I’ve been very critical of Bluespamming – the indiscriminate blasting of a marketing message to all mobiles in the vicinity who happen to have their Bluetooth switched on, as if that was consenting to the spam. I’ve also been pretty sceptical that it would make it as a stand-alone marketing channel. And while there may be ways of legitimate opt-in Bluetooth marketing, I’m not sure that they ever provide the scale that makes things work.

Of course, many disagreed and set out to prove me wrong on all counts. I’m not aware that anyone has succeeded yet, but I’m always interested to have an update from anyone who has had an outstanding success with the channel or who has a thriving business model somewhere.

One entrepreneur who had a lot of early success was South Africa’s Petros Kondos. Sadly for him, the star which shone brightly at first eventually waned and he closed the business. However, Petros knows that there’s certainly no shame in failure – in the words of the legendary entrepreneur and investor, Vinod Khosla, “I’ve failed more times than I’ve succeeded”. And my own success in mobile marketing was built on the failure of my first foray into the industry with ZagMe.

Petros has written a warts-and-all account of his years as a Bluetooth Marketer. This includes some great case studies of success, but also specifies all the lessons he learned over the years, including what Bluespam is (and isn’t) and why his venture didn’t make it. If you have any interest in this area at all as a marketer or potential entrepreneur, this is a must-read book.

Great entrepreneurs learn from their own experiences for sure. But I think it’s especially admirable when they make those lessons public and share them with the world in the belief that it will save others repeating the same mistakes.

You can get your free PDF of Petros’s book by mailing him pk AT telkomsa DOT net or tweeting him @petros99.

Petros is moving to Toronto shortly, so look him up if you’re in the area. Or better yet, recruit him for your company or startup.

Back in August, I wrote a post about Hypertag setting up a network of net-connected Bluetooth units around London for marketers to use. I thought it was an interesting idea, but some other people, like Tom Hume, didn’t really agree (though I take some pride in being able to get coffee to shoot out his nose).

The crux of Tom’s argument was basically that usability and user experience was really poor, for a variety of reasons. And, I’ve got to admit — he’s right. I ran into a Bluetooth-equipped poster in the subway here in London and tried it out. I had to add “Whistler” (the name of the resort being promoted) to the Bluetooth name of my device to opt in, and as soon as I did, I got a Bluetooth message. It was an animated GIF telling me I hadn’t won a free trip, but to visit their web site or something.

Obviously changing the Bluetooth name acts as an opt-in mechanism. That’s great, better than bluespamming everybody on the platform. Making the change wasn’t too difficult, but then again, I’m used to doing this sort of thing. As Tom suggests, asking average users to do this is a stretch. Never fear, though — the poster provides helpful instructions:

Do they really expect people to do all that? Somebody must be having a laugh with the “(Yes, it’s that easy.)” bit just above it, because that really isn’t easy at all. It’s stupidly difficult, as Tom pointed out.

[tags] mobile, mobile marketing, bluetooth[/tags]

Knowing what the user wants is key to both opt-in in the first place and subsequently, optimising the channelǃÙs effectiveness.

This might seem an obvious point to make and indeed, a comment was made to this effect on the original post. However, it’s a point that does need labouring, especially in the marketing community.

Why? Because the mindset of nearly all advertising, direct marketing and promotion has historically been about interrupting the recipient in whatever they’re doing at the time. This could be while they’re consuming a medium (TV, radio, newspapers) or doing something else (walking down the street, opening their post, shopping in a supermarket, surfing the net). Whatever the scenario, the marketer hasn’t really had to explicitly seek permission to communicate a marketing message before.

Of course, this isn’t 100% true. Direct Marketers will point out that they use opt in lists and have been for many years. This is actually rarely the case. Most use opt-out, which is an entirely different thing. True opt in marketing, where the future recipient of messages is knowingly signing up to a marketing channel is pretty rare. So for the vast majority of brands and agencies, this is a logical, important, but nevertheless, not so obvious starting point.

In this post, I’m going to kick off with some of the physical delivery characteristics of these messages, before a final Part 3, when I’ll look at what the messages themselves might actually say.

Firstly, they have to be free to receive. While some may believe that selling ads is possible (iTunes and ESPN announced yesterday that they will sell classic commercials for $2 a pop) I can say with some certainty that it’s going to be a pretty niche market. For the vast majority of us, we expect that our marketing messages are free and will take umbrage if we find that we’re being charged directly or indirectly for being enticed to buy someone’s product or service.

This is important in the context of a mobile phone, because even if the marketer doesn’t charge, the mobile operator may well do so. Any delivery of the marketing message over WAP will incur data charges, for instance and in the US, recipients will even be charged for receiving an sms.

