Carling Bluetooth Kiosks

There is a piece in the current Revolution Magazine about Carling trialing a Bluetooth-enabled touchscreen kiosk in Bristol.

A test project with Bristol City Council will see Carling trial Bluetooth-enabled touchscreen kiosks around the city, along with a wireless "cloud" to enable users with Bluetooth phones to access the web wherever they are. The Kiosks will give people free internet access and information on where to go and what to do in Bristol. They will carry a dedicated Carling channel, offering competitions to win tickets to Carling live gigs in London and Bristol, or a pint of Carling at a local pub. Chris O'Donnell, head of OneZeroOne, which is involved in the project, claims: "This is the future of consumer interaction with brands. We're really focused on 'destination planning', whereby we set up kiosks in locations where people have completed their journey, such as shopping centres, pubs or rail stations. Here, they are in a different mind-frame from when they are are at home or travelling from A to B, and they are open to different kinds of messages." He says there are also plans to replicate the campaign in other cities. Bristol Council has spent time and money in educating locals on what the kiosks will offer them, and Carling hopes it will provide a new channel for targetting people on the move. The project will run until March, after which the firm will review the technology. The pilot will help Coors explore several new technologies in the same place.

I'm not sure how they can provide free internet access to Bluetooth phones, unless the phone user was a hardcore tech fan using GnuBox to route internet access via the phones onboard bluetooth.

A search on the web revealed a story on NetImperative, Carling trials branded internet kiosks.

Here they say that kiosks will offer wireless internet access supplied by Cityspace. Cityspace only offer WiFi access in kiosks, so it sounds like Revolution may have misunderstood the original press release, and Bluetooth isn't being used for internet access after all.

The story also specifically says that Bluetooth enabled mobiles can opt-in to receive Carling offers and Carling live music footage for free.

That sounds more like it. They don't say if the kiosk will be scanning and spamming (bluejacking) unwary passers by, or if the user will specifically have to message the kiosk when in range to initiate the contact. Hopefully it will be the later, but you never know with enthusiastic marketing types running the show.