Precision Dynamics’ Smart Band(R) RFID Wristbands for Cashless Point-of-Sale

Following a successful trial last season, Hersheypark* deployed a fully integrated cashless point-of-sale (POS) system using PDC Smart Band(R) RFID wristbands on opening day, May 4, 2012. The new RFID cashless POS system is safe, convenient, and user-friendly. Guests use their Smart Band(R) RFID wristband to make in-park purchases, check balances, and load additional funds onto their wristband at any of the park’s 200 RFID-enabled POS stations. Since Smart Band(R) RFID wristbands are waterproof, guests can use them in both dry park and water park areas. 

Greg Cetera, RFID manager for Precision Dynamics Corporation, points out that, “RFID capabilities are already built into most POS software systems, so the conversion is seamless and cost-effective. The convenience factor for guests is a huge bonus since they no longer have to carry cash or access their locker for money to make purchases. Faster transactions and shorter lines equate to increased efficiency and time savings for guests, and greater ROI for the park.” 

The cashless POS system is an expansion to Hershey’s embracement of RFID technology. Four years ago, Hersheypark* implemented RFID enabled lockers which guests access using PDC Smart Band(R) RFID wristbands. Based on the success of the current RFID installations, additional applications are being reviewed for use in the future. 

Since the first SmartBand(R) RFID wristband installation over a decade ago, PDC’s RFID technology has helped many theme parks across the nation deliver a better guest experience while reaping significant bottom line benefits. Proven RFID wristband applications include social media integration, cashless payments, keyless lockers, electronic access control, photo management systems, and customer loyalty programs. In addition to Smart Band(R) wristbands, other innovative PDC RFID Solutions include PDC Smart(R) Cards, Key Fobs, Lanyards, and Parking Passes. For more information, visit http://www.pdcorp.com/rfid . 

Hersheypark (known as Hershey Park until 1970) is a family theme park situated in Hershey, Derry Township, Pennsylvania, United States

About Precision Dynamics Corporation

With over 50 years of experience, PDC is the global leader and pacesetter in the development of wristband and label systems for healthcare, leisure and entertainment, and law enforcement. The company introduced the first patient bar code ID wristband, patented Smart Band(R) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) wristbands, and the award winning PDC Smart(R) Kiosk. PDC is committed to 100% quality in service, design, and manufacturing and complies with ISO-9001 standards (Organization for International Standards). 

*Used under license by Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company.

Send Short Messages with Wristbands

Text Bands — a new product that encourages kids to connect face to face while using an interactive wristband.  To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hallmark-bumps-the-trend-with-new-kid-product-text-bands-163246116.html

First-of-its-kind Text Bands allow kids to swap messages by bumping fists or shaking hands. Recently, thousands of kids and celebrities, including Cody Simpson and Demi Lovato, have bumped fists and traded messages at Hallmark Text Bands launch parties. Starting today, everyone can participate in the Text Bands action. Text Bands are available for $14.99 at Hallmark Gold Crown^® stores nationwide.

“In this world of behind-the-screen communication, we wanted to give kids a new fun way to connect face to face and express themselves,” said Dan Woodall, Hallmark Product Manager. “In Hallmark focus groups and at Text Bands launch parties, kids have been enthusiastic about Text Bands. We are excited Text Bands now are in stores so everyone will have a chance to experience this new way to connect.”

How Text Bands Work
Text Bands starter kits feature a purple or charcoal-colored Text Band, complete with a texting module and style band. Kids enter up to 10 characters into the screen and, when they see a friend wearing a Text Band, they connect by bumping fists or shaking hands. The bands will light up, and the message transfers from band to band. A bad-word filter built into the Text Band helps ensure kids send positive messages. Text Bands hold up to 24 messages at a time — the newest messages push out the oldest — giving kids the perfect excuse to connect with their friends again and again.

