Shake Gently – advertising technology blog

Air Force: Bluespamming the innocent

Call it bluecasting, bluespamming, bluejacking, mobile ad push, drive-by adver-spamming, or whatever you want. Just don’t call it legitimate mobile marketing.

Ad Age posted an article about a bluespamming mobile campaign that the mobile marketing division of an ad agency is implementing here in the US. This project will focus on promoting the US Air Force at the Texas Motor Speedway in Dallas this Friday, April 13th.

Matt posted about his bluespamming experience in New York a few weeks ago. Land Rover and CBS are also toying around with bluespamming.

“The transmitters ping any mobile device set to accept messages sent via Bluetooth..” How annoying is that? If the transmitters are set up at the major entrances or in high traffic areas, they will be sure to blanket a large number of attendees.

This is going to set a very bad precedent, and I agree with Mark that this tactic is really going to turn off consumers, who will hopefully complain to the advertiser and their agency.

It doesn’t appear that self regulation is going to work, so I imagine a law will be put in place to prohibit bluespamming in the short term.

My confidence that mobile marketing firms wouldn’t stoop to a tactic like this has now been shaken.

Technorati Tags: bluecasting, bluespamming, bluespam, bluetooth, mobile ad push, mobile marketing, Air Force, Texas Motor Speedway