[Ed. This will now be aired on Monday or Wednesday of next week - we'll keep you posted!]
We’ve done a lot with NFC marketing recently, the Orange and EAT Quick Tap Treats campaign, NFC Hackathon and more.
It’s time for m-payments to take a turn in the spotlight. Proxama will be on Look East this evening talking about the possibilities of mobile wallets and demonstrating how m-payments can be made. The piece will be broadcast tonight on BBC1 between 6.30 and 7pm. It can also be caught on Sky 982.
Last weekend’s NFC Hackathon showcased the possibilities of the technology: giving media agencies and developers the reigns on creating commercial applications using NFC.
Proxama’s TouchPoint™ platform was opened up to the creative community across the two day event giving teams the chance to develop an NFC idea that would enhance interaction between consumer and brand. Each team worked long hours, with many working through the night to bring their idea to life.
There were many prizes available including an all-expenses paid trip to BlackBerry World in Orlando, tickets to see Chelsea in the Champions league, Samsung Galaxy tablets, a tour of Google’s office, tickets to see artists at the O2… and Proxama’s prize: a kickstarter fund of £10,000 development time to make the winning idea a commercial reality.
The winner of the kickstarter category was Team Blue Butterfly who built demo, allowing consumers to login to Wi-Fi networks in hotels, restaurnts and other public spaces, simply by tapping their phone to an NFC tag.
The other winners were:
BlackBerry Developer Group who created a Tesco’s shopper concept.
Team Rollercoaster with an idea to streamline the queuing and paying experience at Theme Parks.
PillIt with an idea to use NFC to enhance prescriptions by helping remind people to take medications.
StreetScreen created an idea around playing games on large digital screen with players using their own mobile phones triggered using NFC tags to control the game.
This year at MWC, near field communication was everywhere. Even the event badges and passes had NFC tags embedded in them (courtesy of key sponsor, NXP) so everyone had access to the technology. There were also a fantastic number of NFC demonstrations going on which showcased both mobile payment and NFC marketing solutions. This was particularly exciting for us, with the launch of Quick Tap Treats last week as it proved both the interest and faith that the mobile industry has in the technology.
We saw some great demos from BlackBerry, Nokia and VISA. It seems that all handset manufacturers now have plans for NFC phones. Apple were once again a topic on the rumour mill, with more and more people becoming convinced that NFC will be in the iPhone 5. With this in mind, we are currently collaborating with Device Fidelity on a version of Tag Center for the iPhone… more details to be revealed in the near future!
Another little snippet of information gathered was that the Google Wallet, although currently a US-only product, is likely to be launched in Europe soon, with Google having learnt some lessons and improving the latest version so that user experience and functionality is even better.
2012 looks like a brilliant year to be involved in NFC, and the Olympics will only make things better. If you’d like to explore the marketing side of the technology, Create London is fast approaching. The 36 hour event will give teams of up to five the chance to enter an idea for NFC and create it using our TouchPoint CMS. The winning team will receive a number of NFC prizes. More information can be found on the Create London website.
Proxama's Tag Center application now available on BlackBerry
Heard about Tag Center and want to download it to your BlackBerry device? Click here.
Interested but want to know a bit more? Read on.
We believe that the guiding principle of NFC is to make life simple. Any NFC phone can interact with tags on posters and signage, receiving web links to external content.
Tag Center turns the typical URL pop-up into a branded landing page with information on what you are about to download. It gives you the option to store tags in your History for use at a later date. Just picked up an NFC voucher from your favourite brand but not in town today? Tag Center will store the content so you can redeem it in store later on. There’s also the option to add tags to a Favourites section. NFC posters might not be on every bus shelter quite yet, but within a year they’ll start to crop up more and more. It would be easy to lose that competition win you picked up among the vouchers for paperclips and tea bags; with Tag Center you can store the things that are special to you in a Favourites list, making it easy to find them whenever you need to. Loyalty cards, business cards and more can also be stored in the app.
And everyone likes a bargain. What better deal than a freebie? We want people to enjoy NFC so we’re continuing to give Tag Center away for free.
The app is now available on Ovi, BlackBerry App World and Android NFC phones. Once you’ve downloaded it and had a look around, let us know what you think! We continue to develop our apps and appreciate feedback (good or bad!).
Over the last few months, NFC phones have sprung up all over the place. It’s happened so fast that it’s often difficult to keep track of the latest handsets. Here’s our simple (and colourful!) guide to what’s out there:
Nokia N9 users have voted Proxama’s NFC application Tag Center as one of their favourite apps and we couldn’t be happier! 2011 was a brilliantly busy year for us and we released a number of mobile payment solutions and applications into the market. One of our biggest campaigns was for VOX cinemas where we helped bring free movie experiences to Dubai film fans and treated them to some popcorn vouchers as well. Tag Center was a key ingredient in bringing this to life: vouchers, show information and more can all be collected and stored on the app. And we’re so excited about giving everyone a chance to experience NFC and contactless, that we’re giving the app away for free. We want to know what you think works, what doesn’t and how we can make NFC even more accessible and user-friendly.
