Samsung Electronics, along with Australia-based NFC marketing firm Tapit, UK-based out-of-home advertising company Chiel and terminal vendor VeriFone are rolling out NFC stickers to 80 taxis in the UK, as part of a promotional campaign for musician Robbie Williams’ upcoming Samsung-sponsored tour.

Tapit said the campaign is a pilot for a permanent deployment of NFC marketing on a larger number of taxis already equipped with VeriFone’s video advertising screens.

Passengers who enter the cabs will see a five-minute video on screens mounted in front of their seats. Every thirty seconds, an on-screen reminder will urge passengers to tap the NFC stickers just below the door handles on each side of the cab. Tapping the 14-centimeter-by 10-cm “smart stickers” allows users to enter a competition to win tickets to meet the musician.

Niklas Bakos, Tapit vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, told NFC Times that Tapit had originally supplied 200 tags for the campaign, enough to roll out the “smart stickers” on 100 taxis. But he said Samsung opted to place the stickers in only 80 taxis in three cities, London, Manchester, and Glasgow.

That rollout is gradual, Bakos said. “It takes some time to rebrand the cars, so it's not that they've put out 80 cabs from day one.” He said that as of last Friday, VeriFone had deployed the NFC stickers on ten cabs, and “they are putting out more and more cabs everyday.” The campaign will continue for a month.

With 10 NFC-enabled taxis currently live, Tapit said the tags have had a few taps per day. “It's more than five a day but less than thirty,” said Bakos told NFC Times.

The NFC stickers are part of a larger campaign by Samsung. Pedestrians who are not taking a cab can photograph the taxis, whose exteriors have been decorated to promote the tour and tweet the picture to enter the competition.

NFC Screens Scheduled for Trials in France
Meanwhile, in France, Samsung will partner with Avenir Telecom to display NFC technology on Think&Go’s newly announced Dynamic NFC Screens at a Mobile Culture Exposition, part of the Marseille Provence 2013 –European Culture Capital event.

The 42-inch high definition screens, reportedly manufactured by France-based Anyces, will contain 4 NFC tags. Users can touch their smartphones directly to the screen to access tag content related to information on the screen. Think&Go recently announced that the Dynamic NFC Screens will be commercially available beginning in June 2013 for €3,000 (US$3,859) and up.

Elsewhere in France, mobile operator France Telecom-Orange will use the screens in a trial at “a major sports event where they are an official partner,” said the recent Think&Go release. The unnamed event will take place “in the coming weeks,” and Orange will also display the screens in its innovation showroom. It is not yet clear how many screens are involved in the trial or what type of content will be displayed.

Permanent NFC Rollout for UK Taxis
Back in the UK, the NFC element of the campaign “came in pretty late in (Samsung’s) campaign planning,” Bakos said, but Tapit has been in discussion with VeriFone “for some time now” about bringing NFC to UK taxis.

“This is the pilot project for us,” Bakos told NFC Times. “We're currently in discussions with VeriFone on enabling permanent stickers inside the cabs. We're talking about 500 cabs initially; hopefully we'll do thousands of cabs.”

He said that those permanent NFC tags, like those for the Samsung campaign, will be “included in VeriFone’s advertisement area that they’re selling” in the taxis, including the video screens. Potential content could include time-sensitive offers from retailers to urge taxi passengers into stores after the ride.

“We're looking at how to install these permanent ones right after the Samsung campaign is over, definitely,” said Bakos.

In the U.S., NFC marketing company Blue Bite recently added NFC tags and QR codes to video advertising screens owned by New York-based taxi interactive media and payments company Creative Mobile Technologies in 5,000 taxis in major cities. Similar to the UK taxies, video or static images on the screens will prompt passengers to tap an NFC tag or scan a QR code on the screen’s frame to access content like application downloads, brand information, coupons, and videos.

Blue Bite CEO Mikhail Damiani told NFC Times that the content on the tags will be associated with the content displayed on the screens. “The information and content will be coming from a variety of sources,” said Damiani, including the ABC network, the City of New York, and other advertisers.