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Location the new cookie? All hail free wifi…

Over the last 72 hours there have been two pieces of news that have fired the imagination around here.

One is very close to Addiply’s home; one a piece of news from across the Pond. Put side-by-side and I continue to think that there’s a marketing revolution afoot; one that sits perfectly within Eric Schmidt’s vison of a ‘SoLoMo’ world.

This was the first - the news that Newcastle City Council, working in conjunction with Nexus, had the go-ahead to deploy up to £6m worth of wifi and wireless thinking across their respective networks.

That the local authority can see benefit from rolling out free wifi across a transport network is not wholly unique; the week before and I was in Cardiff at the BBC’s Digital Week in time to hear that Cardiff City Council had plans to do similar- only across their bus-stops as opposed to their Metro stations.

In both cases, however, the result will be a fresh and free network of civic and, potentially, commercial engagement.

Because ‘the deal’ that people are starting to twig here is that if I give you free wifi, then you give me your location…

And for a local authority seeking engagement with its hard-to-reach residents facing the full wrath of this summer’s welfare reforms, finding them on their SmartPhone - be they on a Cardiff bus or a Tyne & Wear Metro - is what it is all about. That was the message that the incoming head of HM Government Comms Alex Aiken told the CommsCymru conference in Newport this spring - that the time to ‘channel shift’ was nigh.

Now read this; it is from BusinessInsider in the US this weekend.

’Why Local-Mobile Marketing Is Exploding 2013-16’

It makes for a fascinating reading when cast in the light of Schmidt’s prediction of a ‘Social-Local-Mobile’ future.

The numbers are intriguing; the pace of shift to local thrilling for those that have been in the space for a while now.

But the ‘Join the dots…’ moment is in the third paragraph:

’Retailers, brands, and agencies are scrambling to hone their location-based approaches. These encompass everything from “geo-aware“ and “geo-fenced“ ad campaigns, to hyper-local efforts keyed to Wi-Fi hotspots…’

Some-time in the none-too-distant future Nexus and Newcastle City Council will have at least 60 such Wifi hotspots in the shape of the 60 Metro stations that make up their ‘network’.

All of which will, by default, become hubs of data-led engagement; to mobile; in local.

And, according to BI, at such a point location ’will be the new cookie…’

Only why would you turn this cookie off, if it was giving you free wifi?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rick Waghorn .