Marketing turns blue

We recently did what was among our first Bluetooth marketing campaigns. Though it had a modest budget and expectations, it was quite a success.

That got me thinking if there could be a roadmap for marketers using this relatively-new technology for promotional activities.

Bluetooth was created to unify multiple devices (cell phones, laptops, digital cameras and video game consoles) and technologies without synchronisation problems. 

While it’s still relatively early to fully assess this technology for mobile marketing, let me attempt a broad approach for Bluetooth marketing using Telibrahma case studies.
Here are eight tenets of Bluetooth marketing:

- Think Proximity: For once we need to shift our mass media lens and think local. 
The essence of Bluetooth is ‘proximity’. Proximity to the consumer in the mall, at the McDonald’s store, in the multiplex etc.  With Bluetooth, marketing can be as localised as we wish. A promotion done for the Cookie Man in Forum Mall, Bangalore, last year used a special discount coupon to drive the mall footfall to the exact store…

- Permission marketing: The mobile is a highly personal medium. Therefore, we need to be extra careful in seeking our target group’s permission. Unlike the clutter of television, blue-spamming can have a severe backlash for the brand.

But with permission marketing, it can deliver high engagement. At the IIMB fest, Sprite targeted the young TG with Bluetooth-enabled social networking. Users who turned Bluetooth on at the event could download the networking tool. They could search for friends to chat or network with them. 

- Personalised medium: Care should be taken to have a highly personalised brand voice. We must never forget that this is one-to-one marketing. Earlier this year, Arrow did a promotion at its stores in Bangalore where it had two different offers for two sets of TGs simultaneously. Bluetooth allowed for such a personalised and highly-targeted marketing.

- Relevance over reach: Since this is a proximity marketing effort, relevance is more important than reach. Recently, ICICI used Bluetooth marketing to get its customers to download the mobile banking applications at its branches and ATM kiosks.
Applications were delivered based on the mobile phone models of the customers.

- 3Us model: Bluetooth marketing must fulfil at least 2 of the 3Us — usefulness and utility.  The mobile screen is not just to dump shortened versions of the TV and print creative. We must figure out how the blue-content is useful to the consumer and what utility does it have.

For example, at a multiplex, a brand may decide to give the movie calendar along with an ad rather than just the obtrusive ad.

- Simple and non-obtrusive: This is one more medium where ‘less is more.’
The thumb-rule here is not -’what can I add to increase the information content of my message’ but ‘what can I take away to make it simpler and un-obtrusive.’

- Conversation medium: As more clients use mobile marketing, extreme care must be taken to make the message more conversational. While — ‘Dear loyal subscriber’ may be endured/ignored in a direct mail, it will end up pissing off the mobile audience of one. Mobile creatives must also treat each communication as part of a conversation thread rather than stand-alone messages.

- Contextual creativity: This stems from Bluetooth’s proximity to marketing roots. What has worked for one of our clients like Cycle Agarbatti, who converted bus shelters into OOH aarti venues and turned it into a blue-zone so that the devout can download Ganapati wallpapers and ringtones, may not work as well for a durable or an FMCG brand…

These are by no means definitive tenets. Every marketer, brand, agency will have their own learning curve as they play with another technology and try to influence an increasingly inattentive consumer. The ‘tooth’ is out there. We just need to figure our way through.

(Sinha is senior vice-president of Mudra)
(The 3Us model is by David Armano, an experienced designer and blogger)