More than 70 thousand San Francisco residents may be among the first to get to use the new interactive Near Field Communications (NFC) technology. Over the next six months RMG Networks will implement the new program called mTag. The development was a joint venture between RMG Networks and Blue Bite.
Reach Media Group (RMG Networks) is headquartered in San Francisco, California. RMG Networks is a place-based media company that provides news, video entertainment and information, along with away from home solutions for advertising.
RMG’s digital out of home (DOOH) networks include In-Flight Entertainment, Fitness Entertainment, Taxi and NYTimes.com Today, to name a few. These networks appear on over 200 thousand video screens across the nation and reach around 60 million viewers per month.
Blue Bite is a leading mobile marketing solutions provider who bridges the mobile phone with place based networks, including digital out of home networks. Blue Bite uses a combination of cutting edge mobile technologies to deliver any digital media content. Blue Bite currently works across coffee houses, bar and club networks, movie cinemas, airports and shopping malls.
Blue Bite is capable of working across various platforms such as Smartphone Apps, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WAP, QR Codes, NFC and SMS. RMG and Blue Bite announced their strategy at the Customer Engagement Technology World conference last week in San Francisco.
The mTag platform will allow numerous interactions between consumers and company brands. Additionally, mTag will transmit coupons and offers, encourage mobile downloads, purchases and joining in loyalty and rewards programs. NFC tags and QR Codes will be the medium used for this interactive data.
The platform already has sponsors for the campaign launch; Hotels.com and The New York Times will deliver exclusive (mobile) content. The Smartphone users will be urged to interact with posters placed near check-out registers, to get exclusive information.
Several companies have all ready enabled their Smartphone’s with NFC chips, including Google and Samsung. Nokia, Blackberry and HTC are following shortly behind, with new phone releases in the works. Research predicts over 300 million mobile Smartphone’s with NFC technology in just three more years.
