Promoting quiz nights, live music and events on screen
· 5 min read
Promote an event on screen in the days before, when people are making plans, and again on the night, when they're deciding whether to stay for another. A what's-on list covers the regulars (the Tuesday quiz, open mic on a Friday), and a single slide for each big night does the rest. Schedule both with end dates, so nothing is still advertising a gig that happened last week.
Two kinds of event content
The first is the what's-on list: a table of what's coming up this week or this month, with the day, the event and the time. In Casty this lives in a dataset, a small table you edit like a spreadsheet and show on a layout with the DataSet widget. The Casty demo has one for Harbour Cafe, headed "What's on at Harbour Cafe", with an open mic night at 19:00 on a Friday among the rows. When something new is booked you add a row and the screen follows, without anyone opening a design.
The second is the poster for one night, such as a band you've booked or a charity quiz. This deserves a slide of its own, with a photo, the name in big letters, the date and time, the entry price and how to book. Build it as its own layout and schedule it in the run-up.
If you run the same sort of event every week or month, build the first poster well and save it as a template. The next one starts from the template, and you only change the words and the photo. Starting from a template shows how.
When to show it
Timing matters more than the design here. People decide on Monday or Tuesday whether they're coming out on Thursday, so a weekly quiz wants a day or two of build-up, and a band or a ticketed night wants a week or more.
You don't need the event on screen every minute of that run-up. Casty's interrupt layouts give a promotion a set share of each hour, measured in seconds, on top of whatever else is playing. In the demo, The Crown gives its quiz night promotion five minutes an hour on the bar screen on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the rest of the time the screen carries on with its usual rotation.
On the night itself the message changes. "Quiz starts at 8, teams of up to six, grab a table" is the right slide from opening until the first question. A Countdown widget counting down to the start time can sit alongside it.
Afterwards, the event should disappear by itself. Give each scheduled event an end date (Until, on the Repeats tab) and it stops on time. You can also give promotional images an expiry date in the media library, and they drop out of every layout and playlist when it passes.
Priority, interrupts and overlays has the steps for interrupt layouts.
Which screens to use
The bar screen is the obvious one, because everyone stands in front of it at some point. A screen in the window or by the door reaches people who aren't regulars yet, and for them the slide needs to make sense on its own: "Live music tonight, 9pm, free entry" says enough. In a cafe, the screen above the counter is seen by everyone in the queue, which makes it a good spot for a monthly supper club or a weekend open mic.
If you have more than one venue, a display group covering all of them lets you put a shared event (a charity night across the group, say) on every screen with one entry in the schedule.
Keeping events in an online calendar
If you already keep your events in an online calendar, you may not need to type them anywhere else. The Calendar widget reads a calendar's iCal address and shows what's coming up, with daily, weekly and monthly designs in light and dark. It has an option to leave out past events, so the board doesn't fill up with last month's nights. The widgets guide lists its settings.
Quiz scores on the screen
If you run a regular quiz, the scores can go on the screens too. Make a dataset with two columns, Team and Score, and put it on a layout as a table. Between rounds the quizmaster updates the scores from a phone (the CMS runs in any browser) and the screen shows the new standings.
On the DataSet widget, use the Order setting to sort the table by the Score column, and set the Update Interval low, because that controls how often a playing screen fetches fresh data. Schedule the scores layout for the hours of the quiz only, so it isn't still showing last week's winners on Wednesday morning.
What to write
Day and time first, and biggest. Then what it is, in words a regular would use: "Pub quiz", "Live music", "Open mic, all welcome". Then the practical bit: entry price, prize, how to book. Leave out "Don't miss out" and "Join us for an unforgettable evening". They take up room and tell the reader nothing.
A photo helps for live music, particularly a picture of the act on a stage. For a quiz, a big clear date beats any picture. Writing words for screens goes further on keeping slides short, and what pubs put on their screens covers how events fit in with everything else on the screens.
Questions people ask
How far ahead should I start advertising an event?
For a weekly quiz, a day or two is enough, because regulars already know about it. For a band, a ticketed night or anything people need to book, start a week or two ahead and step it up in the last few days.
Do I have to design a new poster for every event?
No. Save your first event layout as a template, then start each new one from it and change the text and photo. For regular events, a what's-on list from a dataset means you only add a row.
Can event promotions come off the screens by themselves?
Yes. Set an end date on the scheduled event and it stops after that date. Media can also have an expiry date, after which it drops out of every layout and playlist it's in.
Can I show a live leaderboard during the quiz?
Yes. Keep the scores in a dataset, show it as a table sorted by score, and update it between rounds from your phone. Set the widget's update interval low so the screen refreshes quickly.