There’s another dimension here though. Many digital marketing messages encourage interaction, mainly clicking through to a website. If there’s a cost to this action, in terms of more data charges, it’s going to suppress click-throughs to far below what we see on the traditional web. Can you imagine what it would do to AdSense response rates if Google started charging the consumer whenever they clicked an ad? And it would be even worse if you didn’t know how much they were going to be charged – operators being far from transparent or at least easily comprehensible, when it comes to one-off data charges.

This means that mobile ads will have to either develop an alternative call to action to the click-through, or find a technology-led solution to allow the user to click through for free.

Neither of these scenarios are impossible actually. Since we’re talking about LBM, we could be looking at the equivalent of a Physical Click-Through, otherwise known as a store visit. Or maybe where the message was delivered by a local network, a digital click-through could be handled free over that network too.

Any marketer who doesn’t take this potential cost barrier into account needs to rethink in my view. Although, I live in hope that all-you-can-eat data downloads might solve this problem for operator delivered messages, eventually.

A second characteristic of these types of messages, is that the message needs to differentiate itself from other forms of messaging, in an ideal world. Taking sms as a possible channel, the familiar beep of an incoming text message triggers a Pavlovian emotional reaction. Someone has sent YOU something and you can’t wait to open it. With younger people, the sms is much more likely to be personal (rather than business) and so possibly even more exciting.

So it can be anti-climactic to open it, to find that it’s “just” a marketing message. In any other context, you may have valued it (after all, you signed up to receive them), but the Beep raised your expectations too high. This is a point endorsed by The Mobile Sage of Brighton, Tom Hume in his comment on my first post.

If there were ways to push messages to individuals without masquerading as a friend or family member (which is what SMS marketing messages effectively do, after all), would it be more welcomed?

Yes, Tom, I think you’re right.

James at Moco News shared much the same thinking in his post about my original article and hypothesised that maybe the delivery channel could be a “scrolling ticker”. This would distinguish it from other forms of messages and could well be a solution. It also has the other important, third characteristic of LBM, namely:

It automatically disappears when no longer relevant or when the recipient fails to interact after a given period of time.

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, no one wants their phone’s valuable memory clogged up with mobile marketing detrius, especially if it’s no longer applicable or relevant. Secondly, to avoid the annoyance factor of recipients thinking “Yeah and?? I’ve already seen that and wasn’t interested.”

The fourth characteristic is timeliness. True LBM is highly time relevant – you are in the vicinity of the message sender for a matter of minutes, or even seconds. Therefore the message delivery backend, as well as the delivery itself, must effectively be instant.

If we’re using sms, this isn’t really an issue. But with richer media, like images, or even video, sending via an operator’s network can be slow at current download rates and by the time it arrives, it could have become obsolete.

As operator networks get faster and faster, rich media delivery, if appropriate in the first place, will become less of an issue. In the meantime, some form of local network, Bluetooth or wifi, might be the better option for high bandwidth media.

The next characteristic is don’t interrupt! Although interruptive techniques have been the very foundation of marketing throughout the ages, this is one environment where it’s a no, no.

If I’m making a call, I do NOT want to be interrupted by a marketing message.

If I’m writing an sms, I do not want to be interrupted by a marketing message, have to click on it to make it go away and then find my draft again.

Interruption on mobiles will be very annoying and will lead to people opting out of the programme very, very quickly.

The next characteristic is accuracy of location feeds. If a store visit, for example, is the objective of the campaign (and it doesn’t have to be), the further away the recipient of the message is, the less likely they are to visit.

There are many competing technologies as far as location identification is concerned and this isn’t the place to review them all. But I’d suggest that such a system needs to deliver accuracy of less than say, 100m, in all types of terrain. As an example, pure GPS relies on line of sight with a satellite, making it impractical to use in many urban environments.

Naturally, LBM may well encompass locally delivered, but non-location specific messages, in which case accuracy is inherent, if often not necessary.

My final thought on the characteristic of the ideal LBM message is probably too futuristic to be realistic right now. But it will be necessary if true LBM is to succeed in the longer term and in a mass market context.

Many such messages will require the user to visit a store and use their phone to prove that they are entitled to some benefit. This process must eventually be integrated in some way into the retailers’ EPOS systems if it’s to be accepted by the Ops people in the retailers.

Of course, the perfect system would be to allow the mobile user to receive the marketing message, go into the store, pay for the product or service and redeem an offer – all completely seamlessly with their mobile. But we’re a ways off that currently.

That’s my thoughts on the most important characteristics of LBM messages. What have I missed out? Please leave a comment and let me know or share your thoughts on this important subject.

Of course, you could argue that many of these characteristics are common sense and up to a point, they are. It’s like being invited into someone’s home – be respectful, sensitive to their feelings, ask before you use something and don’t deliberately break their washing line (long story!). But this is not how marketers have behaved in the past and most will require a new mindset when developing campaigns for the mobile channel.

