Indoor beaconing is going wall to wall.
Or more accurately, it’s going from ceiling to floor, as store lighting joins the Internet of Things.
The ultimate effect is that the location of in-store shoppers can be very precisely identified and retailers or marketers can then deliver highly targeted, location-based offers, on the spot.
Do any shoppers want this? By what evidence? That they already have a CVS or Walmart app? Presumably.
I find myself thinking, given Apple’s moves on the privacy front, that Customer Commons should propose filtration of apps in app stores by customer terms. As in “only show me apps compliant with my terms (or preferences)."
GPS has been pretty good at identifying general location and when combined with Wi-Fi and beacons, the combo can paint a pretty good picture of proximity of a person.
GPS + Wi-Fi has proven good for providing graces such as better navigation in mapping apps, but in the second clause in that sentence I see a slippery slope from a handy feature to unwanted personalization.
But now other location technology, along with beacons, is being built into light bulbs.
This is yet further evidence that beacons as battery-operated, standalone devices may have seen their day, as I wrote about recently (Beacons, GPS, Wi-Fi Combo: The New Mobile Presence).
When installed at retailers, these smart lights can locate a shopper at a precision of 8 to 12 inches and then promotions and other messages can be triggered based on the location.
Let’s look at affordances here. The single affordance we want from a light is illumination. That’s it.
But we don’t want lights to identify us personally and send us messages. Not yet, anyway, and not until we have some kind of genuine opt-in relationship with the store. More about that below.
I just spent some time speaking with two of the executives in charge of implementing the connected lights strategy to see how this approach will be used for targeted marketing and advertising.
“This is about proximity vs. positioning,” said Gerben van der Lugt, global business development lead for indoor positioning at Philips Lighting, a company that’s been in the lighting business since 1891.
Yesterday I threw out a bunch of Philips bulbs I hadn’t yet used, because others just like them fell apart after they died, right in their sockets. When I tried to unscrew their glass-and-shit-metal corpses, the bulbs fell out in my hand while the screw bases stayed stuck inside the sockets. I had to make sure the electricity was off while I worked each bulb base out of each socket, using a needle-nosed pliers, like a dentist extracting a rotted tootht. If I were a retailer having the same experience, Philips’ brand value for me would sink toward Zika's.
Instead of sending a signal to a smartphone, like beacons, the LED lights in a store connect with a phone screen as soon as it is opened.
So let’s say you enter a CVS store equipped with these things, and you open your CVS app just so you can find which aisle has, say, the nasal spray. Is the first thing you want to see instead is a promotional message that says “Hey! Deal on batteries, right there by your right knee!”
Each light fixture has a unique identification code using what Philips calls visible light communication.
A smartphone camera detects the code in the light and identifies its precise location. And that’s where marketing messages come in.
“Every fixture has a unique ID and a small variation in the intensity of light,” said van der Lugt. “The camera of the phone can see the modulation, although people can’t.”
I don’t mind not seeing the modulation, but I do mind being spied on without permission.
As with beacons, the shopper has to have a relevant app, such as the retailer’s where they are shopping.
That’s good. It would also help if they were made aware that systems like this are in place, and opt-in, rather than opt-out.
Carrefore installed the Philips location-based lighting system in its hypermarket in France using 800 lighting fixtures.
Wonder how well that system agrees with the spirit as well as the letter of French and EU privacy laws.
“The retail space is transforming,” said Ravi Koul, marketing director, retail and hospitality at Philips Lighting. “At Carrefore,
Correction: Carrefor.
the app ties into the promotion system so a consumer can select and browse through the promotions.
“When they’re in the store, the app opens and the shopper can say ‘show all promotions around me.’” (Koul will be detailing this in a presentation at the MediaPost Iot Marketing Forum in New York on Aug. 3).
One of the main differences in using lighting for location is in cost, since to add the technology to the lighting is incremental, rather than having to install separate beacons, for example.
“They need lights, and they can outfit them with communications or not,” said Koul. “But adding the communication can make them future proof.”
The key is that location is becoming much more refined.
“Proximity marketing is different than indoor positioning,” said Koul. “There is nothing as accurate as lighting.”
As with beacons, consumers have to opt in to receive the light-triggered messaging.
Well, that’s good.
“People kind of like that as well, since they’re in control of the connectivity,” said van der Lugt.
In addition to the lighting-triggered technology, the fixtures can include beaconing technology, so that even while in a pocket or purse, the smartphone location can be identified and tracked.
But when opened, the person holding the phone can be located to within a few inches.
As a next step I can almost hear a phone talking from a purse, saying “Let’s see what else you’ve got in here… Lipstick, a bunch of credit cards, an umbrella, a pack of smokes—hey, we thought you quit! Have you tried vaping? We have those on sale!"
The Internet of Things is birthing a new state of location.