subject: Check-out the Check-in [print this page] The Yamanas, a South American Indian people, lived more than 100 years ago and travelled by canoes between islands to collect food. The men hunted sea lions and from time to time they might stumble upon a whale carcass on the beach. The voluminous meat was a feast for their fellow villagers, but too heavy to carry back. They had to signal the presence of this natural bounty and they did so with smoke signals. Villagers would spy the billowing smoke over the mountains ranges and make their way excitedly to the spot to see what all the fuss was about.
Fast forward 100 years to any modern metropolis and you'll find people signalling news to their networks of friends using a rather more modern method - a GPS enabled mobile phone. This news is as likely to include facts about a restaurant promotion, right at the spot where the consumer is, as it is details of what they have chosen for lunch.
Location based mobile marketing is a phrase that has bubbled under the surface of the digital press for the a number of years but marketers are now witnessing it become a workable reality. A number of factors have contributed to it gaining traction; the maturation of social media, the growth of smart phone ownership, WI-FI pervasiveness and 3G connectivity. That mobile handsets are now capable of detecting their owners location make them a natural platform for social media services. Together these two platforms will grow over the next three years to offer marketers a new segmentation variable - social location. Not only will brands have access to a consumer's physical location, but they will also be able make inferences about the context of the consumers actions at said location.
Knowing a consumers location offers a number of advantages to marketers. The most obvious beneficiaries are businesses that are reliant on local search. These tend to be in categories such as Restaurants & Bars, Schools & Colleges, Hair & Beauty or Car Dealerships. But there are ways for brands that don't have a high street presence to benefit.
Experiential marketing plays a crucial role in today's communications mix as it engages all of the senses to create a highly memorable brand experience.The challenge is driving consumers to the event - location based mobile marketing can help. It is not yet possible to directly broadcast text messages, based on a consumers current location. This is where mobile social networks step in. Foursquare, a leading mobile social media network, offers brands a virtual coupon product, that can connect with geographically relevant Foursquare users and drive them the experiential event. Imagine for example a 'pop-up bank' with a special rate for first time home buyers. Or consider the launch of a new car, with a top-of-the-range model demonstrated on the concourse of major London train stations. Driving Four Square users to these experiential events, and then prompting them to 'Check-in' before delivering a promotional offer that is relevant to the context of the event, is the state-of-the art in Location Based Mobile Advertising.
One might imagine that the act of 'checking in' is a novelty that is soon to become a tedium. But organisations are already working on this. ASTRA, an EU funded project to realise 'auto check in' aims to make manual checking-in a thing of the past, and seeks to open our location data over the open Internet. Should this project gain traction then this will be the sling shot needed to send mobile location advertising into orbit. We're as excited as our clients are by this prospect but we also realise that it is the beginning of a new debate, one that seeks to resolve how consumer privacy and actionable marketing data might live in harmony.
With the launch of the iPad and other tablets based computers, consumers will start adopting new types of mobile behaviour. We fully expect tablet owners to carry their devices in the way that they might carry a small notepad and it will be used as nonchalantly as one too. This means that devices,far more powerful than our Smart Phones, will begin to connect millions of customers to the mobile internet; these consumers will have at their disposal more screen real estate, richer interfaces and longer lasting
