June 26, 2006 at 10:08 am ·
Authored by Ewan · Filed under Devices
Ah well. James Blunt was excellent, so were Zero7 — according to a colleague of mine who went to the o2 Wireless Festival.
He took along his cheap-as-chips i-mode handset hoping to get access to the o2 VIP section. BUT he hadn’t put any credit on the handset. WOOOPS!
Not a good idea when you have to send a text to get the special barcode to get into the VIP bit.
So he called up a few times and tried to add some call credit with one of his cards. Three times. Failed each time. The IVR o2 pay as you go system wasn’t having it. It’s a total arse when that happens, especially when you’re typing in 16 digit credit card numbers. He’s really quite annoyed.
But the music was good, apparently!
June 23, 2006 at 12:20 am ·
Authored by Ewan · Filed under Mobile
To get me to a gig like the upcoming o2 Wireless Festival, you need to either ply me with a VIP ticket (to avoid the queues) together with the promise of a decent hot dog. I generally prefer watching stuff like this on TV. You can avoid the mud too. Not that there’ll be a lot of that this weekend if the weather holds up.
Anyway, if you’re into live music and you’re in London, AND you’re into mobile, you should probably in Hyde Park to see James Blunt, Eels, Beth Orton, Zero 7, Freestylers and many more.
And if you’re not an o2 customer, get yourself an o2 sim card pronto so you can get into their very own VIP bit. Lastminute.com are giving away some tickets in a competition. Or, just buy’em here. Top price is £37.50. Not bad.
Oh. I thought it was for a weekend. Turns out it’s a five day thing.
For five full on consecutive days of sensational live music in London, and two in Leeds, the O2 Wireless Festival is the only place to be this summer. With headline performances from The Strokes, David Gray, Massive Attack, James Blunt and Depeche Mode plus acoustic performance space, chill out areas, side shows, markets, world food caterers and street theatre, the O2 Wireless Festival 2006 offers the very best of the festival experience, all within a stones throw of home.
June 15, 2006 at 12:07 am ·
Authored by Ewan · Filed under Uncategorized
This is the bit that interested me.
Get your barcode pass to the VIP festival area.
If you’re on o2 and going to wireless, text ‘blueroom’ to 60600.
I wonder who’s doing the barcoding, eh?
Good luck if you’re on o2 and you’re using a Nokia 3300 Christmas Cracker — I doubt the barcode’ll work.
However it’s ultra cool. It’s a brilliant use of technology and loyalty. I think it will cut through easily to the masses — I don’t reckon anyone will have a problem understanding the concept.
If anything, it will serve to highlight the value of your mobile device and make things easier for mobile ticketing in future. I can easily visualise a future where all event tickets are mobilised. This is the first mega high profile event I’ve seen using barcode ticketing. An excellent poster-child for the medium. It’s the sort of thing you can reference with confidence and credibility when trying to convince a suspect event organiser.
As for those wandering around with ancient handsets — well, they’re hardly likely to want to get into the Blue Room VIP section, are they? And if they are, ‘tuff luck. Get a better handset, right? 
So I hope it all works well. Lots more information on the o2 Wireless Festival here:
http://www.o2wirelessfestival.co.uk/
June 14, 2006 at 11:59 pm ·
Authored by Ewan · Filed under Uncategorized
The o2 Wireless Festival ads are another thing I’ve been forever exposed to as I walk around Her Majesty’s No. 1 City.
Someone, somewhere, at o2 is really doing their work. I was hit multiple, multiple times all day with o2 marketing and branding.
I get in the cab to the station and there’s an advert telling me about o2’s wireless festivals. If you’re an o2 customer, you can get into an extra stage, or … something like that, I only heard it once. You get VIP something.
Then bish bash bosh wherever I look on the underground, there are these wireless festival ads.
The most interesting element is yet to come though.. standby while I post another flickr image courtesy of ShoZu and my gorgeous N90.
Ah yes,the mythical o2 barcodes and VIP blueroom.. Hmm.
Well I went to the festival courtesy of the love Mike Butcher of mbites (http://www.mbites.com) fame and we felt it was our duty to check out the VIP room ‘n stuff. I’d tried to get a barcode pass but I’m not on o2 so I get this reply “Sorry - the O2 blueroom is for O2 customers only. See http://www.o2.co.uk for more.” No mention of, ‘hey special offer, get this that or the other by clicking here’. Missed opportunity. I digress.
As we were on a press ticket, we had access anyway, so we trot along to said VIP room. You had to show your barcode but there were no scanners that I saw. And the barcode would get you and 4 friends in and were given a blue wristband so you could come in and out as you please. So there was lots of value in having a barcode then ;-).
Once in, there was a nice little stage, lots of chillout areas, some massage people and also a chance to ‘download free music using bluetooth’. Well, I turned my bluetooth on (I have a N70) to no avail. Nothing, nada. No freebies, no bluejacking, nothing. Probably just as well as the Mobile Marketing Association have recently stated that using bluetooth broadcast mechanisms in this way are spam and, in their opinion, contravenes the data protection Act.
However, we may well be missing the point. The point is they got great PR (hey we’re writing/reading about it). Mike and I also chatted to some teenagers (in an unsuccessful attempt at ad-hoc podcasting) and asked them about their view of O2. They said they thought much more positively about O2. They’d bought O2 sim cards so they could get into the blueroom and then they won tickets for the following day so they thought O2 was ace. I guess there were more like them too.
So yes, the technology failed but the PR and marketing worked.
My photos of the festival are here:
Posted by Helen Keegan on July 3rd, 2006 at 1:19 pm.http://www.flickr.com/photos/technokitten/sets/72157594174970583/
And Mike’s are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbites/sets/72157594174801415/