Enable Proximity Marketing Using Display Phones As Beacons

The problem

Samsung needed a way to communicate, in real time, with visitors to their channel partners' stores.

The solution 

In 2014, right after joining Samsung, I began thinking about solving Samsung’s major disadvantage versus Apple which is the lack of their own retail stores. Not having owned and operated stores means inability to directly engage with customers in the physical world. One of the solutions I came up with is an application that will enable each of Samsung’s display phones in 38,000 locations to function as a beacon. These display phones can be upgraded OTA by Samsung's internal systems. With that, Samsung could send push notification messages customers visiting channels like BestBuy, Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T, etc. Since Samsung doesn't have a capability suitable to manage proximity marketing campaigns., I chose Swirl Networks’ platform for campaign authoring and management.