Text Bands Style
Hallmark also offers style bands, giving kids an opportunity to showcase their style. Style bands feature various designs, including Peace Graffiti, Camo Breeze and characters, such as Minnie Mouse, and retail for $4.99 each.

“With eight style bands to choose from, kids can change their Text Bands to match their outfits or moods for the day,” said Dan Woodall, Hallmark Product Manager. “Additional style band designs, including one featuring teen pop sensation Cody Simpson, will be introduced throughout 2012.”

The Power of Positivity
Before using Text Bands, kids are encouraged to recite the “Text Bands Oath” and promise to use their band for positive communication and friendship. Teen stars, including Demi Lovato and Cody Simpson, led fans in the Text Bands Oath this summer at Hallmark Text Bands launch parties. Other celebrities who attended Text Bands debut events included Ariel Winter (“Modern Family”), Kendall and Kylie Kardashian (“Keeping Up the Kardashians”) and Kelli Goss (“Big Time Rush”).

What Others Are Saying About Text Bands

• “You can show people who you are through the use of your Text Band.” — Kenton Duty, actor from “Shake It Up!”
• “I wish I had these [Text Bands] in middle school, because it’s much easier to ask a girl out with this.” — Cody Simpson, teen singing sensation
• “If I could bump fists with all my fans with a Text Band, I would say ‘URLoved’.” — Tiffany Thornton, star of “Sonny with a Chance” and “So Random!”
• “I love these things [Text Bands]. I’m going to be wearing this all the time now.” — Cole Pendery, singer, IM5

Article was quoted from Sacramento Bee

Social Media Success Story: How Bonnaroo Used Wristbands to Foster Massive Engagement

As the 80,000 attendees at this year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival celebrated on a Tennessee farm June 7-10, news of their daily activities was posting to Facebook, creating nearly 1.5 million social impressions. But the attendees weren’t pulling out their smartphones to connect to Facebook; instead they were swiping wristbands with radio frequency identification (R.F.I.D.) technology at one of 20 check-in portals around the 700-acre venue.

Of the 80,000 people who purchased wristbands (which served as the only form of ticket to the festival), 74,000 registered them online and about half of those people connected the wristbands to their Facebook accounts. Those people swiped their wristbands more than 200,000 times, generating check-ins on Facebook that allowed their online friends to see what they were doing at Bonnaroo. Issaq said on average each of those 200,000 check-ins received about seven “likes” or comments, leading to the calculation of 1.5 million social impressions.

Bonnaroo also used R.F.I.D. wristbands from Intellitix in 2011, but this was the first year of the Facebook integration. In the weeks leading up to the festival, organizers encouraged guests to register their wristband online, offering incentives such as V.I.P. upgrades and festival merchandise and the chance to win a Ford Escape from Ford Motor Company, which sponsored the social check-ins.

“We also drove home the message of registration as a way to personalize your wristband,” Issaq said. “We didn’t want to focus on ‘register’; it was ‘personalize.'” The registration allowed Superfly to stem counterfeits and also provided security for guests. “We pointed out that if you lose your wristband, we have proof it was associated to you,” he said.

About 55,000 individuals opted in for a chance to win the car and another 10,000 agreed to receive future communications from Ford. In addition to that data, the auto company benefited from having its name associated with each Facebook check-in: the online posts included a graphic saying “Checked in by Ford Escape.”

“No other festival had really tapped into the technology of R.F.I.D. in such a broad social reach,” said Ginger Kasanic, Ford’s experiential marketing manager. “This intersection of cool technology and social conversation is the heart of the Escape persona and the perfect platform to connect the Escape to the Bonnaroo audience.”

The focus of Bonnaroo is music, with five stages hosting performances from acts including the Beach Boys to Radiohead to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Organizers placed two R.F.I.D. portals near each stage. Guests who swiped their wristbands got a check-in on their Facebook page indicating the name of the stage and the act that was performing. At the end of the day, the system made a second post to that guest’s Facebook: a recap of all of the acts the person had seen that day with a link to Spotify that provided the act’s Bonnaroo set list and a playlist of studio tracks of those songs.

