Beacon Marketing in Collingwood’s street event

A street festival is conducted in the Downtown Collingwood every year. The organisers introduced proximity marketing using beacons to this annual art event. Each year’s festival has a different theme. This year’s theme is Collingwood history, and the event is conducted from May 19th to October 6th, 2018.

As a part of the decoration, painted Muskoka chairs are being lined in the Collingwood’s sidewalks. The art is hand-painted Muskoka chairs, done by various local artists.

They mounted beacons on every Muskoka chair. Due to their water-resistant and dust-resistant resistant property, these beacons withstand the outdoor environment in the streets.

Attendees who switch on their Bluetooth on their smartphones will get a notification on their phone when they are in the vicinity of the painted chairs. Clicking on the notification will provide details about the chairs – the photo of the chair, historical information of the image depicted and information on the artist who painted it. There is also a call-to-action (CTA) button that takes the user to the art on the street’s website.

This use case is very similar to beacon applications in museums. However, it is very smartly designed to fit into events. In such applications, it is crucial to configure the transmitting range of the beacon to an accurate distance. It works best when notifications from different chairs do not overlap.

Collingwood also used the beacon campaign to generate revenue. They claimed that a part of the revenue generated from the street event would go to charity.