Invisible Infrastructure, by Brand

If you visit Southern Cross Station at the moment (as I do a few times a week) you will see ANZ billboards and banners all over the place. What you might not notice straight away is that they have also blanketed the area with free wifi – providing this invisible infrastructure that people will only notice if they are looking for a connection.

invisiblecity Invisible Infrastructure, by Brand

Melbourne’s Magnation also comes to mind as a nice place to work for a little while with a coffee on Third Floor – while making use of their free wifi and saying hi to them as @mag_nation on Twitter of course. If I’m at a community event without established wifi I often share my 3g as “Yabble.com.au” – sharing the web love and most likely getting substantial branding returns from it. Brand sponsored wifi can be a very powerful medium for a remarkably reasonable cost.

When you can assume the space has this web infrastructure as standard, many quite interesting things become possible. I just sat down at Crema and they have Cafescreen wifi and also the plasma display that shows ads and news and things. The two sponsors I saw were The Age, Myer and ANZ. When you login to the hotspot, named “ANZ_Sponsored_Wifi_By_Cafescreen”, you see a splash login page that has The Age headlines – a practical nice touch – and as soon as you accept the T&C you get redirected to ANZ’s new brand webpage. ANZ are doing an amazing job of integrating their offline billboards with these virtual ones, and enough for me to notice it (proximity + repetition = win!)

I am excited by the potential for these connected displays though – they are hyperlocal billboards just waiting to show local information! The Crema display cycled through a TramTracker screen for the local tram stop, and is an obvious space to show the venue’s Foursquare leaderboard (and Mayor!)

nodecity Invisible Infrastructure, by Brand

If you run a business in a location that has a reasonable amount of traffic you should really consider providing some of this Invisible Infrastructure for your patrons.

Ask NodeCity if you need a hand setting it up!

By Ross Hill - November 24th, 2009 at 4:47pm with 407 views -

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  • I noticed restaurants in Battambang, Cambodia recently using free wifi to lure tourists yearning to hear from their friends and family. This, in an environment where it's not as easy to this set up as it is in Australia
    I'd be thinking that if you want this strategy to have an effect here, you're going to be wanting to be one of the earlier players while it's still a point of difference.
    Is there value is making invisible discount offers to pique a curiousity that can only be filled by turning up and logging in?
  • Perhaps the free wifi can itself be considered the offer?
  • Sure, but the point I'm making is that as it becomes ubiquitous (either many venues have it, or everyone gets cheap mobile data), its value will diminish as the point of difference.

    Somewhat related, saw this yesterday at docklands after running into the artist. Wifi enabled sculpture you engage with using an iPhone app. http://iconica.org/colony/ I went to that location specifically to see the sculpture, although couldn't get the thing to work.
  • Oh wow - that's a pretty awesome looking installation!

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