Ambushed by adverts

WHAT'S THE STORY WITH PROXIMITY MARKETING:Towards the end of last month, Pricewatch unknowingly walked through a Bluetooth hotspot on Dublin's Wicklow St and caught a glimpse of an unsettling and unpleasant future. Our phone beeped and before we knew what was happening we were watching a 19-second advert for UPC - the company spawned by the marriage of NTL and Chorus.

As part of a new multi-million euro multimedia campaign, UPC has been trialling a comparatively new form of advertising known as "proximity marketing". It takes advantage of Bluetooth, a short-range wireless system for transmitting data, to target phones that come within range of small base stations. UPC has set up 10 such stations in locations across Dublin and, for weeks now, has been indiscriminately broadcasting adverts to any device it can reach.

A spokeswoman for the company tells Pricewatch that around 2,600 people had so far chosen to download the advert to their mobiles and she described the response as "very positive" - although why anyone would react positively to a mobile advert, any mobile advert, is difficult to understand.

While the concept is still new, it is very simple, very cost effective and likely to become very annoying in the near future. The technology offers advertisers a brand new, incredibly intrusive avenue through which it can bombard advert-weary consumers.

There is no cost associated with sending or receiving messages using proximity marketing and, unlike unsolicited e-mail or text messages, they aren't in breach of data protection legislation as they are only sent to people who have their Bluetooth enabled - which can be taken as consent - and users have to actively agree to accept the message - albeit unknowingly, as in the case of Pricewatch.

The technology's power to target individuals at a particular time, or in a particular place, is remarkable: people walking past a certain shop can get a message broadcast from inside promoting a special offer, while someone standing in the foyer of a multiplex cinema might be offered short reviews or trailers of the releases in the cinema. One project currently on trial in a Spar outlet in Ranelagh is sending people who come through its doors special codes with which they can claim free cans of Red Bull.

Bluetooth marketing is "very much in its infancy", says Stuart Fogarty, the MD of advertising agency AFA O'Meara. Although it offers agencies previously unimagined ways to reach very targeted audiences, he's not convinced it's a good idea. "Unless people actively opt in to receive these adverts they are going to find them very intrusive. In essence it is spam," he says.

Fogarty claims agencies are not keen on intrusive and unwanted adverts (anyone who has ever heard the Harvey Norman adverts might beg to differ) and says there is "a golden rule" that you "don't send out adverts like that to people because it doesn't do a brand any favours".

He points out that while advertising might not be popular, it is an accepted and necessary evil. "Without it, there would be very few radio stations or television channels or even newspapers - and the ones that did survive would cost a fortune," he says.

People are consequently prepared to accept adverts, he says, but he adds that the more commonly found adverts differ from proximity marketing adverts because they come with an in-built and well established warnings - as soon as a television programme ends you know the adverts are coming so you can go and make a cup of tea. The same can't be said when your phone beeps on the way into work, or while you're buying your groceries.

THERE ARE A number of proximity marketing trials going on in Dublin at present, many of them being run by Bluemedia, a small start-up with three young employees and an office in the city centre. 24-year-old Luke Keily is a director of the company, which started developing a Bluetooth marketing product in January of last year when he and his partner were studying business in UCD.

After successfully trialling their service at Oxegen and the Electric Picnic last summer, Bluemedia set up a service in the Jervis Street Centre in November. Shoppers in the centre with Bluetooth-enabled phones (and most phones have Bluetooth now) are being sent messages with today's news and sport downloaded from the web - it doesn't cost Bluemedia anything to produce. They also get free games, restaurant and what's on guides, a TV guide and - crucially for the Jervis Centre - a directory of the shops and the special deals they have on offer.

Keily says the company is delivering 30,000 messages every two weeks. It has recently started targeting shoppers in the Powerscourt Townhouse and a number of Spar and Londis outlets across Dublin - it is the company behind the Red Bull promo in Ranelagh. Keily says the start-up is also in discussions with five other shopping centres in the Dublin area.

Like the UPC spokeswoman, he is keen to stress that users have responded positively to the marketing. He says people can accept or reject the messages as they see fit, but claims they have an acceptance rate of over 53 per cent. "There has to be something in it for people, otherwise it would not be sustainable. If people weren't getting some value from the messages then they would be rejecting them," he says.

He claims that his company has no intention of bombarding people with useless messages, but accepts that other companies could "start sending out rubbish".

"Ultimately, the user is in control, so if they are not comfortable getting Bluetooth messages, they can simply turn the function off on their phone. Obviously, we hope people don't do that because we are offering something good. We have control over our own product and we are not going to start bombarding people with stuff they don't want. If we did that then we wouldn't have a business and that is the bottom line."

Last week Honda launched an "interactive poster campaign" on Dublin's Wexford Street which will see anyone with a Bluetooth-enabled phone who walks within 100 metres of the site getting a message asking them to send an SMS to a nearby poster. When they do, the car on the poster "starts up" - first the lights flash and then the engine roars and, er, that's it. The future of advertising. They also get a free ringtone of an engine sound, although whether that makes up for the intrusion remains to be seen.