From the office of bizarre marketing experiments:
Yeah, I know it's not digital signage, but bizarre out-of-home advertising projects get me excited for some reason...
A startup company in Philadelphia called Dutch Umbrella is letting pedestrians borrow strategically-placed, sponsored umbrellas that can be picked up and dropped off at different authorized locations around the city. While the umbrellas do have all sorts of logos and sponsorship information printed on them, the really interesting part is that they each contain an RFID chip that is used to track the pedestrians' paths as they make their way through town. This information is then collected and used to sell additional sponsorships and advertising rights, presumably based on the "value" of a given location as based on the number of people who walked buy/near it. According to this article at MediaSoon, the service "costs $100 per month for [an advertising] campaign with 100 umbrellas in circulation. The name Dutch Umbrella is derived from the bicycle sharing system that’s long been a tradition in Amsterdam. Of course, effectiveness depends upon a good supply of rain spread continuously across the marketing period for the advertiser."
While this particular iteration of the product seems innocuous enough since it still provides for user anonymity, I wouldn't be surprised to see some enterprising outfit up the ante with uniquely-identifiable tags (in the form of key fobs, cards, whatever) that allow wide-field tracking through a metro area in return for some other kind of benefit, whether it be coupons or retail discounts, or even cash per mile walked. In the latter case one could even vary the rate based on the "value" of the real estate being traversed.
Tags: Dutch Umbrella, out-of-home advertising
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4 comments:
That's an interesting concept; however, I don't see how they can make money with problems like theft, infrastructure investments, etc...
Any idea about what venture funds finance these enterprises?
That would be a good material for a post on this site...
I am working for a start up, which has a much grander idea and very solid business plan. However, the founders are still shopping for venture capital...
WRT theft, how much resale value can a branded umbrella possibly have? A few dollars? And every time sombeody used it (after they stole it), they'd still be showing the client's ad (unless they scraped off the silkscreening or something like that). Not to mention that it'd be easy to tell who stole it :)
This seems like a pretty low-cost enterprise to test, and could probably be done entirely with seed/angel funding, at least in a small-ish environment like part of a single city. A "real" VC raise is another beast entirely, but I'd think that if the founders can show positive ROI on their trial, they'd be able to get the necessary funding to branch out to other areas. That's a big IF, though.
Hi Bill,
You are right, umbrellas probably aren't worth much. Even though the RFID device may cost just as much as the umbrella itself. Also, there is a cost associated with the umbrella dispensers, tracking hw and sw. It would be hard to implement such a system without VC funding.
Plus, there is always an issue of vandalism. If you deploy this project downtown Detroit, DC or Baltimore for example... I don't think many of these trays would survive the test of time. Even if it is just a couple days...
I think the company I work for has a much more interesting business concept. I just hope they rise funding soon :-)
Nice concept and application of RFID. Keep it up - more of this. Tim
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