Experts in near field communication (NFC) have announced a major global alliance among three top firms in the industry, in order to promote the technology’s potential for mobile marketing.
The companies involved in what has been called the NFC World Alliance, are each representative of a different part of the globe, including Asia-Pacific’s Tapit, EMEA’s Proxama, and Blue Bite in the Americas. Each of these companies has already established its success in campaigns based on NFC which have assisted in linking brands to consumers on a broad scale.
Dan Trigub, the vice president of business development at Blue Bite, said that “We’re very excited about the potential of NFC,” when speaking about the high frequency short-range technology which is currently most often associated with mobile payments and mobile wallets, as opposed to marketing. However, Trigub explained that this will soon change, as NFC has the potential to provide a similar amount of reach to other forms of mobile media.
Proxama’s CEO, Neil Garner, said that NFC technology is going to be a standard feature on mobile devices, especially for being able to read tags. This ability has to do with allowing a consumer to tap an item that has been NFC enabled – such as a poster or a sticker – in order to perform some type of action – such as visiting a site or launching an app – or obtain additional information.
This type of function is already in place by quick response barcode scanners, except that NFC will allow it to be performed much more quickly and easily through a simple tap of the device. Moreover, NFC can also allow a mobile device user to “follow” a brand on Twitter, or to “like” it on Facebook.