We recently blogged on Apple’s non-committal stance on NFC, the company eager to keep their plans for the technology under wraps. Not a group to enjoy being behind in the technology race, iPhone fans have found that they can overcome the lack of embedded NFC by placing a contactless bank card in the iPhone’s case. It isn’t exactly the slick and seamless experience that iPhone users have come to love, but certainly a step in the right direction. It remains to be seen whether Apple will take inventiveness like this to heart and release a phone that comes with NFC technology inbuilt. Otherwise, they might just find that their phones start to become covered in bits of sticky tape and plastic cards. The iPhone is one of the most attractive phones on the market. Let’s not take that away from it.
Google invests in technology to keep m-wallets safe
In Google world, the company have taken on board consumer concerns on NFC security and are using fingerprint technology to keep mobile wallets safe. Many users are unaware that mobile wallets can simply be linked to a pre-paid card as opposed to their bank account directly. As a result, concerns about security are incredibly high (with KPMG reporting security as the greatest inhibitor for mobile wallets) and Google have always seen user experience as paramount. It doesn’t really come as a surprise, therefore, that they are developing a technology to combat these worries: fingerprint sensors. The user gains access to his wallet by swiping his finger across the screen. We wish Google the best of luck with this. Anything to help make such a life-enhancing technology more useable is always a plus for us!
RIM’s outlook on NFC
When Mobile Europe spoke to RIM’s UK MD, what they found was that he believes shopping through the mobile is the next step on from internet shopping, with m-payments the catalyst to see this become reality. For the full story, click here.
Only a month since the UK’s leading network operators announced their decision to team up on NFC, Hungary’s top mobile service providers are doing the same. Vodafone, Magyar Telekom and Telenor have joined forces to launch NFC payment services in phones.
No more loose change! Consumers can soon pay with their phones
With trials of applications beginning this year, the MNOs expect commercial services to be available come 2012. The decision to come together (in alliance with MasterCard, OTP Bank and SuperShop) means the NFC will see a greater push in Hungary, with consumers being able to pay for products and services with their mobile phones much earlier than those in other countries. The alliance is called the Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association and plans to lead the way in mobile wallet development in the country.
What NFC can do for you, our Chief Exec in cartoon form, and Barclaycard’s dinosaur milk. It’s all here.
We’re liking Barclaycard’s mockumentary on the evolution of money (below). As well as making us wonder about the taste of dinosaur milk and what TOWIE girls might have been like in medieval times, it’s a great demonstration of how simple NFC payments are. Have a look:
So what’s new with us?
As usual it’s all go here at Hypertag. We’ve had some great feedback on our NFC Murder Mystery Game, including things to work on for future events. We now have a London base with staff based in and around the city. If you have an enquiry or simply want to send us a present (we like gadgets), you can jot down the address here. We’ll be running a similar NFC Murder Mystery game in London shortly – watch this space!
As an NFC payments milestone, discussions on the collaboration between O2, Vodafone and Everything Everywhere are still going on. Neil Garner had a chat to Brand Shandy [great name! -Ed.] about what this means for retailers, brands, agencies and those working with NFC. You can have a look at what he had to say by visiting their blog (where you’ll also find out what Neil would look like if he were a cartoon character).
As NFC picks up momentum, we want to celebrate what the technology can do for us. There’s a huge number of NFC-related possibilities but these are the few we think you’ll see first:
Someone buying lunch with their phone. If you’re around our offices on weekday lunchtimes, you’ll regularly see our Chief Architect, James Taylor amazing Subway staff with the magic of m-payments. Very soon however, staff might be less surprised as more and more people take advantge of the simplicity of this technology.
NFC opening doors. Literally.
People walking up to posters and holding their phones against them. These guys are getting exclusive content all because of NFC. This could be anything from vouchers, to videos, to game upgrades. If you don’t want to miss out, you can purchase any one of a number of NFC phones. The NFC Forum has quite an extensive lists of the ones available: NFC phones list.
There’s been much rumour and conversation since last week’s announcement that network operators O2, Everything Everywhere and Vodafone are teaming together to provide a standardised mobile payment platform. Neil Garner, our CEO, spoke to Marketing Week, outlining what needs to be done next if brands and agencies are to grab hold of the many advantages of NFC. And since Sony Ericsson announced that the Xperia Play will be getting NFC soon, the technology is being discussed even more. Not only is it being seen as a payment solution, but also as an enhancement to gaming, socialising, and advertising. Today’s news that MasterCard’s James Anderson (Group Head and Senior Vice President for Mobile Product Development) has been appointed Vice Chairman of the NFC Forum is another exciting development in the world of NFC.
These have been the big stories. But we like to let you know about the latest, less publicised news, as well. So we’ve compiled our top five little-known facts of the last week.
