How much does it cost and would a company need to pay a license fee for each screen or digital signage player? |
| Flypaper: | Flypaper licenses range from $795 for a single desktop license to $1,495 for a license for the Professional version, which includes collaboration and other cloud services. The Digital Signage version is $995. The license is for a creation seat. The content that is output can be played on an unlimited number of screens or players. |
| Advertise Me: | Can you offer a special promo to our readers? |
| Flypaper: | We can offer free admission to a training webinar for anyone who purchases flypaper in 30 days time from this review running and reaches out to Alex Mueller, amueller@flypaper.com. |
| Advertise Me: | Do you have any advice for people who are planning to start a business in the digital signage industry? |
| Flypaper: | This is a great time to do it. We’d suggest that you look for proven providers that offer a great deal of flexibility. Customers don’t like feeling that they’re held captive. |
| Advertise Me: | This is our final question. What do you see as the next “BIG THING” in digital signage? |
| Flypaper | Intelligent digital signage that doesn’t try to broadcast a message to an amorphous audience, but rather delivers targeted content that’s likely to be of interest to specific audience members. It’s even more effective when the targeted content engages the individual via interactivity. |
Here’s also a quick video to show everyone how easy it is to use and create content with Flypaper:
About Flypaper
Flypaper Studio, Inc. is the leading Flash Content Creation Platform that empowers programmers and non-programmers alike to create, edit, share, track and reuse high-impact Flash and video content. The Flypaper platform allows anyone to edit and manipulate components without touching programming code. Through an SDK that converts Flash elements into Flypaper Components, Flash Programmers can create components, which can be edited and reused. Output from the application rivals the interactivity and quality of custom Flash development, but in a fraction of time and cost typically associated with such projects. For more information, visit www.flypaper.com.
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