LEKOOA innovates with local marketing technologies

The Izarbel start-up is developing applications using “physical internet” technologies, which are particularly used for local marketing campaigns through the use of geolocation beacons.

In May 2017, visitors to Herri Urrats, the annual festival of Basque language schools which attracted 50,000 people to Saint Pée-sur-Nivelle, could access the event programme on their smartphone and receive practical information via a geolocation beacon emitting within the range of around 70 metres using “Bluetooth Low energy”.

To obtain and read this information, visitors to Herri Urrats had no specific application to download but just had to configure their smartphone by activating Bluetooth and the geolocation on Android smartphones.

“The idea was to give visitors to Herri Urrats a new way of accessing the information they needed without having to do any internet searches, without downloading an extra application and avoiding the printing of brochures in order to reduce our eco-footprint” explained Stéphane Kreckelbergh, the creator of this system with his start-up LEKOOA based at the Izarbel Technology Park.

The new company LEKOOA, which specialises in this “physical Internet” technology which allows smartphones to communicate with surrounding objects, has French Tech certification. Its E-Margerapplication, which allows students’ attendance to be confirmed via geolocation, will be introduced at the beginning of the 2017 Christmas term at ESTIA and in other institutions and business colleges.

It was through applying this technology to other uses that Stéphane Kreckelbergh developed a local marketing offer on several levels. So, a restaurant on the Basque coast uses LEKOOA’s services to deliver practical information to its customers on the premises, via a beacon, and can also send them push notifications subsequently, to improve its customer relations. “It’s not intrusive marketing as the customers have already come to the restaurant and have accepted the principle” specified Stéphane Kreckelbergh.

At the beginning of July, he launched the Sengoo platform which combines the principles of the physical Internet and of the more traditional push notification. In shops, public places and cultural venues, the use of geolocation beacons is growing in order to offer new services and the new company LEKOOA is one of the few in the region to position itself in this sector.