This was my thought as well. I think the workaround is to have the device present itself as a captive portal type of thing, like you might encounter at a Starbucks, so that when the user is prompted to "Sign In" they immediately find the dead drop.

However I haven't actually played with this and don't know if that would work, or if the network would require DNS to function properly.

That's exactly what this project attempts to do. It acts as a captive portal.