The 2009 Location Innovation Awards‘Get Somewhere
19 March 2009
The 2009 Location Innovation Awards ‘Get Somewhere’
Pretty soon you will be able to find out which bus to catch, get turn by turn walking directions to the bus stop, be told to walk a little faster so you won’t miss it and be able to pay for your bus ticket, all on your mobile phone. These concepts won Auckland University Student, Matt Weston a trip to the Where 20 Conference in San Jose in May this year as winner of the Grand Prize of the Inaugural GeoSmart Location Innovation Awards with his mobile phone application called ‘Get Somewhere’.
Last
night a packed house attended the GeoSmart 2009 Location
Innovation Awards Prize Giving event at Sale St in Auckland
to celebrate the beginning of a new era in Kiwi ingenuity
and to find out that LBS is going to change the way many of
us interact with the world around us, with location aware
mobile phones.
GeoSmart Sales & Marketing Manager, Luigi
Cappel presented research and examples from Europe and the
UK and said, “If your mobile is aware of its location, all
sorts of wonderful applications can enrich your life. We
were looking for some new Kiwi icons to showcase Kiwi
inventiveness for this new industry segment, and I believe
we found a number of them. Matt Weston also took out the
Category Award for Proximity Based Marketing with Get
Somewhere.”
“Other category winners included agency TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\ who won the Location Based Games Category with Adipush, a sports motivation application which appears destined for adoption in a number of countries around the world only weeks after its conception. They also took away the Social Networking Category with Facebook Carpool Tree, which combines social networking with viral marketing in a concept that has every likelihood of achieving what other carpool concepts have missed. The application was extremely well conceived and their appreciation of LBS will give TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\ and their clients an edge in a time when traditional marketing media such as TVC’s, Radio and Print Advertising are dwindling in effectiveness. The Agencies that understand the concepts of associating brands with mobile LBS stand to achieve CTR’s and response rates unheard of in traditional marketing, said Cappel”
The other major winner was Neil
McCallum with House-Mouse in the AA Maps Widget Category. An
application that is designed to put the search for
appropriate Real Estate back in the hands of the buyer who
can find the properties they are looking for based on their
criteria as well as optimising the route and getting
printable turn by turn directions to take with them.
“While the application was designed to print the
directions from the AA Maps web site,” said McCallum.
“The next logical step would of course be to have the
directions and route maps along with other relevant
information sent directly to your mobile.”
GeoSmart
General Manager, Phil Allen said, “We have been so
thrilled with the high calibre of entries and support from
the industry, that we have already committed to running this
competition again in 2009-2010.
“
ends