The battle between marketeers is fierce. This all because the eyeballs of the consumer are hard to get and to maintain. For this I have to say that BMW Mini Cooper would surely get my attention with their new marketing concept for the Mini Cooper. BMW specially uses talking billboards to communicate with the drivers of the Mini Cooper. They call the billboards 'talking billboards'. These billboards are programmed to identify Mini Coopers and their drivers and sent them personal messages. I think it is rather dangerous and even calling while driving is safer. But it is a huge success.
RFID in the car keys is used to identify the driver and by a personal questionnaire which the driver has to fill in before he gets his bought Mini BMW knows what to say to drivers using the talking billboards.
A few examples of messages you can expect while driving your Mini Cooper:
Mary, moving at the speed of justice (Mary is a lawyer) or
Mike, the special of the day is speed (Mike is chef). Of course not all messages are not work related. You can also expect a personal note on your birthday. Mini makes with this initiative the fun-image a lot stronger. So to be honest...I think it is a mega good action dangerous or not.
People buy Minis because they really want to have more fun in their days, we want everything about our marketing to fit that (James McDowell, head of North American operations for the company)
Of course safety is important and the government would not be the government if they were not to investigate this on safety. For the future I would like to have also a RFID tags on my keys and tehn I want to see only those messages from the organizations while I permit to do so. That would my perfect future be with the talking billboard. No more advertising on things that really don't interest me.
Meanwhile more then a 1000 Mini owners want to participate in this ...why? To end with their own words.
You sign up for an ever-changing array of unique, personal, playful and unexpected messages
More info:
Wired
08 February 2007 om 10:13
Tony
@Owen, Mini is inderdaad goed bezig met activiteiten rondom klanten binding, al zorgt de auto zelf daar ook al voor