In my last post, I said mobile marketing would take on forms that we can’t predict. Well, I read about just such a new approach in a Feb. 25 article in The New York Times.
Most of the ideas for location-based marketing are either interruptive (e.g., SMS someone when they walk near your store) or based on old media (e.g., text a request for a coupon based on seeing a printed placard in a store). But now a Chicago-based company, Akoo International, has created something entirely new: a cross between a jukebox and an SMS coupon delivery solution. In a nutshell, the firm places an interactive, large-screen display in a store, bar or other venue. The device allows people nearby to text in requests for videos, music or other short form types of entertainment media. Like a jukebox, it queues up the requests. However, it takes it one step further by using those request interactions to offer coupons, ads and other forms of marketing. The best part is that marketers can now know exactly where a customer is located physically without all the fancy technical challenges of GPS.
I don’t know whether this is the much anticipated killer-app for mobile marketing, but it is most definitely a great example of the next generation of out-of-the-box marketing approaches we’ll be seeing in the coming years.
