Many stores rely on a marquee to relay information about store sales to the public. Some use the old school plastic sign format with the individual sliding letter and number cards. Others use the updated, modern, digital marquees to run a list of digital information across the electronic board. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks of each of these types of signs, and why you might request one type over the other from a sign manufacturer.

Plastic Marquee

The benefits of a plastic marquee is that you can highlight the sale of a couple of very popular items. If the marquee is dual-sided, then you can list four different sale items, two on each side, to attract customer attention from all angles. Additionally, if there is a spelling error on the board, it is very easy to correct it.

The drawbacks to a plastic marquee are that you may lose some of the letter and number cards over time, and pranksters love to mess with these kinds of message boards. If the marquee is low to the ground, kids will switch letters around to spell naughty things, which you have to catch and fix right away. The plastic marquees also tend to yellow over time and require a lot of maintenance to keep clean.

Digital Marquees

Digital marquees can be set with several dozen characters, many more than plastic marquees can carry. You could advertise six or more popular products for sale, as well as display the date and time every day. These marquees are programmed ahead of time with a computer inside your store. You type in what you want the display to read the next day, then turn off the marquee or freeze it on the clock mode. For the most part, they are tamper-proof and un-hackable. They require very little maintenance beyond replacing the occasional LED light bulb.

The down side to a digital marquee is that if you make a spelling error, you cannot simply correct that one letter. You have to shut down the feed, edit the content to run, and then load the feed with the new content. That makes these marquees a little more complicated to operate and a little less forgiving of human error. Additionally, if the power in the area goes out, so does the power to your digital marquee. They also cost more to purchase and install than a plastic marquee.