Promotions, Coupons, and Incentive Programs  For the same
reasons that people tend to think of the mobile as a fantastic
advertising medium (always-on, highly personal, uniquely
identifiable users, etc) it’s seen as the perfect medium for
other forms of marketing as well, such as coupons and incentive
programs. So I end up reading about things that the folks in the
industry generally tend to term “The Starbucks Example”. It’s
the example where a service could somehow figure out you’re near
a Starbucks (whether it be location based services or some kind
of near field communication system like Bluetooth) and push you
a coupon (“RIGHT THEN!”) for 25 cents off your latte. There are
a number of variants of the theme, but that’s the overall gist
of it. It’s generally accepted as a shorthand way of dismissing
a mobile marketing effort: obviously not worked through by
anyone who is familiar with either mobile or marketing and
destined for a slow and quiet death hardly worth even noticing.
Which is not to say that co