Instant Gratification Goes Mobile as Posterscope USA Launches First-Ever Near Field Communication (NFC) Out-of-Home Advertising Test

Say Goodbye to Your Wallet and Hello to “Mobile Gratification”…

2011 is the year that our online world converges with our real-world daily touchpoints—giving marketers and consumers immediate and seamless transaction opportunities through NFC technology.

For the first time ever, on July 19, 2011, NFC technology will be brought to the streets of the U.S. and will be live in two of our most technologically savvy cities-New York and Los Angeles—thanks to a convergent partnership amongst key communications experts, media, technology and content providers.

Hyperspace, the digital and innovations division of Out-of-Home (OOH) communications agency Posterscope USA, has partnered with leading NFC technology solutions provider Proxama and Nokia, the world leader in mobility and NFC Pioneer as well as VH1, the hit-music/celeb-reality channel and media partners CBS Outdoor, JC Decaux and Cemusa, to bring instant mobile gratification to life through NFC-tagged OOH Bus Shelter Ads placed in strategically chosen locations.

The goal of this test will be to illustrate the potential of NFC, testing the usability of the technology and confirming that it is suitable for use in outdoor media sites across the nation—ultimately giving marketers a truly viable means to directly connect with consumers at multiple touch-points throughout their day.

The bus shelter posters promote the newest season of VH1’s hit series Basketball Wives and displays a call to action that invokes onlookers to tap the NFC icon with their NFC-enabled phone to view an exclusive clip of the show.

Behind the scenes, each poster site has a pre-programmed, paper-thin, NFC sticker-like tag affixed to its back.

Thanks to the hassle-free usability of NFC, a simple flick of the wrist enables testers to initiate immediate viewing (and eventually a transaction), without the preface of app downloads or cumbersome steps. The technology also dissolves the need for any costly and potentially faulty additional electronics to the poster sites themselves; subsequently streamlining an added dynamic to almost all potential OOH campaigns at the pedestrian level.

NFC will set the precedent for one-to-one direct mobile transactions in the US, whether for downloading content or for instantaneous purchases. It requires minimal effort to incorporate and execute on the part the marketer, the media owner and of course, the consumer. Due to the paper-thin nature of the tags, the potential for seamless integration into Out-of-Home formats offers an enormous added value in extending brands to consumers. The retail possibilities are enormous.

The only true hardware that is needed for the transactions to occur is an NFC-enabled phone, which in this case, Nokia graciously provided the Nokia Astound to all the partners for the test (which has been sold by T-Mobile since the spring). Though not massively available in the U.S. today, by the end of 2011, NFC will soon be seen as a de facto standard within most new-edition smartphones.

The future is here, and the ultimate mobile wallet is now within reach. According to Juniper Research, an estimated one in five smartphones will have NFC functionality by 2014, more than half of which will be in North America alone. As the end of the year approaches, more and more US mobile technology providers such as Nokia, RIM, Apple, Google and Sony plan to include NFC in upcoming mobile device releases. Service providers and major banks are also involved on several levels, working to develop a standardized backend mobile payment system to work seamlessly with NFC technology.

Regarding its potential for integration into OOH media campaigns, Martin Porter, VP Director at Posterscope USA’s Hyperspace division said: “What is so exciting about this new technology is its simplicity, its low cost and the worldwide adoption taking place-all creating large-scale purposeful marketing opportunities that can be easily implemented across the US. There are hundreds of thousands of commercially available poster sites that can be instantly enabled with the technology. The potential application of this technology is immense.”

Beyond instant transactions, NFC coupled with OOH also offers advertisers greater opportunities to build truly “hyper-localized” campaigns through tailored content and essentially building direct and personal relationships with consumers as they travel throughout their day.

Neil Garner, Founder and CEO of Proxama, said: “From the work we did delivering the NFC marketing campaign for the X-Men movie in the U.K., we already know that NFC presents film studios with a great way of promoting their latest productions and engendering closer relationships with customers that not only incentivize a visit to the cinema but enables studios to track individual mobile phone users’ subsequent behavior through our TagManager campaign management system. NFC offers advertisers greater opportunities to build ‘hyper-local’ promotional campaigns using media-rich, high quality content that can only enhance their relationships with their customers.”

About Posterscope
Posterscope USA, part of the Posterscope Worldwide Network, has recently been named Out-of-Home Media Agency of the Year by Media Magazine and is the leading Out-of-Home communications agency offering a powerful combination of strategic insight, planning, buying scale and measurement that helps brands extract maximum value from OOH in a world of increasingly connected consumers. For more information about Posterscope USA, visit www.posterscope.com.

Primary Contact:
Melissa Leonhardt
Manager, Marketing Communications
Posterscope USA
(917) 621-3239
[email protected]