Bluetooth and mobile marketing for live music events @The Streets Electric Proms

So the other week I went to see The Streets play at The Roundhouse in Camden, it was a brilliant concert but what stood out for me was the way the promotors had integrated mobile marketing into the live music event experience.

As you entered the concert venue there were people going around with bluetooth blip stations (bluecasting servers round their necks) offering to beam you a free "Streets" screensaver if you turned on your bluetooth.

Being a mobile geek I happily agreed to this and got sent the screensaver below:

 

Here is is on my N95 8GB

I asked the lady doing the beaming if it was popular or not and she said "yes very" and claimed "more than one in 10" people were going for it.  It did actually look like quite a lot of people were interested while I was hanging around there.  Anyway I thought this was a great way of adding to the music experience by giving you some free mobile content - the potential is obvious - in a couple of years time it will be easy to beam a clip of the latest album or music single onto people's phones at concerts, load bookmarks etc etc. 

A lot of people complain about Bluetooth marketing or blue-spamming as some call it but this example shows that if it's done right it can work really well.  Having an actual person there to explain it and deliver the download makes a lot of sense as they can deal with any concerns, issues and actually walk people through the process of turning on their bluetooth, saving the content etc. 

As well as the bluetooth content blasting, they had a couple of other mobile bits and bobs around the venue.  For example, there was a massive banner with a short-code on it for sending your photos and SMS to:

So nice to see mobile really doing something interesting in the live music events space - if anyone knows the company that was involved in this let us know in the comments. 

Comments

[Anthony Foster]

Bluetooth marketing is getting bigger and better. Its now being used for fun stuff like you mention but also for serious issues by police and local authorities for witness appeal or missing persons. There is a lot more to come from this advertising medium

[james (mjelly)]

thanks for the comment anthony yeah i think the potential of bluetooth marketing is massively unappreciated due to concerns over bluespamming

[Scott]

There is potential here James but I think there are two important factors: context and pricing.

Your example is spot on the right context. Music. Younger generation. Free content.

But the real sticky point for someone trying to use bluetooth is the high cost of implementing a campaign if you use one of the up and coming bluetooth agencies. Their prices need to be grounded in the reality of what it can deliver - we've not used bluetooth as a part of our marketing mix because the prices are just too high for what it delivers.

[Oliver Bridgen]

Hi,

We are running a Kings of Leon VIP competition on our website for the gig at the O2 Arena next week.

http://www.gigjunkie.net/Competitions

I would be so grateful if you could post this on your blog to let your readers know.

Many thanks in advance

Oliver

[laura]

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[Ray]

I'm the founder of a Bluetooth Media in Shanghai, China. We are called Pioco. We do a lot of Bluetooth-supported events.

It's a growing market. But all I can say is that, Bluetooth supporting events is really picking-up and clients are getting more familiar to it. However, to utilize Bluetooth as a media network and broadcast contents with it still takes time to explore. However, as 3G is not here in China yet, there is need to download large file size contents via Bluetooth.

[laura]

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