Outcast began it’s life as Fuelcast, with a simple idea: if you put a video display above a busy petrol pump, then you’re going to get a lot of people watching it. The next step was to move those screens out of the petrol station and into shops and fast-food joints like McDonalds. The screens display ads offering mobile coupons in reply to a user-sent SMS. Outcast claims that it has now sent over 25 million coupons to consumers via it’s 6,000 advertising screens.
Viewers can also register for competitions and giveaways via the ads, as well as downloading content via shortcodes.
From the release:
“Our mobile platform is dramatically extending the impact and reach of our digital out-of-home network delivering exactly the kind of consumer engagement and interaction that marketers want. With our average redemption rate exceeding 25 percent, Outcast’s mobile platform generates some of the strongest ROIs in the mobile industry,” said Matthew Stoudt, CEO, Outcast. “Based on the platform’s tremendous success and recent expansion, both retailers and other digital out-of-home networks are looking to us to develop and manage mobile marketing campaigns on their behalf, as well as monetize excess ad inventory with premium content downloads.”
What we think?
This is a good example of something I discussed with Greg Isbister from UK bluetooth marketing company Breeze Tech (an interview with some valuable content in it – I’m going to write it up tomorrow). He spoke about the need for “dwelling” with proximity marketing. Where you have people staying in one area for a period of time, eg. the 2 minutes it takes to fill your car, you have people who are more open to receiving marketing. The fact that this service is user-initiated and location-targeted also leads to better response rates. It’s major weakness is that it’s not-portable. It needs a point-of-purchase location which sees a lot of human traffic every day.
