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Arizona entrepreneur discovers kiosks' marketing prowess

Donna Collamer discovered a niche providing interactive kiosks for Arizona businesses. After nearly a decade, she recently retired from active duty to spend more time with her family, but her tenure at Kioskom Concierge Kiosks offers a case study in kiosk entrepreneurship.

Donna Collamer placed one of her kiosks at Chase Field in Phoenix.

April 10, 2019 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

With no background in interactive customer experience, Donna Collamer established a network of 24 kiosks that provided directories, banner advertising, text messaging and other types of content. She placed the kiosks in high traffic locations such as hotels and chambers of commerce in Arizona, and sold advertising to restaurants, retailers, tourist attractions and other businesses.

Kiosks were placed in Arizona hotels.

Collamer recently retired from active duty to spend more time with her family, but her tenure at Kiokom Concierge Kiosks, which she launched in 2009, offers a case study in kiosk entrepreneurship.

After a career in real estate, Collamer went to work in 1994 as an events marketing coordinator for a company that sold timeshares, Shell Vacations Club, which is now owned by Wyndham Destinations. She took a creative approach to her role there from the get-go.

Where timeshares traditionally relied on telemarketing to find customers, she set up exhibits at sporting events, movie theaters and zoos to invite passersby to attend timeshare sales seminars. She organized drawings to allow people to win prizes in exchange for attending a seminar. She said she pioneered what is now a common form of timeshare seminar marketing.

The idea takes shape

Collamer first became aware of the marketing potential of interactive kiosks while attending a timeshare industry convention. There was a kiosk at the convention advertising pharmaceuticals.

She thought kiosks offered a great way to market timeshares. While she had been able to promote timeshare seminars in various public places, she was having a hard time getting permission to promote them in performing arts theaters. She believed performing arts theaters would not object to having an unattended kiosk on its premises.

Her management, however, didn't buy into it.

But that didn't stop her. The more she thought about it, the more she believed kiosks could successfully market products and services in a variety of locations.

"I had the idea of putting them in hotels," she said. Hotels at the time were laying off concierges. "It took the place of a concierge," she said.

Taking the plunge

Collamer left Shell Vacations Club in 2009 to create a digital concierge service to allow hotel guests in Arizona to learn about special events on a touchscreen kiosk. "I left (Shell Vacations Club) because I had this idea," she said. Once the kiosks were installed in hotels, she believed she could sell advertising to companies who wanted to reach hotel guests, such as retailers, restaurants and tourist attractions.

"The income would be unlimited because the space is unlimited on kiosks," she said.

She contacted a kiosk manufacturer — Phoenix Kiosk, which Slabbkiosks acquired in 2017 — to develop the software to promote tourist attractions in hotel lobbies. Phoenix Kiosk informed her that they had already developed a similar program for the Sedona Chamber of Commerce, which was using kiosks to showcase its members to visitors.

Collamer ended up leasing the kiosk software from the chamber, and she was able to create her own content.

"They (advertisers) could log in and change their information any time they wanted," she said. The software could also allow advertisers to see how many clicks they got on their ads.

This marked the birth of her company, Kiokom Concierge Kiosks. Collamer eventually purchased 24 touchscreen kiosks made by Friendlyway, a Munich, Germany based kiosk manufacturer.

Chambers of commerce receptive

In the beginning, there were struggles. Hotels were not receptive to having the kiosks.

Fortunately, Arizona chambers of commerce saw the program as a way to promote their members. Collamer knew people at the chambers from sitting on tourism boards, and a total of 13 chambers of commerce became clients.

The chambers placed the kiosks in their own offices and also helped get them into hotels. "It was an additional benefit for their members to be seen visually," she said for the chambers.

Collamer was then able to sell advertising on the kiosks. The advertising feed played on all 24 kiosks in her statewide network.

She sold ads for $50 per month, and paid a percentage of her sales to the chambers. She charged advertisers $100 a month to be in the directory listing, $25 a month for a banner ad on the directory, and $25 a month for having a logo link on the Kiokom website. There was also a text messaging feature advertisers could use.

The locations hosting the kiosks — the hotels, the chambers, etc., — paid $600 a year to have the kiosk and a listing in the directory.

Collamer was able to place some kiosks in visitor centers.

Tourism takes center stage

Eventually, tourism attractions became the biggest advertisers. Collamer has promoted attractions such as Out of Africa Wildlife Park, Arizona Snowbowl, Challenger Space Center, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Grand Canyon Railway and The Arizona Renaissance Festival & Artisan Marketplace.

She also promoted her service on an online video network, OnNowTV webChannel, which gave her advertisers even more visibility. She ran two videos — one that was 50 seconds long and one that was slightly over five minutes — which flashed her advertisers' logos. The OnNowTV service allowed her to see how long each view lasted and the city and state of each viewer. There were more than 100 views in a month.

In year one, she netted $20,000 in sales after investing around $30,000. Sales increased every year until leveling off at $60,000 with around 120 advertisers.

Collamer retired in 2018 and began picking up the kiosks. She is currently looking to sell the kiosks along with the software.

Kiokom Concierge Kiosks provided an exciting final chapter to a successful career in event marketing. It also demonstrates the entrepreneurial opportunities interactive kiosks can provide a creative thinker.