Mobile Marketing Leaders Since 1998
Press
Text Markets
August 16, 2006
Quarters are getting cramped at Vibes Media’s West Loop office. There is no waiting area, and employees sit clustered together, hunched over their desks.
“We have people spilling almost into the hallways,” said Alex Campbell, co-founder and CEO of the mobile communications marketing firm. Privately held Vibes offers a range of products, including iRadio, an application that allows DJ’s to interact with listeners via text-messaging, and Text-2-Screen, a service that displays fans’ text messages on screens at sporting events and concerts.
“Right now we’re hiring people for everything,” he said. “Three new people started today.”
The eight-year-old company has grown rapidly since moving last spring to new headquarters at 205 W. Wacker Dr.
In the past year, Vibes doubled its revenues and added 28 employees to a 12-person staff. Campbell estimated revenues of $6 million for 2006, up from $3 million last year.
Its primary customers are wireless carriers, media companies, and consumer goods firms. Among them: Chicago-based United States Cellular Corp., Schaumburg-based Motorola, Oak Brook-based McDonalds Corp., the Backstreet Boys, and the Chicago Bulls, Cubs, and White Sox.
In June, Vibes and New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. launched a choose-your-own-adventure text messaging game to promote “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
Campbell attributes the company’s success to its narrow focus on the mobile text-messaging market.
“We’re a full-service house,” he said. “A lot of our competitors focus on either delivering messages or coming up with creative-we do both.”
But things weren’t always so rosy.
In 1998, Campbell launched the company with co-founder Jack Philbin out of a one-bedroom apartment in Lakeview. Initially the childhood friends had trouble convincing salespeople that mobile text messaging would catch on in the United States.
And after wireless companies introduced text messaging plans, the service gained popularity primarily among younger users.
“A lot of the people who were making the decisions weren’t using text messaging,” Campbell said. “They would ask, ’Why would I send a text message?’ ”
But thanks to the rising popularity of text messages and an industrywide move to new media advertising, Campbell gets e-mails from two or three venture capitalists a day. Until recently Campbell and Philbin never considered accepting outside investments.
“I saw the dot-com bubble go up and down,” Campbell said. “It didn’t affect us because we concentrated on revenue. If you have revenue, you have an actual business.”
Campbell said the company could now benefit from expansion capital. “But we don’t need it,” he added. “We’ve been profitable for the last four years.”
Last month CBS Corp. introduced iRadio technology at 25 radio stations around the country, including WSCR-AM, WBBM-FM, and WCKG-FM in Chicago.
For Verizon’s Pirates of the Caribbean game, Vibes wrote a choose-your-own-adventure script involving characters in the movie. Subscribers play the game by using text messages to choose various plot scenarios.
“It really generates excitement about the film,” said Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon.
Nelson described Vibes as a “gold star company-not just in terms of implementation but also in terms of measured success.”
