Ideas > Heritage Week

This event would be based around Guernsey Heritage event, this event model could easily be applied to any area in the country. Its aims would be to use mobile technologies to promote spots of heritage in Guernsey, for example the spot of German Underground museums or bunkers.

Concept: Channel Islands like Guernsey and Jersey are littered with historical spots of interest from varying periods of history, finding them however is not always easy, and interesting places are often missed or overlooked. The idea behind the event would be to promote these places and their locations to people via sat nav and mobile devices. By providing people with a service such as this as opposed to targeting them with advertising i feel people are far more likely to get involved and enjoy it. Step one would involve targeting users in their cars with devices such as Tom Tom SatNav. As users drive around the island and become near an area of historical interest the SatNav device would inform the users of this and ask them if they are interested in visiting the area, if the user accepts the invitation the SatNav device will direct them to the area of historical heritage, as the driver is on the way to this area the SatNav device would detail relevant facts about the areas history and importance to the area via audio so the users visit is put into context, better that they know what they are looking at when they get there. Not all historical spots of interest in densely populated areas such as the channel islands are directly accessible by car, so step two would involve navigating the users to the nearest convenient parking area, then the idea would be for the SatNav device to communicate with the users portable devices such as PDA's and mobiles via bluetooth or infrared, giving users the final directions to the area on foot via their mobile devices screens. These devices could then be used to provide further audio commentary to users when they arrive at the area via speakerphone. As well as this scheme there are many other ways in which mobile distributive devices could be used to promote the event.

Primary Technologies Utilised: In car communications (SatNav), PDA's, Bluetooth, Infra red, Mobiles.

Benefits for Company's/Event: Both the company's involved in implementing the technologies required and the event are set to benefit in some way. The event benefits by providing the consumer with an interesting service and will gain publicity when the information is disseminated to the consumers in their cars via SatNav Devices or mobile technologies. This could remove the hassle of finding these areas and provide the users with interesting information about the area, thus enhancing their overall experience. The company's producing the technologies involved would benefit from demonstrating to the public the possibilities of what such devices could be used for and are capable of, as opposed to just path finding/route planning and communications.

Technology Utilised by Target Audience: Assuming this campaign is targeting users of SatNav route planning devices, the likely hood that a mobile phone is not available to them to complete stage two of the concept is low. I feel that if users are utilising such new technologies in their car day to day then it would be contradictory to their buying trends if they did not possess a mobile phone.

Considerations/Notes This concept is based on the ideology that in the near future GPS technologies will become more widely integrated into mobile devices and cars. At current such devices exist but are not widespread enough to target a large consumer base. I predict however that with the rise in use of multi-purpose devices and navigation systems making use of GPS (required to run the event) that this concept would be viable in the near future.