Signature - Q4, 2007 - (Page 12)

Bluetooth Technology Interactive | By Samuel Greengard | Photography Courtesy of Lifestyle Communications | Q4 ’07 TheMessage Zone Shoppers at a South African mall are receiving special offers and promotional messaging from nearby stores on their cell phones, via Bluetooth technology. Is it high-tech spam – or a stroke of marketing genius? In a world where bigger is better, Petros Kondos is thinking small. Less than two years ago, the director of WCIT, an upstart ﬁrm located in Pretoria, South Africa, launched an innovative push-marketing system for Gateway Theatre of Shopping, a Durban mall with 340 shops. The system, which lets merchants send promotional information and coupons to Bluetooth enabled phones, has already garnered a Maxi Award (the advertising industry equivalent of an Oscar) and is quickly catching on at other malls across the country. Here’s how it works: Upon entering a mall, shoppers with the Bluetooth wireless function enabled on their phones or PDAs get a message asking if they would like to receive coupons, vouchers and discounts for mall products. Those who opt in receive no more than three messages per day and aren’t subjected to the same message twice. Those who decline aren’t contacted again for a minimum of 24 hours. Gateway Theatre, which has 20 Bluetooth wireless transceivers covering its 150,000-square-meter area, promotes the “Bluetooth Zone” in the form of text, pictures, multimedia and audio clips. The system, which uses software from Denmark-based Blip Systems and is managed by WCIT, costs merchants from R2,500 to R20,000 per month (US$285-$2,900). However, it eliminates per-message SMS and MMS fees for both sender and recipient. Moreover, because participants opt in, they’re far more likely to view messages rather than disregard them as spam. Nearly 1.5 million shoppers pass through Gateway Theatre every month. Between 500 and 800 shoppers choose to receive the promotions each day, an estimated 20 percent of those whose Bluetooth enabled devices give them that choice. “Although the sheer number of people receiving messages isn’t large, it’s a very effective way to reach a desired audience,” Kondos explains. Gateway’s success has prompted more than 20 malls in South Africa to adopt WCIT’s system. At Pretoria’s Menlyn Park mall, shoppers can go to an 12 | SIGnature | Bluetooth.org information desk or kiosk to register interest categories, such as fashion, technology, entertainment and home décor. In addition to sending out tailored promotions, the system randomly picks a daily contest winner, who receives an evoucher for a gift. WCIT’s marketing methods and use of the technology are increasingly sophisticated. “We can now measure how often a person comes into a mall, what his or her speciﬁc interests are and more,” Kondos notes. WCIT plans to build up a marketing database. “So when a company like Nike comes in and says that it would like to run a campaign where we target males between the ages of 30 and 40, we can go to the database and ﬁnd the matches,” Kondos says. “These customers will receive a speciﬁc message.” WCIT is also expanding the use of Bluetooth enabled push marketing to trade shows, university campuses, nightclubs, churches, movie theaters and other venues. It’s possible to quickly create campaigns that reﬂect changing business conditions or customer groups. Kondos says Bluetooth wireless push marketing won’t supplant other retailer tools. But because it beneﬁts both consumer and retailer, Bluetooth technology should become a permanent point-of-sale marketing resource. “Effective marketing is all about providing beneﬁts to consumers,” explains Kondos. “Bluetooth offers a highly effective way to communicate with potential customers and measure the results.” Samuel Greengard covers business and technology for Wired, Discover, Industry Week, Business Finance and other publications. http://Bluetooth.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Signature - Q4, 2007

Signature - Q4, 2007 Contents The Road Ahead Getting Noticed In the News Keeping the Edge Why Wibree? The Message Zone Do You Compute? Command Center Mountain Magic On the Fast Track Give or Get? Groundsurf’s Up! Get in the Game Get on the List Number, Please! User-Friendly The Tell-Tale Car

Signature - Q4, 2007

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