Bluetooth Marketing - A beginners guide for advertising agencies and brands
I often get lots of inquiries from agencies, brands and people working in advertising in general about using Bluetooth for marketing.
There always seems to be a general lack of understanding about the capabilities of Bluetooth as well not knowing how to use it effectively.
In the right place at the right time it can be one of the cheapest most effective ways to advertise rich content to consumers.
Ive put together a list of things to help you get started including suppliers, case studies and some general myths.
1) Bluetooth advertising is spam.
When people say this its just annoys me. Bluetooth campaigns which aren’t targeted properly and just ping messages out aren’t spam, there just awful campaigns run by stupid people who don’t have a clue.
Lets take the campaign by the bank HSBC did last year where they sent videos to everyone on Regent Street about their crappy cash ISA.
Now, what are people on Regents Street to do? Shop. And a big percentage of those who are there are tourists who cant open a cash ISA here. Where is the targeting here? Its such a pointless campaign whoever signed it off at HSBC should be sacked.
It was covered in the Daily Mail here, which quotes a HSBC spokesperson saying:
Feedback from customers and passers-by has been ‘positive’
Lies!
Now compare that to what Nike have done in China with their Bluetooth campaigns. There is simply no contest. Where HSBC failed was a complete lack of creativity with the channel.
You need to think about the audience. In a concert for example you would find a very high percentage of people wanting content for the artist on stage. A perfect time to Bluetooth a sample track from an album, music video or discount coupon to buy tracks. How many people in the audience do you think will be complaining about spam? The same applies for clubs (mix from the dj etc), museums (video/audio walkthroughs, information on the show), sports events.. the list goes on.
Age of the audience has a big factor to play so keep that in mind. The fans at a Girls Aloud concert might be of a different demographic to ones at a Tony Bennett gig.
The bottom line is, make the content so wanted and right for the occasion that it wont even be seen as spam. Relevance & Context! Oh and have some posters/signs/flyers to let people know whats going on so they actively turn on their Bluetooth. No point of spending the money on the content and transmitters if you dont let anyone know their is cool stuff up for grabs.
You can also configure Bluetooth transmitters to only ever try and send content to someone once. If they reject, they are never bothered again. You cant say the same for those people that try and get you to sign up for charities on the high street can you?
And please lets remember YOU CAN REJECT THE FILE. You are given the choice. Users must take some responsibility. Its like when I hear stories that people accepted a transmission on the bus and it turned out to be animal porn, i mean come on what did you expect to get? I don’t open emails saying ’sexy time for you sir’ from Unknown in the subject line with dodgy attachments, but if I open them, who really is to blame?
2) Bluetooth CANNOT send SMS (text messages) or start a phone call.
This is probably the most frequent request from agencies/brands and it isnt helped by a number of agencies claiming their bus shelter or posters campaigns are sending out ‘SMS’ or ‘text messages’ via Bluetooth.
And the reason why Bluetooth cant do this?
It has no idea what your mobile phone number is. No personal information about you. Nada.
This information is not revealed when Bluetooth pings you. I mean think about it, imagine if it was THAT easy to get your mobile number? how ridiculous would that be?
What Bluetooth can do is send notepad files (.txt). Practically every phone with Bluetooth capability can open these which means you can get a big chunk of text to the receiver to advertise or stick URL’s in.
So isnt that just the same as a text message? Nope.
The problem is that when agencies, blogs, press etc use the terminology SMS or text message it insinuates that the message didnt need to be accepted, it just landed in someones inbox. Which lets face it, would be alot cooler and therefore sounds better in the press release or award entry for a campaign.
You can actually send any type of file via Bluetooth and the phone will gladly receive it, literally anything. The problem is will the phone be able to open the it? The key is knowing your audience and knowing the basics.
Which moves us on to…..
3: What you can send via Bluetooth
Bluetooth is just a way to transfer files so its capable of sending and receiving any file type. It all depends on the whether the reciving phone is compatible with the file that you are send. For example on MSN you can send me a Photoshop file, even though I don’t have Photoshop and I cant open the file but I can still accept the transfer and receive it. The same applies for Bluetooth sends.
If you want to send media and want the best possible reach and compatibility of your content you have the options of:
- Video (3gp and Mp4)
- Images (Jpeg and Gif)
- Audio (Mp3 and ringtones)
- vCard (Business Card files)
- .Txt files (Notepad)
These files are more or less safe for every phone in the market with Bluetooth.
Now remember if you send out a image, not every phone will open it full screen. A large majority of phones will open it thumbnail size so if there is lots of copy it will be unreadable. Also animated wallpapers look terrible if the screen size isnt correct as GIFs stretch badly.
You can also send the following types of files which are handset specific:
- Java applications and games
- Web bookmarks
- Calender events
- Symbian files and the list goes on
The main issue with files like these is that every manufacturer has its own version. Nokia bookmarks don’t work on Motorola’s, Sony Ericsson calendar events don’t work Sagem etc. Java applications and games are alot more troublesome as one java game will not work across multiple handsets from the same manufacturer. They are often made to cover a range of screen sizes and capabilities causing even more problems.
Bluetooth marketing companies like Qwikker have the technology to recognise the users handset make and model enabling you to send the right file. Unfortunately this doesn’t work for every single handset or manufacturer. Samsungs are poorly supported as well as brands that make up the budget market other than Sony Ericsson and Nokia, like Sagem etc.
You can be creative and solve this buy configuring your Bluetooth transmitter to send people that arent Java/bookmark/etc capable a video file or image instead. But beware of making consumers interacting with your brand feeling left out.
Think about your content - Want it to be viral? Make it small enough to fit in an MMS, that includes video and audio. That way you open up to another method of spreading your content other than Bluetooth.
4: Companies
I can recommend two companies that have the experience and friendliness to help you with your Bluetooth marketing.
First is Bluecasting and the second is Qwikker. Both have worked on large scale projects including concerts, festivals and outdoor billboard campaigns.
Also the MMA have made some guidelines which might interest you. Heres the link
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 12:32 am and is filed under Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
