Cruise Line Uses Mobile Crowdsourcing for Out-of-home Analytics
- Wednesday, June 29th, 2016
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Switzerland-based cruise line firm MSC Cruises has partnered with mobile crowdsourcing company BeMyEye in order to improve the effectiveness of its out-of-home marketing, using gamification in order to produce data on advert viewability and brand safety.
MSC Cruises has above-the-line marketing and advertising materials in over 9,000 travel agencies throughout Italy, but verifying the effectiveness of these adverts and promotions is almost impossible for a traditional brand or marketing firm.
BeMyEye offers a solution in the form of its crowd of Eyes – smartphone app users who are paid to be real-world data gatherers. Users collect location-specific data through gamified tasks, and the insights they generate empower companies to see thousands of locations in just a few days.
In the case of MSC Cruises, users captured images of shop windows which should be displaying MSC Cruise posters through the mobile app, along with information on whether competing brands were displayed next to them. With 90 per cent of the companys business coming through travel agents, the company hoped that the insights would enable it to drive additional sales opportunities through these partners.
The initial results from Italy revealed that 30 per cent of the travel agents that MSC Cruises was distributing catalogues to were actually failing to display them. This crowdsourced information enabled the company to negotiate better partnerships with these travel agents, as well as providing valuable analytic data that enabled the firm to improve its trade marketing activities.
“Before working with BeMyEye, brochures, posters and point of purchase displays were regularly sent to our travel agent partners regardless of their location, footfall and window size to help publicise MSC Cruises,” said Andrea Guanci, marketing director at MSC Cruises. “However, we had no way of knowing that they were being displayed in every store and, in fact, whether they could be displayed, due to window space for instance.”
“Any brand that has relationships with external partners in the real-world needs to be able to verify and trust that its brand is being maintained correctly,” said Luca Antonietti, CEO of BeMyEye Italy and chief operating officer of BeMyEye Global.
“Through the crowd, businesses can leverage peoples talent, time and locations to gain unique, real-time local insights that will allow them to measure this, as well as grow sales, spot new market opportunities and significantly reduce costs.”
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