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Cell phones may be next big marketing tool
January 17, 2006
Coming to a small screen near you: coupons, recipes and marketing messages galore.
Your cell phone screen is the latest tool for marketers seeking to win over customers, especially 18- to 36-year-olds.
Polls for TV programs, including “American Idol” and the Super Bowl, are the best-known form of this marketing. Customers dial a five-digit code and key in a short text message.
Consumer product companies, retailers, rock bands and radio stations also are using codes and text messages to cement their relationships with customers. Marketers use codes to sell cell phone content — ringtones, screen savers, wallpaper and text alerts — related to topics such as sports or name brands.
The cell phone industry began offering the codes two years ago as a way for marketers to interact with customers who use text messaging.
In the first year, 150 companies licensed more than 450 five-digit codes. Last year, the number of codes issued grew by a factor of six, according to CTIA-the Wireless Association, which licenses them through a Web site, www.usshortcodes.com.
Customers who take the trouble to key in a code tend to be more interested in, and more likely to buy, products than people passively viewing a commercial or print ad, said John Styers, director of data communications services for Sprint Nextel Corp.
Advertisers can get immediate feedback on a commercial or ad campaign by including a code.
For example, Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. ran a Bud Light promotion at bars urging customers to use their phones to send messages to screens set up for the evening. It also offers cell phone screen savers and ringtones at Budweiser.com.
The campaign was designed to raise brand awareness among 21- to 28-year-olds in a way that was fun and social, said Rick Leininger, Bud Light brand director. More than 7,000 users sent 80,000 messages during the campaign’s 28-city tour, he said.
Text-to-screen applications, such as the Bud Light promotion, have been popular at rock concerts, where fans can send messages to an electronic board and, in some cases, win prizes.
“Everybody wants to see their name in lights,” said Jack Philbin, president and founder of Vibes Media, a Chicago-based mobile marketing firm that designed the Bud Light campaign.
Mobile marketing helps companies get more mileage out of their marketing dollars, Philbin said: “When people respond to a call to action, that’s real engagement.”
Philbin doesn’t advocate sending unsolicited messages, instead preferring campaigns that prompt customers to dial in, get an entertaining message or teaser and then dial back again and again for more.
“Every single individual gets a customized experience. It breaks through the clutter” of other ads in a way that’s “hip, cool, young and fun,” he said.
The use of text messaging on cell phones “is bigger than most people imagine but not as big as everybody would like,” said Will Hodgman, chief executive of M:Metrics Inc. of Seattle. He formed the company in November 2004 to study messaging so advertisers could measure the potential impact of a campaign.
In the United States, about 200 million people have cell phone service, according to CTIA-the Wireless Association.
About 58 million customers have used text messaging, Hodgman said. In June, cell phone customers sent 7.2 billion messages.
“When advertisers see that kind of market penetration, they start drooling,” said Tamara Gaffney, a mobile industry analyst for Telephia Inc., a San Francisco market research firm.
