Wikipedia defines Geolocation as “the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar, mobile phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal. Geolocation may refer to the practice of assessing the location, or to the actual assessed location.”
The Leeds Digital Festival lunch on Geolocation gave me some really interesting insights into what Geolocation is now, what it was, and where it is going in the future.
The Past (well, a few years back anyway!)
The king of Geolocation and what really put it on the map (no pun intended) was the Sat Nav. Britain’s roads are bewildering to navigate – a maze of spaghetti junctions, one-way systems and dizzying roundabouts.
A Sat-Nav helps us get from A to B in the quickest time possible, decreasing journey time and stress for people with no sense of direction like me! It’s a multibillion dollar industry and Sat Navs can be found in cars up and down the country and across the world.
From a marketing point of view, GPS technology got interesting when social media and smart phones went mainstream. One of the early adopters (still only three years ago) of that technology was Foursquare, which produced a location-based app that made it easy to keep in touch with friends and upload tips on various places for other members to find. I found out at the lunch that Foursquare makes its money by collecting all the location data that people have uploaded, packaging it up into databases and then selling it on to companies that want to buy it – genius!
VoucherCloud is also a great example of an app fulfilling a consumer need… capitalising on the frugality trend, VoucherCloud uses Geolocation to great effect, by connecting brands offering local deals to consumers.
The Present (for brands)
However, developing a Geolocation based app, and then seeding it so it becomes mainstream is no mean feat. If you can do this then I suggest mobile app development is the career for you!
Instead, brands and markettiers need to think laterally about how they can utilise already existing platforms to drive awareness and sales of their brand. We recently did this for Fox’s, when we launched a location-based Facebook treasure hunt game to mark the launch of its new Christmas Pudding range. The campaign, called the Great Christmas Pudding Heist, features the brand’s panda mascot Vinnie enlisting Facebook fans to help find his stolen treasure, which have been smuggled inside Christmas puddings.
I’ve also seen great location based campaigns from Mini and Vodafone in the past.
Perhaps the most exciting development recently is the new location based reminder software in the iPhone 4s. You can set a reminder to a place and when you get close to it and your phone will beep to let you know you need to do something. So, if you leave a suit to collect from the dry cleaners and you drive past it on the way home from work but you don’t know what time that’ll be, you can set a location based reminder so you won’t forget to pick it up. Brilliant! I haven’t started using this yet but I plan to very soon!
The future
Mobile shopping through Smartphone apps hasn’t really taken off yet, but I’m sure it will in 2012. An exciting idea will be to combine a retailers back end stock systems (so consumers know what’s in stock) with a live shopping app and Geolocation. That way, you could find the closest shop to you that is open and has the item you are looking for on the shelf at any given time. This would work brilliantly for me while Christmas shopping next year!
You could see this extending into shopping lists – so for example, ask the app “what shop closest to me has the most items in stock on my shopping list?” This would be great for grocery shopping on a Sunday evening when the supermarkets are closed.
Geolocation and joining friends with friends and consumers with brands is still very much in its infancy but I predict big things for Geolocation this year – Marketeers need to be ready to take advantage and evolve with it.
Posted by Greg on January 11th, 2012
