Mobile Marketing Leaders Since 1998
Press
Marketers Merge SMS, Mass Media
January 29, 2004
Wireless text messaging has already proved itself an impressive tool for marketing. Now, mobile ad firms Vibes Media and Enpocket are breaking new ground in leveraging the technology in connection with radio and television promotions.
Five-year-old Vibes Media is an old hand at merging traditional and new media. The firm cut its teeth on promotions centered around wireless pagers and similar devices; in recent years, it’s made a name for itself with text messaging -- also known as Short Messaging Service, or SMS.
The firm has launched wireless marketing efforts on behalf of advertisers at concerts, fairs, sports games, and other outdoor and indoor events -- enabling audience members can send a text message to a number or short code in response to a contest or trivia call-to-action.
Most recently, the company worked with Minneapolis radio station KTTB/B96, “The Beat of the Twin Cities,” to integrate text messaging and radio. Vibes set up a Web interface enabling Disc Jockeys to distribute wireless sweepstakes promotions, which reprised the typical “call-in-and-win” scenario -- in which audience members phone the station and attempt to be the tenth caller to win concert tickets -- with SMS replacing telephone calls.
The effort proved successful, but more importantly, it opened the floodgates for wider, regular contact between listeners and DJs.
“What it turned into is this: people would find out that they didn’t win, but they’d keep sending in messages to the DJ,” said Alex Campbell, chief executive of Evanston, Ill.-based Vibes Media. “It turned into this huge thing where everyone wanted to talk to [DJ] Tone E. Fly. They did it all through text messaging.”
The thought is that the technology -- which Vibes markets as its iRadio Platform -- proved so effective because it leverages the benefits of both radio and wireless communications.
“It’s a great fit,” Campbell said. “Usually, when you’re listening to the radio, you’re not near the computer -- so you’re limited in the ways you can interact with that radio station. When you try to call in for a promotion, everyone thinks they’ll get a busy signal -- which they do.”
Meanwhile, on-air talent gets to better connect with fans.
“I love the live nature of the interaction with my listeners,” said B96’s Fly, in a statement. “Vibes’ iRadio platform allows me to read incoming messages from listeners in real-time and choose who I want give a shout-out to on-air. I can even send my own personal messages right back to people.”
Translating the tried-and-true “Be the Tenth Caller and Win” contests to wireless brings about important improvements to the model, Campbell said. For instance, players can receive individualized confirmations of their participation.
“When [listeners] hear, ’Hey, be the 25th person to send a text message to win tickets to Nelly,’ they can get a confirmation that they were the first person,” he said. “We send, ’You were number one, keep trying’ ... until the 26th person, when we can send back ’You just missed it.’ The ability to customize every one of those answers from a radio perspective is huge --- the only other way to do that is have a DJ pick up the phone and talk to people. This allows everyone to participate in a promotion.”
Enpocket and “Todd TV”
New York-based Enpocket, meanwhile, is overseeing an effort to merge SMS with reality television, in partnership with “Todd TV” on Fox Television’s FX Network.
The gist of the show is that television cameras follow around an average fellow -- the program’s namesake -- and viewers get to make decisions that determine his actions. The show’s producer, Endermol USA, and its official wireless sponsor, T-Mobile, turned to Enpocket to ensure that viewers’ experiences are tightly bound into the program.
The marriage between the fads of wireless messaging and reality television isn’t new -- starting in the U.S. most notably with SMS support for voting at the end of televised contests like “American Idol.” But Enpocket, which has done several campaigns in the past with each Endermol and Fox, is bringing a few novel elements to the table.
Most notably, the firm’s “Live Direction” offering enables instant audience interaction via wireless messaging -- interaction that changes the flow of the show. During the broadcast, T-Mobile subscribers who have opted-in will receive questions asking for advice on what Todd should do next.
“At the end of a show, you can ask someone a question ... that’s a pretty standard thing, we’ve done that,” said Enpocket Chief Executive Jonathon Linner. “But we’ve been able to change what’s happening with the TV show, with real events happening ... This is a big difference in the way that TV will be made in the future, and in and viewers’ involvement in the show.”
Similarly, Enpocket also is enabling T-Mobile wireless customers to receive messages from the main character, in near-real-time, during the show’s broadcast.
“As Todd goes through life, Todd’s personal thoughts can be distributed to you as they’re going on,” Linner said. “Say he meets an old girlfriend on the street. We can send a message to your phone that says, ’She was the worst girlfriend ever, this is a nightmare,’ that kind of thing. Every time certain events happen, this synchronization happens. You have ability to see what’s happening on the show, and that allows you to have better insight into what’s going on.”
Enpocket’s major contribution to both processes is ensuring that messages are delivered quickly and on-schedule.
“The really difficult part is making sure the timing is exact, and you’re managing the right time zone,” Linner said. “The message has to hit when it’s relevant on the screen, not 10 minutes earlier, 10 minutes late or three hours too early for audiences in the California time zone.”
Enpocket also is providing SMS alerts informing the audience of what’s happening between shows -- and, ideally, encouraging recipients to tune in.
The work with FX, Endermol, and T-Mobile comes at the same time as Enpocket is working to extend its wireless marketing capabilities through an acquisition. The firm closed this month on the purchase of Finnish mobile marketing software company Mobicus, in a bid to beef up its technology.
Helsinki-based Mobicus develops and provides carrier-grade SMS, MMS and Java mobile marketing software, serving clients in Europe, the Middle East and North America -- including Enpocket and several of its competitors.
“This was for us a really great opportunity,” Linner said. “They’re one of those companies in the mobile marketing space that’s reasonably unknown but an incredibly important part of a lot of the things we see happening. They provide the technology behind some of the biggest and most interesting mobile marketing events we’ve seen happen.”
Elements of the Mobicus software have been used in the Enpocket Engine for the past two years, while companies like Radiolinja, Orange France subsidiary Mobile & Permission, Mobileway, Future Communications and Sonera Zed have also relied on the technology for their campaigns.
Linner said Enpocket decided to acquire Mobicus to provide soup-to-nuts services for clients.
“What [clients] were really asking for was a merger of what both companies had,” he said. “We’re [now] able to offer some advanced technology that we couldn’t before ... and [for Mobicus clients] we offer a number of things, from profiling to predictive modeling, and we have more experience in actually executing campaigns and running those.”
