Renamed WiFi Networks Guilt Freeloaders Into Buying Coffee
This is truly brilliant. With free WiFi popping up at cafes the world over, the number of people impolitely "stealing" it without so much as buying a simple coffee has increased as well. To both reprimand and capitalize on this trend, Holland-based CoffeeCompany, with help from THEY, has started promoting menu items through people's WiFi menus.
By continuously changing the names of their store networks to such things as OrderAnotherCoffeeAlready, BuyCoffeeForCuteGirlOverThere?, HaveYouTriedCoffeeCake?, BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate, TodaysSpecialExpresso1.60Euro and BuyaLargeLatterGetBrownieForFree, the chain is able to both promote items as well as guilt patrons into realizing free WiFi really isn't totally free.
Hilarity ensued when patrons would ask the barista what the name of the network was and the barista would shout, "OrderAnoterCoffeeAlready" or any of the other witty names.
Simple. Effective. Cost-efficient. What's not to love?
Comments
This is a great idea! Simple, effective, and unexpected, so it cuts through the ad filter. Plus, it's fun, and the baristas can have a good time with it.
Great guerrilla marketing
That's pretty similar to the wifitising campaign of car renting company SIXT on airports, the only difference being a lot more wifi access points to push messages. I wrote about it here: http://www.brandinfection.com/2008/11/01/wifitising-sixt-guerilla-marketing-idea/
LOL thats very cool. Such a simple idea with so many possibilities, I wonder when we will see people in city's selling there SSID's as advertising space
I heard about germany wings Airline doing this too. But its also funny in the cafe because people sit there with laptop for hours. And have to ask netwerk name from barista. Funny.
Learned long ago not to trust wifi at coffee shops. Nearly always broken, or will turn on and off. Wifi in general is a horribly buggy technology.
This just seems even more insane. Why not do a splash page or something on the website? Changing the SSID? What a pain.
sure, it's not free, but how much does wifi for a coffee shop cost? a few hundred bucks a month max, right?
It's more like stupid and annoying than simple and effective.
Heh, spot the commenters who think they have a right to free wi-fi everywhere :)
Guerilla Marketing at it's best!!!
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We operate a number of vacation rentals in the Disneyworld area. All of the homes have a password-protected wifi network for guests, but we have the SSID set to our domain name so it's visible to any other vacation homes within a few hundred feet. Judging from the geolocation data on our Analytics tool it drives a few clicks to the site - not many, but every little helps.
Great idea.
that is good idea, thanks.