Case Study: Red Bull proximity marketing campaign

I believe in the next couple of years proximity marketing will be the next marketing trend for retailers to engage their potential customers in Singapore and the rest of the world.  

Advantage

1. Simple set up – just a simple laptop, digital signage or even kiosks which able to broadcast content using Bluetooth technology
2. This can create retail and promotion awareness to potential customers in the area
   
3. It cause retailers $0 to send out marketing message in term of videos, text and even image to customers
   
4.  Retailers can reach customers within the range of 100 meters radius
   
5.  Retailer will be able to track their marketing camping
   
6. Customers who had Bluetooth enable device such as mobile phones or tablet will be able to receive promotion or advertisement send by the retailer
   
7. Customers can choose to accept the incoming promotion message send or reject it

Disadvantage

1. By default most mobile device had their Bluetooth disable, customers might not even know there is such type of promotion going on
   
2. If customers turn on their Bluetooth, they might be bomb by multiple incoming promotion message all at ones
   
3. Aggressive marketing or retailer might send out different promotion message at very short interval and piss of their customers 

In Red Bull Case study after reading a couple of times on the article and researching it online I am disappointed on how they use proximity marketing. I think is a waste of time, money and resources.

Mac’s/Couch-Tard Store is like our typical 7/11 or Cheers but at least 2 to 3 time bigger – let keep in mind.

1. Placement of their 17 and 32 inch screen.
   wow they had place their 17 screen which is showing the promotion content near the point of sale.?

a.     Do you want all the customer to jam and block your POS?

b.     What if I’m the only customer and I just come in, grab my drink and go off and I don’t even get to see the promotion not even say on my Bluetooth to download the coupons

c.      Placing the 32 inch screen in the store aisles? Again you want people to block your aisle and cause inconvenience to other customers

Why with all these trouble?

• Normally retailers will have big banner or poster of their promotion place right at their doorstep to attract customer to come in.
•  Everyone should had visited a local 7/11 store before, they simply place a piece of paper, Get 2 yeo drinks for $2.00 on the freeze itself or the boxes. Customers who are interested just grab, pay and that it. Why do I need to extra step?
  
• Convenience store – how big can it get? You might just take less then 5 min to cover the whole shop

with the above three way it should be good enough. Just don't use a new technology for the seek of it

How it can be use better

• ·      Proximity marketing should be use on a bigger coverage like attracting customer within that 100 meters radius to come to your shop
  
•  Singapore – Instead of a participant shop in a shopping mall doing the broadcast, the shopping mall can do more to help their retailers to do that instead. Help them generate business and in turn help themselves.
  
• Bigger retailer like courts mega store, cold storage, NTUC fairprice where they had a bigger floor area and can have their own internal broadcast cause they got a big area and customer might have miss it by chance with so many rows of item in front of them

Most company will engage agency to run their marketing camping, so better to think hard is it workable and effective before you become their guinea pig for their trial testing of their product