Several recent announcements indicate that the market for NFC-enabled marketing campaigns in the UK is starting to gather steam.
This week, outdoor media company Clear Channel launched the permanent outdoor NFC ads it had announced in February, while UK-based NFC marketing and mobile wallet company Proxama announced two partnerships, including one with UK-based loyalty and payment services company The Logic Group. And mobile wallet joint venture Weve and The Logic Group announced the group’s first loyalty pilot. The pilot might not use NFC technology, however.
Clear Channel launched its permanent NFC-enabled outdoor advertising network on Thursday. Shoppers can tap tags on posters for upcoming movies Trance and G.I. Joe: Retaliation to view movie trailers, as well as advertisements from entertainment marketing company Dewynters to view excerpts from the musical The Bodyguard. There are also ads from KFC to search for the nearest restaurant. Vouchers and promotional offers will also be available from advertisers.
The newly launched network consists of 10,000 digital advertising displays in business and shopping districts in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Newcastle. The displays use both QR Codes and NFC Forum Type 2 tags, and UK-based mobile advertising company Eagle Eye Technology is providing the NFC technology for the campaign. The tags will report analytics to brands, though Clear Channel has not yet revealed what type of data will be collected.
Clear Channel began installing the 10,000 panels in December 2012 and announced the rollout in February 2013. Derek Manns, head of new business delivery at Clear Channel UK, earlier told NFC Times that from the mid-February announcement until the March 14 launch, users who tapped the tags or scanned the codes would see a message informing them that advertising content would be available soon.
Elsewhere in the UK, Proxama and The Logic Group this week announced a partnership, which will combine Proxama’s NFC tags and management platform with The Logic Group’s loyalty and coupon programs. The companies plan to roll out smart poster campaigns at The Logic Group’s client retailers, in which customers would be able to tap NFC-enabled smart posters in stores to receive coupons and other offers, which they would then redeem at checkout by tapping an NFC-enabled point of sale terminal with their smartphones.
The Logic Group, newly partnered with Proxama, will also be working with Weve on a pilot project for loyalty and couponing. Weve, a joint venture of Everything Everywhere, Telefónica (O2) UK, and Vodafone UK, expects to launch the wallet-based loyalty pilot later in 2013, with The Logic Group providing database infrastructure, business development and consulting.
Miles Quitmann, managing director of Proxama, told NFC Times that he could not confirm any involvement of Proxama in the Weve pilot or whether the pilot will involve NFC.
“Weve at the moment is very much getting the message out that they are platform or technology agnostic,” he said.
Proxama also recently announced a partnership with UK-based sign manufacturer Signbox. Signbox already offers its customers NFC-enabled smart posters, as part of a product line called Enlighten. Announced at the Retail Business Technology Expo in London earlier this week, the partnership will move Signbox’s existing line of smart posters onto Proxama’s TapPoint campaign management platform.
Signbox launched its Enlighten line of backlit NFC-enabled smart posters in 2011 in partnership with UK-based RFID company Avery Dennison, which supplied the inlays for the posters. Until the newly announced partnership with Proxama, Signbox used its own Enlighten Me platform for smart poster campaign management and analytic reporting.
Outside its new partnerships, Proxama expects to announce two other major projects in the coming months. The first will launch outside the UK, Quitmann told NFC Times, and it involves mobile-wallet capability and “some large organizations who are well known in the mobile space.”
And early in the summer, Quitmann said that he hopes to be able to announce a retail-related project in the UK with “a very large global brand.”
Mobile technology is “a natural companion for out-of-home” advertising, according to a December 2012 statement by Clear Channel CEO Matthew Dearden. NFC-enabled outdoor campaigns have taken place in several countries in the last couple of years, mostly local pilots; only recently has outdoor NFC advertising expanded to national campaigns and permanent displays.
For instance, In a July 2011 employee trial by U.S. cable network VH1, selected employees of advertising company Posterscope in New York and Los Angeles could tap a small number of smart posters to view trailers or a Facebook page for cable television show Basketball Wives. Earlier in 2011, Posterscope also participated in a similar trial for the move X-Men: First Class with Twentieth Century Fox. Proxama provided technology for both campaigns.
Earlier in 2012, the distributors of the movie Zero Dark Thirty launched a four-week nationwide smart poster campaign in Australia, which involved 200 posters at 91 shopping centers in every state except North Australia.
Viewers could tap the tags to view a landing page for the campaign, where they could click to view trailers, images, a synopsis, and reviews; like the movie as on Facebook, or follow it on Twitter; enter to win free tickets; or play a “CIA” game via Facebook. Australia-based NFC advertising company Tapit supplied the technology for the campaign.
As more NFC-capable smartphones and tablets reach consumers, companies like Clear Channel apparently see increasing benefit in implementing permanent NFC advertising or large-scale temporary campaigns.