“I think that was the most valuable piece—the content on the back end,” Issaq said. “That’s what people were most excited about.” Organizers plan to take what they learned this year to develop strategy for 2013. “I would want to communicate earlier,” he added. “We pulled this together in about four or five weeks. I would also want more incentives, more special offers, and at the physical event, more strategically placed portals.”

Article was quoted from BizBash.com

Branding Your Business on Wristbands

Festivals are a fun way to celebrate pretty much anything from food and drink to music and sports. There are strawberry festivals, beer festivals, jazz festivals, X Games—just to name some examples. These festivals build community and provide a safe place for families and people of all ages to have a good time. To ensure guests are having fun, it is important to control access and ensure their safety. One of the goals of many festivals is to generate some revenue, so usually admission is charged. How can you enhance the safety of guests and boost sales at a festival? Festival wristbands can help.

Various Messages in Wristbands for promotions and brands awareness

Festival wristbands serve two important purposes in highly effective ways. First, boosting security so that guests who pay for their ticket get full value and the service they deserve, while keeping intruders at bay. Second, growing sales through an economical marketing strategy that reaches beyond festival guests—touching their friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and even strangers they may pass on the street. 

Many festivals celebrate alcoholic beverages. Beer festivals and wine festivals are quite popular nowadays. If alcohol is being served at a festival, festival wristbands can be used to identify people of legal drinking age. Festival staff can verify guest IDs upon entrance into the festival. A festival wristband imprinted with the words “Over 21” can be fastened to the wrist of guests who are of legal age to drink. This really speeds up service and guest satisfaction. Servers can quickly identify who they can serve alcohol to without rechecking IDs each time. People who do not have to wait in long lines are more likely to come back for more. Quicker moving lines means increased sales.

Festivals oftentimes are host to special events or exclusive shows, which are scheduled within the duration of the festival and entail the purchase of an additional, separate ticket. It’s critical to identify paid patrons for these special shows. Festival wristbands come in many different colors, so color coding can be used to indicate and identify different levels of access—general admission, VIPs, staff, volunteers, performers, or other types of guests. Since festival wristbands are brightly colored and highly visible, they make it easy for staff to identify authorized persons and remove anyone from the premises who isn’t permitted. Colors can also be used to indicate different festival dates or days. Maybe green festival wristbands are distributed on Friday and yellow festival wristbands are distributed on Saturday.

Beyond colors, festival wristbands can be customized by imprinting a logo or tagline to make them more unique; doing so helps prevent counterfeiters and gate crashers from gaining access to a festival. Some people think they can get away with purchasing stock wristbands from a party store and sneaking in for free. Custom festival wristbands won’t let that happen. They are the perfect assistant for security staff. 

Bright Colors work well to enhance branding messages

In addition to assisting with security, customized festival wristbands assist with promoting your festival’s brand. Besides your logo and tagline, you can also include the festival dates and sponsors’ logos on festival wristbands. 

Sponsorships are a great way to cover the cost of your festival wristband program. In fact, you might even be able to make a profit. You can sell advertising space to sponsors and do promotions. Maybe a new Italian restaurant has a booth set up at your festival. You could imprint a coupon right on the festival wristband beneath their logo, like “Stop by our booth, get a free scoop of gelato!”

Along the lines of promotion and branding, if you want to increase attendance as the weekend moves along, create some buzz via social media. You can imprint either a website address, QR (quick response) code or both onto festival wristbands. People can post photos of the fun their having at the festival and “check in” or post encouraging friends and followers to join in on the festivities. You create a QR code could that leads people to an invitation to come back to the festival tomorrow night. Encourage them with a bit of incentive: “Bring a friend, get in free!” QR codes have a way of engaging people and encouraging them to take action. 

