View PDF of this issue - The Green Sheet

53
CoverStory
marketing platforms are today's ever-evolving mobile
phones, onto which every last technological marvel seems
to be converging.
"I believe the growth of this industry is mobility,"
McWeeney said. "Anything you can do in a mobile environment
will be big. … As this continues to grow, be it
mobile applications, networking, social networks, no matter
what it is, if you can do it in a mobile environment, it's
going to increase the value of that device."
Indeed, as more and more consumers buy Internet-based
mobile phones, complex new advertising campaigns will
develop a common destination no matter what channel
they run on: the customer's pocket.
"They expect mobile marketing is going to be literally in
the trillions of dollars, surpassing Internet advertising,"
Barnett said. "And why? Because it's connecting to you –
to your person."
There is little doubt that such accessibility will help drive
merchant advertising campaigns and the loyalty programs
which increasingly accompany them. Finding effective
ways to communicate with customers will become even
more crucial in a landscape dominated by digital media.
In the new mobile phones, the information age has a focal
point; that will likely become the focal point for advertisers,
too.
One of the newest revolutions in phones has accelerated
their integration into the payments space. In December
2009, within a week of each other, Twitter co-founder
Jack Dorsey and payment equipment and systems vendor
VeriFone unveiled separate card swipe terminals, Square
and PAYware Mobile, respectively.
These can be retrofitted to existing Apple Inc. iPhones,
which will almost certainly accelerate the adoption of cell
phone payment acceptance devices. A corollary will be
more phone-to-phone communications between retailers
and consumers, and thus more marketing opportunities.
"If you can combine the loyalty component with mobile
payments, you're really going to have some powerhouse
marketing capabilities," said Peggy Olson, founder of the
marketing and communications consulting firm Strategic
Marketing.
According to Olson, the trick is to build loyalty from the
moment of the first payment.
"A scenario is you can have [a merchant] and they attach
the Square device or VeriFone jacket and they conduct a
payment," she said. "At that point they're going to ask the
purchaser for an e-mail or a phone number that they're
either going to text message or e-mail a receipt to. So now
they have that information and can later promote that I've
got the latest, greatest thing."
Tap and touch
Then there is the untold impact of near field communication
(NFC) technology when it hits the American market,
essentially giving phones the same capabilities as payment
cards.
When such phones are finally deployed on a large scale,
and more consumers use phones as payment vehicles,
retailers will have unprecedented access to consumer
data, according to Mohammad Kahn, President and
founder of NFC technology firm ViVOtech Inc.
ViVOtech is conducting NFC trials in the United States
and Europe using special NFC "tags," or chips, that
adhere to the back of a cell phone and make it NFCenabled.
Kahn said NFC phones would significantly
enhance loyalty programs by simplifying the process of
sending coupons and other promotional offers and having
them redeemed at the POS.
ViVOtech's back-end software enables merchants to send
offers to customers through SMS messages. When customers
come in to redeem the virtual coupon, at the time
of transaction they tap their NFC-tagged phones on the
reader and the coupons are redeemed automatically. "I
call it the machination loyalty program – loyalty 2.0,"
Kahn said.
Kahn noted that consumers with NFC tags on their
phones tend to use coupons more frequently. "Often they
don't carry all their loyalty cards in their wallet or pocket,
and even when they do, they don't go through the extra
effort to take it out," he said. "But having that in the phone
makes it a lot more accessible. And because I'm receiving
a text message on the phone, there's a linkage that makes
my phone a lot more lively."
Live wire act
On the merchant's end, NFC networks will provide
retailers with a wealth of reporting on their customers'
purchasing habits, with specific information about who
opts into promotional programs and what their shopping
histories are.
With that information, merchants will be able to send
promotional text messages tailored to individual preferences,
Kahn said.
Such a vision of merchant marketing contrasts sharply
with the spam that has dominated the digital advertising
sphere. While spam is sent indiscriminately, the NFC
ads that Kahn describes would target individuals in an
informed way, using customer-specific research to create
the most enticing offers possible.
This is only part of what promises to be a new, more
sophisticated era in payments industry advertising. And
it seems as close as the touch of a button.