Television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz is teaming with Jeff Arnold, creator of WebMD, and Mobeam’s Beep’N Go Android application to bring health information via mobile to in-store shoppers.

By providing helpful health videos and tips while shoppers make their way through store aisles, the partnership builds brand awareness for all parties involved. Through the mobile channel that Beep’N Go provides, Dr. Oz and Mr. Arnold can promote their tips and products at the most appropriate time, which is during customers’ shopping experience.

Increased usage
Now downloaded to over five million devices in the last five months, Mobeam’s Beep’N Go converts the bar codes found on coupons, loyalty cards, and membership cards, stored within Beep’N Go, into beams of light that can be read off any mobile device by in-store scanners.

Patented light scanning technology used in Samsung Galaxy devices that is found in Beep’N Go can mimic any bar code.

Beep’N Go allows users to store their loyalty, gift and membership cards on their smartphones and put away those physical cards. They can also save offers to their loyalty card or take advantage of retailers’ direct coupons. Users can use Beep’N Go to redeem their cards and coupons when shopping.

With the ShareCare health tips platform, co-founded by Dr. Oz and Jeff Arnold of WebMD, the partnership allows shoppers to discover ShareCare videos and team comments that have been approved by Dr. Oz and that highlight the key health benefits of selected products.

The feature went live yesterday.

Leveraging mobile
Brands are leveraging mobile coupon capabilities to widen their reach to consumers.

For example, SC Johnson and Naked Juice are two of the brands leveraging Shopmium, an interactive mobile coupon experience developed to save consumers money for no charge.

Shopmium, developed by a French company, has been live in Europe for the past three years, and recently launched in the United States for the Android and iOS markets. The application offers new discounts each week and cash-back offers after a user takes a photo of their receipt or scans the product bar code (see story).

Also, consumer-packaged goods companies Unilever, Kellogg’s, Johnson & Johnson, Mondelez, SC Johnson, General Mills and Heinz are some that have aided couponing mobile application Checkout 51 in its milestone of obtaining two million users, showing the momentum of the usage of mobile coupons.

Given the app’s personalization capabilities, Checkout 51 allows its partners to send targeted offers and messages to consumers based on prior purchases. Through receipt data that consumers upload to the app, the combined efforts of the platform and CPG companies can offer relative savings on the products that customers are purchasing most often (see story).

Final Take
Caitlyn Bohannon is an editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York