I have been researching convergence marketing concepts especially Proximity Marketing. By using bluecasting an organisation can catch passing bluetooth enable phones to send a text, image or even a multimedia message. So imagine driving past McDonald and your phone will give you an offer to get Free BigMac if you show this message. In the UK they are using this technology with billboards that scan 100m radius. The user receives a message “do you wish to accept this message”. So this avoids the “spam” element but I would get pissed off if I was bluejacked 30 times a day.
But people are greedy, so they have also found that offering more media or an offer makes the user more likely to accept the offer.
But here is the problem… non opt-in communications are illegal and are proven ineffective. So getting customers to subscribe would be critical to the success. For example if you were on the Myers’ CRM list, when you walk into the store they could bluecast only target or relevant items of interest. This is more Narrowcasting which is used for other media platforms.
Using information such as Scan Data a store would know what category of product or brand preferences you have. Then using this data and fast computing to send you a message via bluetooth. Alternatively it could recognise that you walked past a communication point (entry to a department) and change the electronic POS to target you. Or even take an average of the customers walking through the door to tailor the most effect communication. Very Minority Report!
I love the idea of walking past a movie or TV show metro (or even sitting on train) an receiving a trailer or ticket offers. This could be expanded banking (especially credit cards) and retail to offer deals when someone passes.
A recent example in the UK had poster locations for rock band Coldplay’s new album through the London Metro. The billboards offered to beam further promotional material, including song clips from the album, to the phones of passers-by.
The posters detected 87,000 Bluetooth phones over a two week period, of which about 17% were willing to download the clip. If only marketers could make billboards turn into 17% increase in sales!
This is a very exciting concept and I am forming a thousand ideas. Who want to pay for one of my ideas?
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