Proxama delivers first US NFC consumer marketing campaign for new series of VH-1's 'Basketball Wives'

Date: 19 Jul 2011

Proxama, the global near field communications (NFC) solutions provider, is behind the latest innovation in out-of-home marketing with the release of an NFC poster campaign to support the launch of the latest TV series of VH-1’s 'Basketball Wives'.

The campaign offers NFC mobile phone users an exclusive trailer for the new series and a link to the Basketball Wives' Facebook page, when they tap their devices on poster sites situated on bus shelters around the cities of New York and Los Angeles. Each site has a pre-programmed NFC chip affixed to the rear of the poster that transfers the content immediately to handsets that tap the poster.

Proxama is working on this campaign in partnership with Nokia, a long-time NFC pioneer, Hyperspace, the digital and innovations division of out-of-home agency Posterscope, CBS Outdoor, JCDecaux and Cemusa. It is being run to illustrate to the advertising and business communities, as well as consumers, in both cities the benefits that NFC ‘hyper-local’ marketing offers them. The Nokia C7 Astound phone, which has been deployed in the US since March by T-Mobile, is being used to demonstrate the tap’n’load process of getting content from the posters. Consumers owning a Samsung Nexus S can also access the promotion.

For advertisers, retailers and, in this case, TV networks, NFC campaigns offer a hugely valuable new consumer gateway as each poster site effectively becomes a new retail outlet.  Advertisers will be able to gain additional data, such as location data and shopping history, about their customers via Proxama’s TagManager, which in turn will allow for more targeted advertising and greater accountability. In May, Proxama developed the UK’s first NFC outdoor marketing campaign in support of the latest X-Men movie in London.

Neil Garner, Founder and CEO of Proxama, said: "I am delighted that Proxama has been chosen to be the NFC partner for this exciting project. It is very important that we are able to demonstrate to advertisers, businesses and consumers the potential that NFC offers which is why we are running this campaign in tandem with a leading handset manufacturer in Nokia and outdoor media specialists Hyperspace.

"From the work we did delivering the marketing campaign for the X-Men movie with Nokia earlier this year, we know that NFC presents organisations with a great way of promoting their wares and nurturing closer relationships with customers that can incentivise a purchase or retail visits and enables them to track individual mobile phone users’ subsequent behaviour through our TagManager campaign management system. NFC offers advertisers greater opportunities to build 'hyper-local' promotional campaigns using media-rich, high quality content through a simple tap of the phone. And because content is delivered immediately without lengthy downloads or cumbersome procedures it leads to a much more satisfying customer experience and keeps down costs."

Martin Porter, VP Director,  Hyperspace 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."