by Branimir Parashkevov

In April the giant Pepsi Cola started a viral marketing campaign that went on for 2 months and is considered to be their largest bluetooth event ever. It run on public places like bus shelters in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Denver and Orange County, and pay phone kiosks in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Each of these media networks has integrated Qwikker’s Bluetooth content distribution technology. Pepsi was offering wide clips on posters, with a particular code for access. The five offered clips were called “Pass The Mic” – hip-hop freestyle music provided by Yahoo Music.

In the first week of the Pepsi campaign, opt-in rates to download content were reported to be 27% across the network.

Have you ever thought of using such a campaign ever? Why not!

by Marino Bresciani

I am start getting more and more surprised about how the big companies are gathering interest in the bluetooth marketing. In Paris, for example, you can easily find “interactive” advertising box that ask customers to activate the bluetooth on their mobile phones, in order to send them some interesting content: maps of the city, discount coupons, etc etc.

The following is instead a more subtle promotion: to promote popular reality show Big Brother 2008 on Channel TEN in Australia, advertising agency Marketforce in Perth came up with a unique bluetooth SMS campaign that really caught people by surprise. The ads embodied the “Big Brother is watching” slogan, which is the essence of the show. The campaign installed Blue-tooth transmitters in over 20 high-traffic bus shelters around town. The transmitters automatically sent two anonymous messages to any bluetooth enabled phones in the area.

The first message was tailored specifically for the local location, with something along the lines of:

I’m watching u. Ur at the (customized current location)

The second message is received 30-40 seconds later with the big reveal, saying:

Big Brother is back. 7 PM weeknights on TEN

Hopefully people won’t get mad at them.

by Martin Koppel

Today i was searching some practical cases about how companies have used Bluetooth marketing. Among others i managed to find quite good success story video, have a look:

It made me think how can it work even better. When you are going to buy a car it is nice to get pictures and videos about the car, but how could Bluetooth marketing bring people to buy a car. Well, there are automated parking machines everywhere, why aren’t we integrating Bluetooth marketing with those. A lot of people have hands-free system in their car with Bluetooth nowadays, it means also that Bluetooth is enabled. Just push through any car related ads and it will most probably reach the audience. To be sure we could also make the car owner pay for the parking via Bluetooth or just give out 30 minutes free parking… car owner gets free parking via Bluetooth i think you follow the pattern now. I think i can bring people to buy cars, tires or whatever.So what are we waiting for, let’s integrate Bluetooth everywhere and see what happens – do we refuse to enable Bluetooth in the future or not.

by Martin Koppel

Some time ago i introduced a new device Bluepod Media had developed and talked a little about bluetooth marketing. I might have been a little too untimely with conclusions. So i decided to invest some time and find out useful things about bluetooth marketing.

First what is bluetooth?
Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks. Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.

Bluetooth also said as Proximity marketing is the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. The process of Bluetooth based proximity marketing involves setting up Bluetooth broadcasting equipment at a particular location and then sending information which can be text, images, audio or video to Bluetooth enabled devices within range of the broadcast server.

It used to be that due to security fears or a desire to save battery life many users kept their Bluetooth devices disabled. To overcome this problems marketers have combined bluetooth marketing with advising via traditional media – such as posters, television screens or field marketing – suggesting people to enable their Bluetooth handsets in order to receive free content.

Nowadays mobile phones seem to have usually bluetooth switched on by default. Many other devices like car kits and handsets are usually bridged over bluetooth, so users now leave bluetooth switched on for easy connection. How effective bluetooth marketing will become time will tell. The following video describes the possibilities that bluetooth marketing offers.

by Martin Koppel

I read from UTalkMarketing that a company called Bluepod Media has developed hardware which can communicate with Bluetooth enabled handsets over a radius of 100 metres.

They are saying that this device is going to fly mobile marketing to the whole new level. The company is stressing the necessity of this device with facts like:

* There are now more Bluetooth-enabled handsets worldwide than there are PC-s
* The use of bluetooth is extremely high amongst teenagers who advertisers find traditionally hard to reach (37 per cent of all UK teenagers are regular users)
* Bluetooth content is the most popular form of mobile advertising
* It operates on pay-per-download model

But this is just a beginning imagine with few years from now we can get personal offers and pay via bluetooth.
You are going to cinema and you don’t have to pay for the ticket, you’ll be charged via bluetooth. But wait while you are watching Harry Potter you’ll be sent everything related with Harry Potter. Also you’ll get information about upcoming movies by categories you have previously chosen. When the movie has ended you are walking by the newspaper-booth and you’ll get all the hot topics you are monitoring via bluetooth. It’s like google alert on your mobile. These are only small things that came in my mind, wouldn’t it be great?

Well i see some disadvantages as well. This may get really disturbing, if i want to be alone i’ll switch bluetooth off. Actually i would like to know how much bluetooth-enabled devices have bluetooth enabled all the time- in cinema, walking by newspaper-booth, watching football etc. I’m afraid that the number isn’t so large since blutooth is eating battery, there are some securitity risks etc. It seems that this device is great for seducing marketing people, but there still remains a question does the message get through, how wide is the target group etc. In my opinion it isn’t the best channel to market something but the time will tell us am i right.