* How long has your company been doing what you guys do? Give us a bit of background.
Cytech Ltd, started off as a technology provider for the mobile marketing field back in 2001, by building mainly sms marketing tools for bulk sms, and interactive sms services. Based on that very positive experience and success – mainly in the greek market – we decided to invest in bluetooth marketing by purchasing a share in a bright startup company then called Bluebird. Bluebird later evolved into Bluevibe, the company that develops the synonymous proximity marketing product for us.
I am quite pleased to say we identified the potential in the mobile marketing field very early on, and we are very happy with our choice! (laughs) At the time we invested in Bluevibe, it was the only proximity marketing platform built in Greece, and one of the very few worldwide. Since then, we have concentrated on constantly pushing our product one step ahead of the competition, in order to be able to cope with marketing giants from around the world developing their own solution. Today our system is the only system in the world that can offer free web access via Bluetooth wherever a Bluevibe Hotspot is covering the area.
* In your experience, do you think people are still afraid of using Bluetooth? – Is that any different in Greece than abroad?
I am not sure if the word “afraid” is the right one but it is definitely right that most of the people are circumspect about accepting files over Bluetooth. The main reason is that they have heard that viruses can infect their mobile phones and they are coming from Bluetooth. This is something common all over the world. From my point of view there is only one solution and this is trust. When a well known brand runs a mobile marketing campaign and makes it visible to the people, they tend to trust it. According to our experience if the brand informs people about the proximity marketing event the penetration rate doubles. So there are hesitations about accepting mobile content over bluetooth but there is always a way to overcome them.
* You’ve run a couple of very interesting campaigns lately in Greece.. Do you see the market opening up?
Indeed, we have run a number of different campaigns, in expositions like Thessaloniki International Expo (Helexpo) or Taxi Show and DTE-Comdex, in events like the Dont Drink and Drive campaign we are currently running, and of course at the Athens International Airport. We are in the proximity marketing field for about 4 years and we know that you have to be patient. We see that marketing agencies adopt this medium day by day and that in the next years will be part of their tool set. In the beginning we had great difficulties to make marketers understand the role of this new medium at the whole marketing landscape. Now we receive daily phone calls and emails all over the world asking about Bluevibe. They know the basic features and want to know more about centralized management, web access over Bluetooth etc.
* What is your favourite mobile marketing campaign / proximity marketing campaign, from any that you might have seen?
I have read a great number of campaigns all over the world and many of them were very successful. But I have to say I am biased. My favourite campaign is the one we are currently run with Johnnie Walker. I like it because it is in combination with other marketing activities, field promotion, internet marketing and because the mobile application we send is very useful. It is not easy to run such a campaign as the events take place at squares where there is no electricity or network coverage and sometimes you have to overcome issues like bad weather etc. I will come back if you want with numbers when this campaign is over.
* How do you see proximity marketing in the economic crisis?
I think that proximity marketing and mobile marketing in general will benefit from this crisis. No one can say for sure, but my thinking is that these types of marketing media are relatively cheaper that the legacy ones like press or radio. Marketeers are trying to find new media to use, cheaper that the ones already have because the marketing budgets are lowering. We ll see about that in the next months but I have to say that the demand for Bluevibe is greater than one year ago.
* Do your customers prefer opt-in campaigns, or opt-out?
As you understand opt-out campaigns are easier. There is no need for acceptance and there is no need for special mechanisms to manage the opt-in lists. So, in the beginning, customers try this type of campaigns. They soon understand that even if the numbers are good they tend to lower as people get used to proximity marketing. During the first campaigns we run, people accepted to receive mobile content, most of time because of curiosity. They didn’t know what exactly this bluetooth message is and they wanted to see. Now most of the people and mainly young ones, are accustomed to the whole procedure and they want to receive only valuable information. They dont want to be disturbed and as proximity marketing events are more frequent, they want to know what they will receive before the click on OK button. I am sure that opt-in is the magical word for the next year and we, as technology providers, are obliged to provide the appropriate technology to support it.
* How do you avoid being thought of as SPAM?
This is one of the first things we tell our customers. It is crucial to inform people about the proximity marketing event so they are not annoyed. In addition, Bluevibe platform has a number of features to ensure that the person who says no will not be receive anything in the future. But I think the final and more antispam policy is the Bluevibe mobile application. One of the most advanced components of the platform is the interactivity. Bluevibe mobile application is installed at the user’s phone and it is s/he that begins the interaction with the system. There is no need to send him/her nothing and on the other hand s/he has access to rich content like multimedia, internet websites, facebook, wikipedia etc. Finally, in order to void being thought of as a spammer you have to:
o inform people,
o give them the right to opt-out easily
o and, if the application permits it, provide interactive services.
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