Wellington software firm cracks Brazil

A trip to Brazil in 2004 sponsored by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and Positively Wellington Business has finally paid off for interactive advertising company Eyemagnet, which has won a deal to supply its Black Eye software to Sao Paulo bus manufacturer Caio Industries.

Caio will use Eyemagnet's software and WiFi and cellphone networks to upload advertisements to television screens that the bus maker plans to fit in 5500 new bio diesel buses by the end of 2008.

Eyemagnet sales and marketing manager Nick Ratcliffe says that Caio Industries later plans to install GPS transceivers in its buses. The interactive TVs will then be able to show adverts and tourist information based on the location of the bus. The screens could show the bus on a map and display advertisements for shops and restaurants as it passed by them.

Brazilian commuters will be able to text shortcodes displayed on screen to buy products from advertisers, Mr Ratcliffe says.

"If you were advertising shoes, passengers could send a text message to a shortcode and get a voucher for that store on their mobile phone that they could redeem in store. That is the whole Eyemagnet premise, to develop interaction."

The screens will not be retrofitted to all of Caio's 35,000 buses in Sao Paulo, but the deal might grow in size as more of its older buses are replaced. Trade Minister Phil Goff, in Sao Paulo for the signing, said it had the potential to be worth millions of dollars.

Eyemagnet employs 10 staff in Wellington and Auckland and has previously supplied its interactive advertising software to Telecom for use in its retail stores. Last year it won an award in the Australasian Ericsson Mobile World Innovation Awards.

Mr Ratcliffe says a businessman that Eyemagnet met when it joined other Wellington companies on the trip to Brazil in 2004 heard about the work it was doing in New Zealand to promote the launch of Telecom's T3G mobile network and used that to help broker the deal with Caio.

"The size of the opportunity in Brazil is vast, and it is not a market we were particularly focusing on."

- © Fairfax NZ News