| Tiny Billboards, Big Possibilities |
| Monday, 24 February 2003 | |
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Wall Street Journal, 25th February 2003 - Ads on Mobile-Phone Screens Offer Companies a Cheap Way To Reach Buyers, Gather Data. So the mobile phone is becoming a new frontier for advertisers: Companies from Cadbury Schweppes PLC to Bayer AG are experimenting with promotions using text messages, ring tones, downloadable logos, competitions and discount coupons. The tiny, mostly monochromatic screens of the world's 1.1 billion mobile phones might not seem great billboards, but advertising - mainly consisting of short text messages - is fast and simple, ties in well with other outlets such as TV and print, but provides opportunities to track consumer behaviour other media can't reach. "The mobile phone is a very powerful relationship-marketing tool that brands can use to stay in touch with consumers on an ongoing basis," said Lars Becker, chief executive of mobile-marketing company Flytxt in London. Mobile phones have two major advantages. The technology is already in place and is cheap to use. Advertisers can send a text message for a few European cents a consumer, with the chance the recipient will find it engaging enough to forward to friends, which cost the advertiser nothing. Spending on mobile-phone advertising today is negligible, but that doesn't reflect the strong interest in the medium, according to Robert Horler, managing director of Carat Interactive UK, part of media-buying and market research group Aegis PLC. "Clients are either getting heavily discounted or free tests, which they are using to experiment with the mobile channel as a marketing platform," he said. Potential advertisers are understandably cautious. Some agencies and their clients were badly burned by the internet bubble, spending big on a medium that in only now beginning to grow, years behind expectations. Advertisers stumbled in their early attempts to use mobile phones as marketing tools. Those efforts included schemes where consumers were given free phone time if they agreed to listen to ad messages before making their call. But it soon became apparent phone users simply switched off mentally while the advertisement was running. In any case, the offer tended to appeal to the lowest-income phone users, who aren't often advertisers prime targets, said Adam Daum, chief analyst and vice president at research service GartnerG2. Research in Europe shows users will accept as many as four or five mobile-phone text messages a day before finding it irritating, and they will only tolerate ads from advertisers to whom they have given permission, said Carat Interactive's Mr Horler. Mobile-phone users want advertising to deliver time-sensitive information or opportunities for interaction, such as competitions and quizzes. "The thing about the mobile is that it's incredibly personal and incredibly powerful, but if you get it wrong, you can get it very wrong." said Anne de Kerckhove, managing director of mobile-phone advertising agency 12Snap. The firm operates in the UK, Germany and Italy and counts among its clients Cadbury, McDonald's Corp and Interbrew SA, maker of Stella Artois beer. Mobile-phone campaigns appear particularly effective for impulse buys. Confectionery maker Cadbury ran an on-pack promotion with Flytxt in August 2001 that lasted three months. Chocolate buyers were offered the chance to win prizes such as digital videodiscs or cash by responding to a text number printed on 65 million Cadbury's chocolate bars and five million people took part - a response rate of nearly 8%. For Cadbury, the campaign was a chance not only to promote its products but to learn more about consumption habits, such as which types of chocolate are popular in different areas at what time of day people consume different products. That is important data for targeted marketing campaigns Mobile-phone marketing is viewed as ideal for fast-moving consumer goods, especially those aimed at younger consumers, but some campaigns have demonstrated potential beyond that. In Germany, Flytxt is running a service with agrochemicals maker Bayer Crop Science that sends weather alerts by text message to farmers and gives information on airborne bacteria. The messages carry product recommendations and local contact information. The Bayer campaign has proved extremely successful during the year it has been running. Even the most technophobic farmers now carry a mobile phone, and Bayer is looking to widen the service and include more products. Having secured phone users attention with an ad, advertisers next job is to get them to spend some cash. They are doing this with a fresh take on the humble money-off voucher, or coupon. They have been around for decades but have inherent problems - not least of which is that customers might not have the voucher on hand when they have an opportunity to redeem it. The traditional voucher transaction also doesn't provide much of an opportunity to collect data, said Anders Hakfelt, managing director of MindMatics, a mobile-marketing agency that operates in Munich, Bonn and London. The new idea is to beam a discount voucher to a phone as a text message. MindMatic's equipment, installed at the point of sale in retail outlets, scans the phone's screen to ensure a voucher is redeemed only once. The advertiser can identify which customer has exchanged a voucher, which helps build a more accurate database. The system has been used by German casual-clothing retailer S.Oliver, and MindMatics is not marketing it elsewhere in Europe. Marketing is moving more and more toward customer-relationship management, Flytxt's Mr Becker said. "We think the mobile medium fits right there and might even become the driving force," he said. © Copyright Flytxt Ltd 2006. Unauthorized use of any content constitutes a material breach. |
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