Festival wristbands offer a multitude of ways to provide a safe environment and grow sales. When customized with a cool design, logo or tagline, people tend to wear them even after they’ve festival grounds. Festival wristbands become conversation starters, providing guests the opportunity to encourage friends and family to attend your fun-filled festival.

Using Wristbands as Entrance Tickets

Wearable Wristbands work well for patron identification

Most events these days require and admissions ticket. Traditional tickets have a sole purpose: getting the paid customer into the event. Seems a bit wasteful, doesn’t it? Admission wristbands are a popular substitute for tickets. Aside from their simplicity, admission wristbands have multiple uses and benefits. 

They serve as a highly effective identification tool—assisting with crowd control. Admission wristbands can help events run more efficiently and increase profits. They can also grow brand awareness. As an added bonus, admission wristbands fit securely around the wrist, which prevents them from becoming lost. 

With admission wristbands, crowd control is made easy. Admission wristbands enable staff to spot uninvited guests by just glancing at the wrist. Nobody wants party crashers to pop in and mooch food and drink from all the guests who actually paid. For large events, there may be different levels of access, including general admission, VIPs, staff, volunteers, performers, or other special groups of guests. Admission wristbands come in a wide variety of colors, so color coding can be used to differentiate the various access levels. 

Another way to put color coding to use is when an event is spread across multiple days and each day requires separate admission payments. By assigning certain colors to certain days, such as Thursday is red admission wristbands and Friday is blue, security can identify any guest that attempts to re-use their one day pass from one day to another. 

To further distinguish access levels, you can custom imprint text onto admission wristbands, such as “VIP” or “STAFF”. You can also imprint admission dates. Perhaps a popular singer is performing at the event. To see the performance, guests had to purchase separate concert tickets. Maybe some of those attending won back stage passes. Any guest who paid for the concert or won tickets could be given an admission wristband of a specific color with the date of the concert imprinted on it. Those guests with backstage passes would get the same admission wristband with one differentiating factor: it is imprinted with “VIP”. Same goes for staff, who would wear admission wristbands imprinted with “STAFF”. By making these designations with admission wristbands, security and other staff can quickly and easily identify whether someone is a welcome guest or staff member and ensure they are where they are permitted to be. 

If alcohol is being served at your event, admission wristbands can again help control access, but may also help boost sales. Staff can check IDs to verify age upon guest entry. If guests are of legal drinking age, they receive an admission wristband imprinted with “Over 21”. When wait staff is relieved of the duty of checking IDs for every drink ordered, a tremendous amount of time is saved. Guests don’t have to dig through their wallets each time they order a drink. Lines move faster. When people do not have to wait in line, they are more apt to go back and order more. Quicker service leads to increased spending, which, in turn, leads to increased profits. 

Just as you can imprint “VIP” and “Over 21” on admission wristbands, you can also imprint logos and taglines on admission wristbands. Admission wristbands become a walking mini advertisement. If the design imprinted on the admission wristband is cool and guests have a great time at the event, then they are likely to continue wearing the wristband for several days afterward. They are sure to catch they eyes of all sorts of people—co-workers, workout buddies, neighbors, family, friends. Curiosity will strike and lots of questions are likely to be asked. 

If you want to cover the costs of admission wristbands—or maybe even make a profit—sponsorships can do the trick. You are essentially selling advertising space—directly on the wrist of their target market. Imprint sponsor logos, coupons and promotions; encourage people to take action: “Stop by. Show us your wristband. Get 20% off $50 purchase.” You can also imprint quick response (QR) codes. Maybe scanning the code with a smartphone takes guests to the sponsor’s Facebook page—or the event’s Facebook page—and they are invited to “like” to start receiving exclusive discounts or invitations to future events. Both imprinted coupons and QR codes are effective ways that admissionwristbands can help build the brand and grow profits.

Admission wristbands are such a simple idea with multiple uses and benefits from a whole lot of angles. Whether you need to boost security, efficiency, profits, brand awareness, or just want to add a bit of fun to an event, admission wristbands have you covered.