Silverback Media partners with Toronto retailers to create a mobile-enabled downtown

Silverback Media and the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area have embarked on an ambitious plan to create a mobile-enabled downtown core, where customers use their mobile phones to choose a favourite restaurant, view menus, access coupons and follow an onscreen map to their destination. The first 25 retailers are expected to be on board by July.Making your way through the crowds in Toronto's downtown core, you reach for your mobile phone. You're passing by the popular Springrolls restaurant and scan a QR (Quick Response) code in their window, and save it to your device. You'll need that later.You activate the Wayfinder navigation system in your phone and navigate the streets to get to the Eaton Centre. Calling up the indexed listing of their stores on your cellular phone, you quickly make your way to the shoe retailer of your choice. The sales clerk scans the QR code you've saved in your mobile wallet, and you save 10% on your purchase.Feeling hungry you call up the Springrolls promotional message. You click on the link to their website and scroll thru their offerings. Armed with a mobile coupon for 2-for-1 meals, you follow the map on your phone to their front doors.While not here yet, such new services could soon become commonplace in Toronto. Canada's largest city is on its way to becoming a mobile-enabled downtown core, due largely to a new partnership between Silverback Media and the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area (BIA)."The long-term goal is to do a mobile bubble around the downtown core. That would include Wayfinders, mobile coupons for discounts, mobile loyalty programs, flyers and brochures," explains Silverback's Gary Chaiki, executive VP execution and sales. "There may be variations of that, but that's what we're hoping for in the coming year."In April, Silverback and the Downtown Yonge BIA rolled out the first phase of the mobile coupon project with a subway poster campaign. Consumers opt-in to the program by texting "Yonge" to the 700700 shortcode, and are sent a link to their own personal mobile wallet. Users are offered coupons to featured retailers, or can search under specific categories. Coupons can be saved to the wallet, forwarded to a friend, or redeemed at a retailer who enters a validation code or scans the QR code at the point-of-sale (PoS) system.Mobile coupons have been gaining traction: earlier this year, Toronto-based Mvive Inc. registered over 50,000 customers to its mobile coupon service and San Ramon CA-based Netinformer also jumped in, launching their Xtra Coupons service last winter.What differentiates Silverback is the sheer magnitude of its offerings. All coupons are geo-coded, enabling users to quickly find the retailer using an onscreen map. Active phone links enable users to quickly call stores without searching for phone numbers and each retailer have its own QR code. QR codes- two-dimensional bar codes that can be scanned and read with a camera phone to connect to information instantly-are already used extensively in Japan and other Asian markets.They are also slowly gaining prominence in Canada. Toronto-based Luna Corp. is working to integrate QR codes in the next generation of camera-phones, and many other next-generation phones are expected to have QR readers built in. In the interim, consumers can download third party applications, such as iMatrix, to read the code.While retailers have not yet opted to make use of their QR codes, the potential is certainly there, says Jim Brown, Silverback's manager, Americas. "The QR codes could be embedded with the entire proposition, or just be a link to their website or a phone number. It really is up to the retailer," he says. Few retailers have PoS systems that are capable of reading the QR codes, but that could change as new technologies emerge and gain traction."We've built this in anticipation of the Canadian market. Canada is really almost an island. In the rest of the world, QR codes are a done deal. They're used extensively, they are going to be everywhere," adds Chaiki.To date, the campaign has attracted a handful of retailers, including Springrolls and St. Louie's, and big names, such as Milestones, are expected to enlist shortly."We believe that by July, we'll have 25 retailers on board," says Chaiki. Part of the allure is the impressive response rates: during the first four weeks of the campaign over 1,000 customers signed-up for the service. Chaiki boasts that the viewing rate is about 90%, the open rate hovers around 70% and the redemption rate is approximately 35%."It all about the technology these days," says the BIA's marketing manager, Monica Kocsmaros. "We approached our membership and they felt mobile coupons were the way to go. Mobile phones are the one accessory people wear at all times."The mobile marketing industry is experiencing substantial growth: ABI Research predicts the global market will reach $24 billion in revenue by 2013, up from $1.8 billion last year. But Chaiki thinks the environmental factor will also play a large role in the pick-up of his, and other, services."When you say to the world, as we have, that you can eliminate paper, eliminate ink, eliminate waste, that message gets driven into the environmental groups of these companies and into the organization and causes change," says Chaiki."The environmental impact (or lack thereof) is a major factor," he says. "We've made ten calls to ten big companies in the past week and we've got ten meetings."

Silverback Media partners with Toronto retailers to create a mobile-enabled downtown

News | 06/26/2008 2:08 pm EDT

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