Blue Bother?

Australia's Big Brother 2008 is being promoted with an innovative bluetooth poster campaign, inspired by the “Big Brother is watching” slogan used on the show. Bluetooth boxes installed within posters at bus stops automatically send two anonymous messages to any bluetooth enabled phones nearby.

Cleverly, the first message is specifically written for the location, e.g. “Im watching u. Ur at the just beside Starbucks, by the bus stop”. Then a second message is sent 30-40 seconds later with the reveal, “Big Brother is back. 7 PM weeknights on TEN”. Top marks to the Marketforce agency for coming up with such an engaging concept. However, in the We Love Mobile office we are split over whether all consumers will thank them for it.

You see, there is no apparent opt-in to get these messages, and if there was, it would kind of kill the whole suspense thing. So are consumers effectively being spammed (or bluespammed, to use the technical term!)? What if they don't get the joke? What if they get on the bus before getting the second message? What if they really are being stalked? (Ok, that's unlikely). What if they don't like big brother? (Much more likely!) So cool campaign, or social nuisance? Or are we just jealous we didn't come up with the idea first?