Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0169 Beacon Implementation Potholes

Advertising Age has an excellent read on Beacons/iBeacons and this author's expectation of failure by a majority of merchants.

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/beacon-programs-fail/295843/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Businesses of all kinds -- from worldwide department stores to neighborhood shopping districts, international airports to baseball fields -- are adopting beacons at a pretty incredible pace. From all-door rollouts to smaller test pilots, companies are very bullish on beacons. As they should be. The devices offer a way to connect with consumers unlike ever before in-store, when it's relevant to their immediate location. To personally welcome individuals as they arrive. To disseminate important or motivating content. To gather unique insights into on-premise customer behavior. And the beacons themselves are available at such a low cost that adding multiple devices to hundreds of stores is not out of the question.

But, as with most shiny objects, beacons will be abused. In fact, I predict that three out of every four beacon programs will fail in 2015.

We are seeing a lot of experimentation with this new tool.  I'm certain we'll see a lot of failures and that is a good thing.  Try, fail, and try again.  Sounds like a recipe for eventual differentiation.  The laggards will take years to catch up once the leaders figure this out.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant