With all the bad press surrounding botched proximity marketing attempts here in the US, I always like to report on successful deployments whether here or abroad to offset the usually-negative success-rates.
There was event that took place recently called the Loxion Motorshow at a mall in Soweto, Africa that featured a bluetooth-based proximity campaign lead by BP and Brandscape Marketing. They enlisted five “BP Ultimate” promoters that engaged visitors by helping turn-on the bluetooth on their mobile devices, as well as downloading rich media content directly to their handsets from Hypertags. The campaign consisted of promoting branded mobile-wallpaper, ringtones, and instant-prize vouchers.
Of the some 11,000 visitors to the event, about 7,500 received audience alerts (“Would you like to download content from BP Ultimate?”) with 4,278 requesting downloads from the Hypertags, equating to a 56.7% conversion rate overall for the campaign. The average rate of downloads per hour, per promoter was 79.9 with the top promoter averaging a staggering 103.7, with a best hour of 188 downloads. In other words, it was a great success for both BP Ultimate, and Brandscape Marketing’s proximity platform.
Brandscape’s solution relies on “Hypertags” that can be worn by promoters, and acts as a visual link to the mobile content. It delivers free rich media content including video, MP3, animated wallpaper, and 2D barcode vouchers directly to over 800 handset makes and models uniquely using Bluetooth or infra-red.
It looks to me that an important aspect of a successful proximity campaign is alerting the public of what it is and how it works. In this example, BP had live promoters on hand to educate the public on how to engage in the content, and to give a live call-to-action instead of relying on posters and flyers. Also, introducing a gimmick such as instant-prizes gives users the motivation to participate, as well as the brand and opportunity to get their message out. I also think the location the campaign is initiated in is important as well. Large events with high foot-traffic and a collective interest in one topic, such as sporting events or trade-shows, is important to the campaigns success.
