Murdoch launches free wifi and analytics into public transport with ‘Getting to know you’ project
Murdoch University in collaboration with mobile solutions agency Mnet, Initiative and wifi specialist Skyfii have taken university recruitment and technology to a new level with the launch of the “Getting to know you” project. It is the first time wifi and geofenced analytics capabilities have been partnered on Perth Public transport.
The project, created by Mnet and Skyfii, enables Murdoch Uni to develop a better understanding of people’s relationships with the University, as well as interests of potential students and current students by gathering data on people’s internet activity as they use the free public wifi provided on Perth’s public buses.
Designed to elevate Murdoch University’s “Think Murdoch” positioning – created by Meerkats – during the mid-year recruitment period, the installation is successfully providing more relevant content and targeted communications to potential students at the university.
Beyond the collection and analysis of existing student data, potential students utilising the free wifi are targeted with Murdoch-focused information that publicises the strengths of specific schools and courses at the uni and how Murdoch is differentiated from its competitors locally and nationally.
Data collected enables Project “Getting to know you” to re-target previous users with relevant, sequential messaging to help deliver potential students more pertinent information and educational opportunities. This was extended into physical cross matching at Murdoch’s Open Day to identify re-targeted individuals via unique mobile pings and then using geofencing technology to map pre-qualified prospects interaction with School displays in real time.
Clive Bingwa, Managing Director of IPG Mediabrands Perth, said bringing new levels of technology to Murdoch University’s recruitment was consistent with the highly digital interests of new students and it was a smart media choice to capture people’s attention implemented by the Murdoch team within Initiative working with Mnet.
“Mnet is the world’s most awarded mobile agency and bringing their capabilities to Murdoch Uni’s outreach and market positioning certainly ups the recruitment ante,” said Bingwa. “We will assess the results and impact of the mobile WiFi installation with the University and plan our next developments from there.”
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Interesting, some questions. Incidentally, it’s good to see the Perth advertising industry finally having these kinds of conversations.
1. Who uses free wifi on buses? Most bus trips in the Murdoch catchment would be around a 8-15 minute trip, 4 minutes of that would be spent understanding and performing the wifi login procedure. Every prospective student would have at least 3G capability and would be pretty used to rolling with their own data, especially with the new big data plans. And we’ve all learnt that free wifi (especialy mobile wifi) is usually slow and dinky with a million terms and conditions (City of Perth free wifi? Forget about it).
2. Assuming that you’re happy using the wifi, gathering internet activity data exclusively during the bus trip surely has limited value (and dubious legalities, but we’ll assume the user obliviously signs their life away when they connect)? How much is the student going to tell you about themselves in a few minutes worth of commute time that relatable to a course? You’d surely be better off at least investing in tracking that student via cheap web search data for that user at their home/work desktop and mobile (e.g. search data around ‘nursing studies’, ‘universities western australia’ etc). Even if you can’t necessarily link that data cross-device, do you really need to know that it’s the same student when both instances are being used to search for Engineering courses? Just run the same sequenced creative across devices. I’m not saying it has zero value, especially if I’m being generous and assuming that the wifi login screen redirects you to, say, a Murdoch Study Area page (or even the Course Selection page) that would at last give you some usable course data. But this extremely limited data pool is expensive to analyse, especially if you’re trying to extrapolate causality between a student looking at a Guardian article about fishing and their likelihood to study… what exactly? Marine Biology? Animal Health? Seems like it would be cheaper to just run a broad, low-cost impression campaign to drive all potential students in the Perth metro area to a landing page – even those students who don’t catch public transport/drive a car/use their own data on public transport (as a slightly incidental aside, Murdoch students have one of the highest rates of bicycle usage rates because of their high proportion of enviro students and numerous free bike lockers compared to other unis).
3. I’m really hoping that the ‘potential students utilising the free wifi are targeted with Murdoch-focused information’ is not just HTML ads during the session or a landing page, and this data is being used to fuel a remarketing strategy beyond the single bus user session. Again, I’m going to be generous and assume that this is happening.
4. The physical cross-matching stuff is probably the most interesting part of this whole story, but I’m worried it won’t be backed up by enough bespoke creative to justify the whole exercise. Given that the entire Murdoch campaign is Big Heads, how is the template going to deliver messaging to students to offer enough value in the environment? Actually, let’s back up. So I’m a student on the bus, I access the wifi, I walk onto campus and walk over to the science labs to give them a squiz. Is there where the ‘School displays in real time’ are? Are there digital screens I can interact with (and more importantly, actually qualify my interest because I’m probably walking all over the campus because I’m just a high school student and this is Open Day). Let’s assume ‘no’ because that’s expensive and the school has already spent all of its money on the wifi bus deal with three different partners.
If all of this takes place, what usable data have I actually gathered? That I’m a prospective student who caught a bus and went to Open Day? Why not just tag the Murdoch landing pages and remarket that way? You might actually save a bunch of money that could be better spent being funnelled back into the original creative (the one part of this whole story that is currently being ignored and which is actually the only ‘communication’ part of this whole strategy).
Look, I’m not saying that any of this activity is useless, but it’s certainly mostly useless considering the cost/benefit ratio. The fact that Meerkats, for example, obviously haven’t had a whole lot to do with this whole strategy means that the creative shown based on the analytics will be rudimentary at best and inaccurate at worst. Just another example of agencies and companies packaging pre-existing technologies into an expensive program of dubious value when you really analyse the component parts. But I’m happy to be proven wrong with some of the answers to my questions.