Trendsurfing: Bluespamming (The Times)
By David Rowan
You're dashing to catch a train when your mobile buzzes with an unexpected new message. Pausing at the barrier, you fumble desperately in your jacket in case it's urgent news from work, or a childcare emergency. Finally, you intercept the vital communication just as the train doors slam shut without you. And the message? Nothing more than a brazenly unsolicited sales pitch by marketers whose hidden transmitters have been blitzing the entire station.
Meet an unsavoury new trend in mobile marketing. It has long been an ad-land dream to target consumers' phones by location, and now the use of Bluetooth-enabled handsets is encouraging marketers to beam messages across airports, stations, even entire neighbourhoods. Using Bluetooth transmitters typically built into ad hoardings, they can send video clips, text ads or sound files to handsets hundreds of metres away. One UK company is excitedly promoting what it calls "Bluecasting" as the latest way to deliver "tailored messages" to consumers on the move. Critics are using a rather more brutal term: "bluespamming", as in the unsolicited "spam" that clutters our e-mail in-boxes.
If you passed through a large London station over the summer, your Bluetooth phone may well have invited you to learn more about the new Coldplay album. Filter UK, the marketing company that coined (and trademarked) the term "Bluecast", beamed samples of the band's song and video clips, which preceded a further option to click through to buy. Before transmitting the samples, Filter sent a message requesting permission to go ahead, which it claims keeps its activities legal and has been "approved" by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). Of 87,000 users receiving the cold-call, Filter claims, 13,000 opted to receive the samples. Handset owners, it boasts, are a "captive audience" for advertising.
Now clients including Volvo and BA are working with Filter to deliver more of this phone spam. Maiden, the "outdoor media" company, has linked up with Filter to install transmitters on its billboards across Britain. Already, travellers at Heathrow have been receiving text messages inviting them to watch video clips promoting the Range Rover Sport. Nokia, too, is working with commercial partners to promote this "powerful new advertising tool". What excites the marketers is the technology's ability to recognise individual handsets, allowing them to track which ads interest each user, so that he or she can then receive customised campaigns. The only way to escape the messages is to ensure that your phone is set to be not "discoverable" by other Bluetooth devices.
There's just one problem. According to the IPA, such unsolicited approaches are probably illegal, and its spokesman is unhappy about Filter's claim that the institute "approves". "We want to ensure that the industry maintains its integrity, and any Bluetooth marketing must comply with existing regulations, which this seems not to do." Filter UK, in turn, takes issue with the IPA's interpretation, and claims to work within the relevant European directive. It has also said it will remove reference to IPA "approval" from its literature.
Coldplay, meanwhile, are left looking rather less cool than Chris Martin might like. There are some trends, Chris, that you really ought not to be leading.
(The Times Magazine, December 10 2005)
.. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
You're dashing to catch a train when your mobile buzzes with an unexpected new message. Pausing at the barrier, you fumble desperately in your jacket in case it's urgent news from work, or a childcare emergency. Finally, you intercept the vital communication just as the train doors slam shut without you. And the message? Nothing more than a brazenly unsolicited sales pitch by marketers whose hidden transmitters have been blitzing the entire station.
Meet an unsavoury new trend in mobile marketing. It has long been an ad-land dream to target consumers' phones by location, and now the use of Bluetooth-enabled handsets is encouraging marketers to beam messages across airports, stations, even entire neighbourhoods. Using Bluetooth transmitters typically built into ad hoardings, they can send video clips, text ads or sound files to handsets hundreds of metres away. One UK company is excitedly promoting what it calls "Bluecasting" as the latest way to deliver "tailored messages" to consumers on the move. Critics are using a rather more brutal term: "bluespamming", as in the unsolicited "spam" that clutters our e-mail in-boxes.
If you passed through a large London station over the summer, your Bluetooth phone may well have invited you to learn more about the new Coldplay album. Filter UK, the marketing company that coined (and trademarked) the term "Bluecast", beamed samples of the band's song and video clips, which preceded a further option to click through to buy. Before transmitting the samples, Filter sent a message requesting permission to go ahead, which it claims keeps its activities legal and has been "approved" by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). Of 87,000 users receiving the cold-call, Filter claims, 13,000 opted to receive the samples. Handset owners, it boasts, are a "captive audience" for advertising.
Now clients including Volvo and BA are working with Filter to deliver more of this phone spam. Maiden, the "outdoor media" company, has linked up with Filter to install transmitters on its billboards across Britain. Already, travellers at Heathrow have been receiving text messages inviting them to watch video clips promoting the Range Rover Sport. Nokia, too, is working with commercial partners to promote this "powerful new advertising tool". What excites the marketers is the technology's ability to recognise individual handsets, allowing them to track which ads interest each user, so that he or she can then receive customised campaigns. The only way to escape the messages is to ensure that your phone is set to be not "discoverable" by other Bluetooth devices.
There's just one problem. According to the IPA, such unsolicited approaches are probably illegal, and its spokesman is unhappy about Filter's claim that the institute "approves". "We want to ensure that the industry maintains its integrity, and any Bluetooth marketing must comply with existing regulations, which this seems not to do." Filter UK, in turn, takes issue with the IPA's interpretation, and claims to work within the relevant European directive. It has also said it will remove reference to IPA "approval" from its literature.
Coldplay, meanwhile, are left looking rather less cool than Chris Martin might like. There are some trends, Chris, that you really ought not to be leading.
(The Times Magazine, December 10 2005)
.. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
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