Tomorrow, my final post in this series about LBM will be about the messages themselves. What should they be saying in terms of content that will make them attractive enough to opt into in the first place and to want to continue to receive them? Many traditional advertising messages will no longer be acceptable, so what should marketers think about saying?

If you have any thoughts on this angle too, please drop me an email or leave a comment.

However, ZagMe closed 5 years ago now and I sense that the world and technology is catching up with the thinking, so I thought it would be interesting to re-examine the business case.

Whenever location based marketing is mentioned, there are usually a number of predictable reactions.

At one end, we have what I’ll call the traditional techie, or possibly the anti-marketer (not always one and the same person) who tend to run around shouting stuff about invasion of privacy and calling for damn-fool advertisers to leave us alone. “We don’t,” they say, “want marketing messages on our phones (or anywhere else, in our heart of hearts) under any circumstances. It’s Evil.

Well, unless it’s Pull Marketing, where we get to decide when we want to be marketed to – obviously maybe that’s OK.”

At the other end of the spectrum is the traditional marketer or ad agency. They know the traditional channels are dying. People PVR out ads, have spam filters and their minds are adept at ignoring marketing messages.

They need a new magic bullet and mobile marketing may be the answer.

What both parties seem to be missing is what the ordinary mobile phone user might want. So I thought I’d have a look at this and see what the role of marketing on a mobile phone might be.

Firstly, let’s bust the Pull myth. Most ordinary people don’t want the hassle of pulling down information. They want it presented to them as a seamless part of their device experience, to ignore or act on, as they see fit.

That’s not to say that there isn’t an important role for Pull – I think being able to access information to supplement other media, as an example, is a great idea. And some die-hards will always stick to Pull and that’s fine too.

But the ordinary person wants to access marketing messages without any hassle, provided that the messages will be of interest – more of that anon.

I’m also not going to belabour the the Opt In Rule here. Trying to run non-Opt-In campaigns is not only illegal in Europe, but will be anywhere where marketers try to run this type of campaign. It’s simply too annoying for recipients and too tempting for politicians to run vote-catching legislation to ban it.

Having said that, illegal or not, it’s fundamentally Stone Age marketing, akin to bludgeoning passers-by with a huge marketing club and shouting after those you miss “Oi, shithead come back here, so I can smack you round the head and tell you how much I much I disrespect you”. In other words, it’s not for reputable brands, as they’ll find out damn quickly if they try it.

So let’s assume that your user has signed up to receive LBM from you.

Yes, this is a very big assumption and leads to the first fundamental LBM question: Would anyone sign up and if so, why would they?

Well, I think we can tackle this pretty quickly. Yes, they would sign up or opt-in to receive LBM. And they’ll sign up because of the type of marketing messages you promise (and they believe) that you’ll send them.

At ZagMe, for instance, we had 85,000 people sign up to our opt-in mobile marketing channel. These people weren’t tricked into something, they were simply promised marketing messages from shops in the mall, as in “great deals on essential brands direct to your mobile ÇƒÏ free”.

So, in fact, the really important question when studying LBM, the-answer-to-life-death-and-the-universe question of the subject, is: what kind of marketing messages should you say you’re going to send that will attract opt-in in the first place, that recipients will welcome and that they’ll respond to? In other words, what kind of messages will work? Knowing what the user wants is key to both opt-in in the first place and subsequently, optimising the channel’s effectiveness.

I’ll examine this in Part Two of this exploration and I’ll publish it later this week. If you have any ideas or feedback, leave a comment and I’ll incorporate the best in the follow-up.

Have a great week.

Justin Pearce* writes in New Media Age about the UK’s Mobile Marketing Association finally coming out against Bluespamming – 6 months after we wrote that it was illegal. I wonder what took them so long to decide that sending unsolicited messages was in clear breach of European privacy directives and meant to be against everything they stand for?

Filter, the main company behind these BlueSpam campaigns, have always argued that they are in compliance with the Directive, despite the fact that sending someone a message saying “Oi, can we send you a message please?” is just as much spam as as offering Viagra or Penis Enlargement advertisements. The fact that I may choose to have my Bluetooth settings on my phone as Discoverable is not consent to getting spam, anymore than owning a computer is indicating that I am happy to be sent unsolicited emails.

Better late than never, I guess – which might be a very nice motto for the MMA to adopt actually.

Meanwhile, in a similar vein, German Trend-following site, Trnd.com has been following our coverage of this and polled its readers.

