Taxi Driver Online

One of my customers has just been offered a bluetooth device for sending taxi advertising to bluetooth enabled phone and he’s asking me if it’s a good idea. I’ve never come across anyone using these devices so was wondering if anyone here has any experiences good or bad.

I know at the national exhibition these add messages were really annoying and didn’t McDonalds try using it at one time and got a lot of stick over it?


Bill

They do work but require effort from someone to move around with them. Some people put all the kit in a small wheelable suitcase and wander around crowded areas in order to set off as many bluetooth enabled phones in the area. They do not work with I Phones as they use a different bluetooth stack to everyone else.

You would have to dedicate a DDI number in the office to the Bluetooth Marketing Campaign so as to see any results of the efforts. Sophisticated versions can be set not to repeatedly send texts to the same phone.

If McDonalds got a lot of stick over it - then it worked?

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"Where to, Guv'?. Na sorry not going my way"

I am told that the new ones also send messages to iphones. This is something that I have been looking into for the near future.

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Grandad,

Seen them advertised in PHM over the last few months.

There's a gym round our way which spams your phone when walk through the door.

Everytime I drive past cash converters, I get pinged, or come to think of it I used to with my nokia, hasn't happened with my nexus smartphone.

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Former taxi driver

I'll make the smart phone thick driver joke to save you all the bother...

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Former taxi driver

I know of someone locally who has one in his private car sending out cab advert spam as he goes around the city.

Not sure of it's success, but it's a bit big and cumbersome IMO. Apart from being rather expensive.

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IDFIMH

It was indeed Private Hire that was offering the equipment at a cost of £4k for three years. May be that’s a good deal may be it isn’t but without any feedback from longer-term users how do you tell? Having done a bit of reading up on the subject, the people pushing this sort of technology say it’s the way of the future but then again they would say that.

On the down side, it’s been heavily criticised by the motoring organisations due to the high usage of bluetooth in cars and receiving advertising messages while driving is regarded as extremely dangerous. Secondly there’s a growing trend in viruses and malware being passed by bluetooth and the recommendation, just like emails, is that unsolicited bluetooth messages should always be rejected without opening.

I reckon this latter point ultimately would be the final nail in the coffin for such systems then it’s tough luck for anyone that’s forked out for a contract.

Bill

IMO the only ones that advertise this way are the sh1te firms who struggle for work.

If you've got a good reputation for turning up within 5 minutes of the booked time you don't need the bluetooth machine.

We tried this around 2 years ago, as our office is in a busy bus station, and to be honest, all we really managed to do was really pee off the people waiting for buses, so it went in the bin!
(if you look around, you can find companies knocking the equipment out for under £200.00)

This is one reason that we are thinking long and hard before doing it. Let's be honest you are either looking for a taxi or you aren't. I find that google adwords works for us at the moment so I think we will stick with that for the moment.

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Grandad,