The NFC/Outdoor Combo: New Marketing Tools for Consumer Shows

The recent announcements by out-of-home advertising giant, Clear Channel, to add near field communications (NFC) functionality to 300 key out-of-home advertising sites in Singapore and 100 locations in London are worth noting by event marketers, as it looks like these type of units will eventually be seen across the globe.

The trend in the outdoor advertising industry towards digital units, and the integration of NFC, a wireless technology that allows very close-range communications between two devices, means some exciting new opportunities for marketers of consumer shows.

NFC-enabled outdoor ad units will enable marketers to engage their audience in entirely new ways in high-density pedestrian traffic areas.  Marketers will be able to move beyond one-way messaging to real-time, interactive communications.

Mobile users with NFC smartphones can simply tap an NFC-enabled outdoor ad unit with their smartphone and immediately receive rich content such as videos, music and brochures, access Web sites, engage in social media—and eventually make purchases. “As mobiles become payment devices, the ability to buy off a poster in a bus shelter or a shopping mall is going to be transformative,” said Clear Channel International CEO William Eccleshare in a March 2, 2011 article in the Financial Times.

These new digital outdoor ad units will also enable advertisers to track engagement and acquire metrics to optimize campaigns in ways not possible with traditional outdoor.

This will not happen overnight.  It will take time to convert traditional outdoor units to digital, for NFC phones to reach critical mass and for mobile users and advertisers to learn how to use NFC.

However, it looks like outdoor advertising is certainly moving in that direction: “In key markets, I can see 90 percent of out-of-home advertising being delivered digitally by the end of the decade,” Mr. Eccleshare said in the Financial Times article.  “That compares to about 10 percent today in a developed market such as the UK.”

NFC will be one of the many topics that I discuss in my upcoming session “Leveraging Mobile Marketing to Drive Attendance, Engagement and Value” on Dec. 8, 2011 at Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition in Las Vegas.

Posted on November 3, 2011