Of the 708 people who responded 62% have a mobile with Bluetooth, 19% have it switched on, as a rule and visible whilst 54% have it switched off. Most interesting of all, 81% consider this form of advertising as “Bluespamming” which loosely coincides with the Coldplay numbers, we wrote about, where 85% of recipients rejected the “come on” message. Only 9% thought advertising this was was “gut” (not a typo – German for good!).

So if you are still tempted to use Bluespamming, either in flagrant breach of the law, or because it’s legal in your country, my advice is don’t. Pissing off 85% of recipients just doesn’t make any sense.

* See Justin? I do link if there’s something to link to

In fact, it’s reaching epidemic proportions and is one reason why the income yield per page for mobile content advertising is declining so rapidly. But it’s equally easy to argue that Bluetooth file sharing really isn’t an issue at all, as a Bluetooth file share episode is completely untraceable and untrackable.

I can tell you than I have plenty of anecdotal evidence from kids I talk to that if you ask how much they pay for ringtones, they look at you as if you’re barking mad. Who pays for ringtones these days, apart from rich kids or those that don’t know better?

The fact that these sharing episodes are untraceable raises a very interesting point for those in the music industry who want to try to stuff this particular cat back into the bag. Unlike mobile’s online cousin, no ISP or operator can be bullied or sued to reveal culprits of this “crime”. The fact is, no one knows.

The only way you might be able to find kids who have shared files in this way is to impound their mobile phone, physically examine the content and demand proof of purchase or right of ownership. This seems a little extreme, both logistically and legally. I’m not a lawyer, but I can’t see the courts allowing the music industry to impound someone’s phone on the mere suspicion (or less) that they might have done something like this. Plus it would surely be up to the prosecutor to prove that the defendant had downloaded something illegally, not that the defendant would have to prove their innocence.

This means that the music industry is going to be forced to confront its demons and work out how they can make money in an age when digital music must be free – no other outcome is possible here.

The first move will be to cling to the DRM life raft, in the hope that it’ll keep them afloat in the sea of piracy. Unfortunately, DRM is fatally flawed and badly listing already. There never has been an uncrackable DRM system and there never will be, as no matter how foolproof any system purports to be, some geek somewhere will unlock it for fun. And once there’s just one unlocked copy, that’ll turn into two and four and….you get the picture. Just one geek is all it takes, every time.

Despite this clear and present danger, it’s interesting to see that EMI, for one, have decided to dive straight into the Bluetooth channel, by teaming up with Nokia. The bFree service has launched in Finland, offering free (for the time being) downloads of digital content, such as ringtones, logos and wallpapers.

Is this a sign that the record industry is finally coming to terms with the new paradigms? Or another that they don’t know what the hell they’re doing?

What do you think?

Bluetooth, huh? Sounds like it could start a “boobjacking” fad.

It’s been a while since we last looked at Bluejacking, but it’s alive and well and seems to be going from strength to strength. At least, that’s what I deduce from a look round BluejackQ, which is the spiritual home of the movement.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my post in June 2004 for a definitive guide. But essentially, it involves ordinary mobile phone users (as opposed to commercial organisations) sending unsolicited messages (text and pics) by Bluetooth. The messages range from harmless and childish (in a good way) pranks – such as “your shoe lace is undone” – to perhaps initiating a friendly contact.

As Bluetooth messages aren’t trackable, unlike say, an sms, no one can say how popular Bluejacking is. But anecdotally, I’d say it’s big and getting bigger – perhaps even now crossing the chasm from early adoption into the early majority, if you know your Moore.

MobiLuck have clambered on board this bandwagon and just released version 3.5 of its short range, Bluetooth messaging system. This takes Bluejacking, which is actually rather a clumsy interface, involving using the entries in your phone’s address book, and makes the whole thing that much slicker and easier to use.

It automatically searches for other Bluetooth devices and alerts you when they’re found. This casting process is still quite a hassle using the normal method. It also has built-in virus protection, as playing around with Bluetooth messages from strangers’ mobiles is the digital equivalent of unprotected and promiscuous sex.

The interface is a lot easier to manage as well.

The app costs Euro 14.95 ($17.96) a year and is currently only available on Nokia Series 60 phones, although you can send to any Bluetooth enabled phone, providing that Bluetooth is in discoverable mode, obviously.

Apart from Bluejacking, there are MoSoSo applications, to find other people you might want to meet or network with in the immediate vicinity.

But also if you study kids, you’ll find that they quite often sms their mates who are in the same room – messaging is often a parallel communication channel, as opposed to an alternative one. For instance, they may want to take the piss out of someone else in the room, share a joke, communicate a private message or exchange those icky love notes that we’ve all sent back when we were teens (“i luv u” “i luv u more” “no u dont” “yes i do” kind of thing).

Of course, the great thing about Bluetooth is that it’s also a completely free-to-use channel, so you can send as many messages as you like, without paying a penny to your operator or anyone else.