In the Zone

You’re at the mall when you receive a text message informing you that those new cross-trainers you want have arrived at Foot Locker and that movie you’ve been waiting for opens today.

The text isn’t from your BFF, it’s from your BRF — Best Retail Friend, new age mobile marketing from Proximity Blue. The two-year-old company is using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at mall locations to deliver targeted advertising, touch-screen applications and other free content to mobile devices.

Proximity Blue is the brainchild of Alex Teplish, whose decade-long experience in web development and design has given him an insider’s perspective on businesses ranging from automotive to retail.

“With technology and marketing moving into the mobile space this has been a natural transition,” he says. “The only change is the screen size and new functionality. Most websites don’t function properly if you use a mobile phone [so] we create the equivalent of any website for a mobile phone by optimizing functionality and content.”

Advertisers and retailers within specified “Blue Zones” can deliver audio and video messages and promotions, as well as ringtones and bar-coded coupons, to consumers. Shoppers entering a Blue Zone (generally located in places with the greatest traffic, like food courts and main lobbies) receive a message from the mall or an individual retailer asking if they would like to view certain content. Floor decals and digital signage also are used to promote the system.

Proximity Blue offers two basic content delivery options. The first is a rotating campaign that includes multiple advertisers. “If the customer comes into the mall they may get a coupon from one company,” Teplish says. “But the next person who comes in may receive a coupon from a different one. It works the same way as a digital screen.”

In the second model, Proximity Blue creates and delivers custom content for individual advertisers. To promote a new movie, “we could brand a Blue Zone specifically for that movie and only send out content directly related to it,” he says.

On-screen coupons, keycodes
Audio and video clips can be supplemented with coupons. A bar code embedded in a coupon can be “scanned at the store’s register right from the phone,” Teplish says. Or, if the retailer has created a unique keycode for a specific campaign that is tracked through POS, “customers can show their phones to the cashier, who takes the keycode right off the screen.”

At present, the system is available at the Bridgewater Commons, Paramus Park and Willowbrook/Woodridge Center malls in New Jersey and the Staten Island and South Street Seaport malls in New York. Proximity Blue is “also looking at other options such as gas stations and dormitory buildings,” Teplish says.

The platform creates “a form of viral marketing that’s free to users” and increases retention “because it goes to a device that people are rarely without these days.

“You can hand someone a coupon or mail it to their house. But they don’t really want to carry it around in their pocket,” he says. “When it’s on your phone it’s just there. It’s not taking up physical space and they can forward it to any one they want at any time. That’s a big advantage over traditional forms of marketing.”