Mobile Marketing Leaders Since 1998
Press
Good Vibrations
April, 2009
The mobile marketers at Vibes Media are on the cutting edge of a fast-growing filed—text your friends about it.
Ten years after starting Vibes Media—a marketing firm that connects companies to their customers via wireless devices-in their Wrigleyville one-bedroom apartment, Alex Campbell and Jack Philbin still insist on sharing an office. “We do it for communication’s sake,” Campbell says. Understandable—these two have a lot to talk about.
The thirtysomething business partners—who, since elementary school in New Canaan, Connecticut, have schemed up several enterprises, including a car wash and a can-crushing company—landed their mobile marketing startup on the 2007 Inc.com “Inc. 500” list of the fastest-growing private companies. And last year, Vibes raised $15 million from Boston-based Fidelity Ventures. While most businesses are cutting back in today’s nervous economy, the nearly 100 employees who punch in at Vibes’ 205 West Wacker Drive address are in attack mode.
“For a growing, small company, cash is oxygen,” explains Philbin. “Nobody has significant market share in mobile media, so now is the time for us to double down and go for it.”
Research firm eMarket predicts mobile marketing will be a $19 billion industry by 2012. Disney, Intel and Coca-Cola are among the scores of major brands that use Vibes’ services to better reach their customers via cell phones and other mobile devices. In all, Vibes has launched more than 50,000 mobile marketing programs.
As the stakes continue to rise, Campbell and Philbin understand they can no longer be personally involved in every detail. They now focus on recruiting top talent—Vibes just hired a CFO with experience selling startups to Google and Yahoo!—and staying ahead of the technological curve.
“Every month there’s a new product or application that can revolutionize our industry,” Campbell says. “By bringing in the right people, we can now spend our time thinking about what the iPhone or [Google’s] Android means to us.” Sounds like these guys mean business. And business is good.