Swisscom postpones Beem campaign after expressions of displeasure

How the NZZ on Sunday writes, the launch campaign, which Swisscom plans to launch together with its partner apps and advertising customers, should have started on Saturday. The Winterthur agency Partner & Partner is responsible for the communications launch. (Werbewoche.ch reported). Nothing came of it, the campaign had to be postponed. The technology had caused uncertainty, a spokesman tells the newspaper. That means: Watsonone of the three app partners, has decided not to offer Beem for the time being because some of the reactions were fierce. Swisscom says it regrets this. In addition to Watson, the 20 minutes and Bluewin to the start partners.

Billboards equipped with Beem transmitters make contact with smartphones via a high-frequency sound, provided they have the partner apps installed and open. The sound signal is received via the smartphone microphone. The device then displays additional content that complements the poster. For example, a contest, an order link, or a vote.

Now Swisscom wants to take more time for better explanations of "what Beem does and, above all, does not do," as head Alessandro Rausa says. For example, no tracking is done, no personal data is collected and no conversations are listened to. No push messages are sent, and users have to click on the app themselves each time.

The consensus in industry circles is that Beem is harmless, even conservative, compared to other technologies and methods. Data protection and control by the user are paramount, says an unnamed expert in the NZZ on Sunday quote, "You don't want to know what other companies are doing with your data."

And Marcus Schögel from the Institute for Marketing at the HSG recalls the high hurdle for customers to open the app. For them to do so, they have to be offered real advantages.

An advertiser, also not named, says that compared to Facebook ("the devil") and Google ("the Beelzebub"), all the other players - especially those from Switzerland - are choirboys.

The newspaper points out that other Swiss advertising campaigns are far more advanced - for example, geofencing, in which users are tracked via GPS data and targeted with advertising for defined geographic zones. Incidentally, this is also done with the help of the news portal Watson, which "is now suddenly being so coy. APG uses real-time data from 21 of Switzerland's leading apps, including Watson or those of the Tages-Anzeiger. According to the company, however, the data does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about a specific person.