Brazil: Some Detergent Boxes Will Contain GPS Transmitters to Allow Company to Follow Consumers Home
July 31st, 2010Just wait until the detergent box costs more than the GPS transmitter.
Via: AdAge:
Unilever’s Omo detergent is adding an unusual ingredient to its two-pound detergent box in Brazil: a GPS device that allows its promotions agency Bullet to track shoppers and follow them to their front doors.
Starting next week, consumers who buy one of the GPS-implanted detergent boxes will be surprised at home, given a pocket video camera as a prize and invited to bring their families to enjoy a day of Unilever-sponsored outdoor fun. The promotion, called Try Something New With Omo, is in keeping with the brand’s international “Dirt is Good” positioning that encourages parents to let their kids have a good time even if they get dirty.
Omo accounts for half of Brazil’s detergent sales and is already found in 80% of homes there, so Unilever’s goal is more to draw attention to a new stain-fighting version of Omo and get it talked about rather than looking for a big increase in sales.
That made the idea of doing a promotion where the prize finds the consumer, rather than the consumer having to look for the prize — and maybe not bothering — appealing.
Fernando Figueiredo, Bullet’s president, said the GPS device is activated when a shopper removes the detergent carton from the supermarket shelf. Fifty Omo boxes implanted with GPS devices have been scattered around Brazil, and Mr. Figueiredo has teams in 35 Brazilian cities ready to leap into action when a box is activated. The nearest team can reach the shopper’s home “within hours or days,” and if they’re really close by, “they may get to your house as soon as you do,” he said.
Once there, the teams have portable equipment that lets them go floor by floor in apartment buildings until they find the correct unit, he said.
Of course, Brazil has a high crime rate, and not everyone is going to open the door to strangers who claim to have been sent by her detergent brand to offer a free video camera. Bullet has thought of that. If the team tracks a consumer to her home but she won’t let them in, they can remotely activate a buzzer in the detergent box so that it starts beeping. And if the team takes too long to arrive, and the consumer has already opened the box to see if she’s a winner or just do laundry, she’ll find, along with the GPS device and less detergent than expected, a note explaining the promotion and a phone number to call.
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“If the team tracks a consumer to her home but she won’t let them in, they can remotely activate a buzzer in the detergent box so that it starts beeping.”
Yeah, I know that nothing would resolve a tense standoff at my front door like some unidentified buzzing sound coming from a package inside my house, command triggered by someone outside my house…
It’s gonna be great when marketers can drive down the street and inventory the contents of your home via RFID. I can see the email message now:
Dear Customer:
As a courtesy we have inventoried your grocery items and determined that you are entirely out of Shichimi Togarashi and your Mayonnaise is out of date. Please Click Here to see our great specials on these items.
Thanks,
Your Local SuperWallyWorldmazon Manager