Inspiration can seize an entrepreneur in the most humdrum moments and unlikely settings. Just ask Steven Yankiver, whose business muse visited him in an airport terminal during a flight delay.
Yankiver was returning from Toronto, where the business his father started, Uniko Manufacturing Ltd., produces light boxes and backlit displays for sign companies in Canada and the United States.
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Yankiver runs its U.S. division from a 5,500-square-foot office and warehouse space in New Rochelle, selling to 2,500 sign companies nationwide.
While waiting, he was looking at the light-box signs that line the walls of airport lounges. He was also on the phone with his wife.
“My wife said, ”˜I”™m sitting in a doctor”™s office, basically doing nothing, twiddling my thumbs,”™” Yankiver recalled last week.
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Yankiver thought of captive audiences ”“ the kind found in doctors”™ waiting rooms and airport terminals. He thought of lighted screens. His wife was staring at the wall while he viewed electronic wall displays. A sudden idea hit him “like a small explosion.” He boarded his flight and let his idea percolate.
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The result was Waiting Room Promotions (WRP), a business Yankiver has launched in partnership with Howard Miller, an advertising and marketing industry representative. Free to participating physicians, they install cherrywood-framed 19-inch digital screens in medical offices that divert waiting patients with short programs whose content is created by the partners, information about their doctor”™s services and local and national advertising for which advertisers pay a monthly fee.
Their digitally interactive medium is silent, a mercy to doctors”™ staff and any patient whose eardrums have ever been assailed by the din of a waiting-room television or flat-panel screen. Its standalone technology leaves it free from Internet hackers and junk-mail and spam filters.
The looped programming is timed to the average waiting-room stay for a patient, 22 minutes. It includes seasonal health tips presented by the front man for Waiting Room Promotions, an animated cartoon character called the “Little Doctor,” picturesque travel scenes and trivia questions. Its aim is to engage, educate and entertain viewers.
“We want to relieve people”™s anxiety,” Miller said. “We”™re looking to take what is an unpleasant experience ”“ waiting for your appointment ”“ and make it pass in a pleasant an enjoyable way.”
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Local advertisers include nursing homes, assisted living centers and home improvement companies. Their captive audience ”“ an average of 150 patients weekly for each office, according to WRP ”“ views their ads three times during an average programming loop.
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The promoters do not accept ads for products not in keeping with good health practices, including fast-food restaurants, tobacco, alcohol and gambling. To avoid reliance on the pharmaceutical industry for revenue, they also do not advertise prescription drugs.
Doctors can use the free medium to inform patients about their practice and services. “People in the medical profession are realizing they really have not done the best job of communicating with their patients,” Miller said. Hospitals looking to boost declining revenue have contacted the company about using the digital screens in their doctors”™ offices.
Yankiver said Waiting Room Promotions has placed screens in just more than 200 offices in Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties. “Now that the units are out, doctors are calling us,” he said.
“The next main push will be Manhattan. We will branch out as soon as we see the trend in the economy where people start having budgets in advertising” after cutting them in the recession.
Yankiver said it has been a difficult time to launch their advertising medium. “But at the same time people are realizing that the old ways don”™t work. They”™re looking for things to build their business for them.”
“This is a really new medium,” Miller said. “The industry is probably where the Internet was six years ago and yet it”™s growing very rapidly.”
“Basically right now we are gearing up for the tremendous growth that we think we will be experiencing in the next few years,” Yankiver said.
