NFC and the Museum of London
Posted on by Timothy Boyle
NFC is often pigeonholed as a technology whose main purpose is as a device for payments. While this is indeed a very useful and important use for the new technology it is by no means limited to this purpose, and in fact, I suspect it will be the non-payment uses that will really drive NFC to critical mass in the coming years.
Using NFC Beyond Contactless Payment
One great example of NFC being used for non-payments purposes and a good look into the future of NFC is the Museum of London.
The Museum of London was an early user of NFC technology and brought it into their exhibits in 2011. The idea behind using this technology for the museum was to help make the exhibits more interactive, provide great information and value, help connect visitors to social networks like Facebook, foursquare, and Twitter, and promote future exhibits and the ability to pay for those exhibits in advance using a mobile landing page and on their phone.
Engaging Visitors on a Deeper Level
The many benefits to this sort of technological adoption for a place like the Museum of London are obvious. First, connecting many of these individual paintings or artifacts by NFC to more online information provides the individual with a better experience and helps make the particular painting or artifact come alive. This sort of added value can help ensure these visitors come back in the future.
Connecting visitors to their various social networks and using NFC to promote “liking” or “sharing” on Facebook for example, allows the museum to advertise for free and increase interest.
Advertising future exhibits to current visitors while they are at their peak interest and allowing them the easy ability to purchase tickets for these future exhibits is a fantastic way to promote and increase ticket sales.
Other museums around the world would be smart to do the same as the Museum of London, particularly now that more and more phones are NFC enabled and the number of users only continues to expand at leaps and bounds. Clearly as you can see NFC technology is a promising technology that can improve the museum experience, help with advertising and even promote sales, and for only a very small cost.
If you plan on using NFC in the near or distant future though, make sure you are following best practices and using a NFC marketing platform that is self explanatory, easy to use, and helps make sure you are using the technology right.
