Choice of Proximity Marketing Platforms

The growth of proximity marketing has increased over the recent years, big brands like Red Bull and Coca Cola are not lacking behind. Enter Red Bull, an international brand that has a diverse international marketing campaign. From team ownerships, sponsorships to sports/extreme sports/e-sports most recently events. A few stadiums and circuits under their belt and we are talking about an energy drink.

Here's a story from Mobile Marketer:

The program works in 1,400 Macs/Couche-Tard convenience stores in Canada and all begins on digital signage at the point of sale. The digital signage broadcasts ads for various products and services that the convenience store offers such as Coca-Cola and Cadbury. Red Bull is using digital signage to push its power drink. The brand is giving visitors to convenience store shoppers across Canada. The coupon offers two cans of Red Bull for $4. The digital signage asks consumers to enable the Bluetooth on their device for a message from Red Bull.  The display is at the point of purchase, reaching consumers who are waiting in line to pay or just walking around the store. Once consumers enable the Bluetooth on their device, they receive the coupon. The set up within a Mac's/Couche-Tard store is to have one 32-inch screen in the store aisles and two 17-inch screens near the point of sale. Red Bull is able to receive real-time feedback on each advertisement sent to shopper’s phones, from every sign and location.

Red Bull made the bluetooth technology platform their choice for their Proximity Marketing Campaign. Lets look into the many possibilities of their choice over other platforms like NFC or GSM. Currently, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are the primary platforms which are used to transmit proximity marketing messages, but some analysts expect NFC to become a competitive rival. Some even believe that NFC will eventually overtake other proximity marketing communication methods and become the dominant means. However I am not standing at any sides yet. To date almost every mobile phone are bluetooth enabled from my more than a century-old 3210 Nokia phone  to the extravagant fancy Samsung Galaxy S4 equipped with the coolest features. Wi-Fi hotspots are growing as rapid as Wi-Fi smart mobile phones. Every shopping mall or least a shop in a mall has Wi-Fi hotspot most commonly a food and beverage outlet.

A SMS from a GSM network lacks interaction. Too little colours and designs to represent your brand and draw the attention of the consumer.  The counterpart MMS would be less cost effective. NFC the highly anticipated platforms and its own drawbacks. It is a very small amount of consumers with NFC enabled phones. But sources say, by 2015 the percentage of the NFC enabled phones available on the market would 53 percent. There could be another technology within the next 3 years. NFC watch this space.

To use the NFC tag to receive messages, users may have to download an app, while virtually every smartphone already comes equipped with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities. Another potential barrier is that NFC ad campaigns require consumers to initiate the engagement. First, they have to read the poster or sign, and then they have to decide to tap their device to receive the message. Since many consumers are already engaged with content on their devices in public spaces, they are less likely to notice the invitation to receive the message. Besides, since NFC has a limited transmission field, consumers must not only notice the printed ad and decide to make the connection, they must get close enough to the NFC tag to initiate the message. So it’s an open question whether or not consumers will be willing to read and respond to advertising messages that require that level of effort on their part.

In contrast, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-based proximity marketing campaigns use a technology that is already standard on nearly all handsets to deliver an opt-in message directly to the device that consumers already use for most of their communications on the go. Consumers are not required to initiate the transmission instead, a well-designed Bluetooth/Wi-Fi campaign sends a message to all consumers who came within a range as far away as 10m/300 feet. Consumers who opt to receive the marketing message can do so by simply touching their device screen. Both technologies are familiar. This familiarity gives Bluetooth and Wi-Fi a distinct advantage over competing technologies when it comes to proximity marketing.

Lets not write off NFC just yet, NFC brings a lot of conveniences and is getting more and more popular, there’s no surprise marketers will include the NFC or all the above as their approach. After all, the key for marketers is to examine potential ROI and make the right decision.