Your Ad Here






Bluespam Political Tactics

Posted by: Ion | April 5th, 2007 · 8:09 AM

Real-time personal interference

To the horror of wireless users everywhere, Bluespamming (or “Bluecasting” if you prefer) has picked up a rather substantial endorsement by practice. HSBC is testing an implementation for geo-targeted spam via Bluetooth enabled mobile devices. If you’re a registered customer, you’ll be tagged with an advertisement for savings accounts, whenever you blunder past one of their facilities in London:

When it finds a Bluetooth mobile phone in range the box sends a message asking if the person would like to receive a promotional message from the bank. If the person answers ‘yes’ the ad is sent to their mobile. Mobile users who do not switch their phones to ‘discovery’ mode or who reply ‘no’ to the initial text will not receive anything further.

The system has been set up so that regular passers-by do not receive repeat messages. The technology recognizes which devices have already received a text and will not send to them again till the marketing campaign changes, usually on a monthly basis.
The first screen flashed up ‘Look, no tax!’, then changed to read ‘Open a Cash Mini-ISA now and we’ll give you £2 to be shared equally between Earthwatch, The Climate Group and WWF’.

The final screen gave a number to text for a telephone call-back or suggested asking in the branch.
(Today, Mogo and ThisIsMoney)

While this practice has always seemed like an idea that will annoy the hell out people, if it develops commercial sustainability (and HSBC’s move is a large step toward that), the tactic has interesting political marketing applications.

Suppose you were to set up a mobile wireless antenna in a van, in order to bluespam all the attendees at an opposition political rally in realtime. Either as push advertising, or just to annoy and distract them. Call it active wardriving, it would be a swell way to run realtime interference for a guerilla wifi PAC: “Candidate X just lied about his record on organized crime, did you know several of his donors were recently convicted of fraud? Click for more info.”

In a more positive method, this would also be a fun way to get around the prohibition on last-minute political advertising at polling locations. Suppose you could ping a voter on their mobile phone, just prior to entry into the polling booth with a geographically and demographically tailored message. “Remember Sheila, Candidate X wants to cut funding for High School Y you’re voting at. Vote Candidate Z today for our children’s future.”

Matt Dickman, tech strategist at DigiKnow, correctly surmises that the best commercial approaches are retail, incentive based SMS. That is, hit the customer with a redeemable virtual coupon when they’re in front of your store:

If you’re smart, stay away from this invasive, unrequested form of marketing. If you’re innovative, consider (for example) creating an SMS campaign which you promote on a sidewalk ad in front of your store. Tell people that for an immediate X% discount, send a message to your shortcode and show the cashier the reply message. This way you’re using technology, but the user is pulling you in.
(TechnoMarketer)

An enhancement to this is to make the incentive time-dependent. A timestamp on the coupon with a countdown in minutes or seconds would mandate action, whereas a traditional coupon would lack some of the immediacy required to pull in street traffic. The political marketing equivalent to incentivizing would be free merchandise (shirts, stickers, signs, etc.) or benefit-driven short-term volunteerism.

Correction: Matt Dickman points out that HSBC’s experiment is geographically indiscriminate, not smart targeted. The only authentication that occurs, is on repeat transmission not on customer-status. I misread this in one of the original pieces.

Posted in: General. technology. Political Marketing |

Add us: Digg | Del.icio.us | Technorati


Your Ad Here

1 comment to “Bluespam Political Tactics”

iAdvert.mobi » Bluespam Political Tactics, April 5th, 2007 at 8:39 pm:

Your comment:

You must be logged in to post a comment.