There is an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about Unilever testing mobile coupons. Unilever is one of the biggest packaged goods companies in the world. Their brands include: Breyers ice cream, Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and Lipton tea.
This test will take place at a Shop Rite store in New Jersey. They will offer coupons via a mobile device. The customer can download the coupons into the phone and then have the phone scanned at checkout. If this works, no more cutting coupons. How many times have you cut out a coupon only to leave it at home? Most customers today bring their mobile phones with them to the store. Just think of the promotional tie-ins you could do with supermarkets and your events with this technology?
This is just another example of mobile marketing. All of us in the event and entertainment business really need to jump (with both feet) into this technology. I believe that we could become the standard bearers for this non-traditional marketing.
Ticketmaster came close with mobile technology in the last few months with their BlackBerry app. But they didn’t seal the deal. Most Ticketmaster venues use scanning technology now for tickets. If a customer can now buy tickets via the BlackBerry then why do they still have to print the ticket out? Why can’t the barcode be scanned from the BlackBerry?
Last year at the Event & Arena Marketing Conference, Tickets.com showed us mobile ticketing. They showed us not only technology that places a barcode on the mobile device, but captures data. This data is then marketed back to the customer. This even includes knowing when the customer has entered the venue.
When I go to this year’s conference, I will be asking everyone these questions: What are you doing with mobile marketing? What are you doing with your mobile data capture?
Have a great weekend!
Tags: barcode, BlackBerry, Event and Arena Marketing Conference, mobile, mobile coupons, mobile marketing, mobile technology, ShopRite, supermarket mobile marketing, Ticketmaster, tickets.com, Unilever
