Power to the Younger, and their Smart Phone (2)

So Power is to the younger, and their Smart Phone? I told you I would continue with this brainstorming on the Festival. A week ago I explained you how contactless would facilitate the consumption of drinks and food: visitors could become a customer at the main sponsors: YouBank and a big Telco, or simply continue to pay with paper vouchers. If they became a customer they would get the Pukkelpop application on their Smartphone, with all kinds of practical information on the festival and a prepaid account for their consumptions. They could also forward prepaid value if a friend would get the drinks this time for example.

The advantage for Pukkelpop visitors would be to have new vouchers on every moment they like: thanks to a link to their real YouBank account. They would not have to queue anymore, not have to wait much longer for their consumption, because thanks to the contactless technology queuing would go faster at the food and drink tents as well.

The advantage for the organisation would be that they need less crew for selling vouchers, and they have less cash to manage, which is safer and cheaper. On top of that the money would be immediately on the organisation’s account thanks to the pre paid connection.
 

In this article I was going to continue with the advantages of the other sponsors, which brings us right in the middle of the world of e-Loyalty! For those who do not really know how a festival like Pukkelpop looks like inside, I will briefly explain it here: it is a big field, with a couple of huge stages (for the headliners) and tents (for the smaller groups). Next to that there is also a lot of space for sponsors, who have their own attractions and promotional material. This goes from Coca-Cola and Inbev (we are in Belgium, right?), to scratch tickets WinForLife and newspapers and even Interim companies. They all made their own stand with their own theme and their own incentives to attract customers.

Many are just stupid, like hats or a chance to win something, or a secret room (with promo stuff), or... Now suppose all the sponsors would embrace the power of mobile loyalty, what a revolution could that be ;).
 

Instead of handing out gadgets to visitors these sponsors have so many other possibilities thanks to the Smart Phone. Thanks to a linked loyalty system, sponsors can attract visitors for a secret code for example. And with this code they can present themselves later in a shop where they get a reduction on their next purchase. Sometime people have to do a (simple) challenge first before they get a gadget, the same thing could go on with the secret code. Many time it is some like: SingStar with a friend, or a small soccer game, or... The main reason why sponsors would offer of e-Loyalty promotions is to offer visitors a real incentive to come back to the brand after the Festival, to really buy something later on, when they are back in ‘real life’!

After all, that is what marketing is all about, right? Visibility and sales opportunities...

Last week I found an article called ‘Iphone App Clears Way For Mobile Loyalty Program'. This article was elaborating on the fact that this new app would give loyalty purely based on the location of a customer. So if a customer would enter a shop, he would pass a device that emits inaudible signals that trigger the loyalty system, offering him immediate reduction on the purchase. Shops could go even further by attaching a bar code on certain location that could be scanned by their Iphone. Now let us reflect that back on the festival.
 

Imagine there is 1 central theme at the Festival, like “All for Culture, Culture for All”. With this campaign they hope to attract more young people to museums and cultural events. Sponsors are more willing to participate in this campaign if they also have advantages in it. So thanks to the technology explain before, every sponsor could send out signals that are collected. If a festival visitor has collected all the signals (which means he has visited all the sponsors’ attractions), he get a special code.

And with this special code he can get reduction in well specified museums and cultural events for a certain amount of time.

So you see the advantage for sponsors: they sell more, they attract more people and people get less bored of the gadgets they get from these sponsors. I guess this is not for next year already, but it doesn’t seems such an unreasonable scenario to me actually...