New Stories on Mobile Marketing

Companies are starting to use mobiles not only as channels of coupon delivery, but also as instruments for building memory and involvement towards product categories and specific brands. On this post please feel free to post new stories related to mobile text campaigns, mobile internet use, couponing, advertising, research, targeted user segments, etc.

How can Mobile Marketers make a difference?

All media moguls are claiming that mobile is just "another" new media which promotes similar advertising content as TV, Internet, Billboards, etc. After all, all the text and visuals you can promote on small screens you can also promote on large screens. If you had to raise an objection, how would you distinguish mobile advertising as different?

SMS Personality

Do you imagine the personality of a sender based on the content of the message sent to you? This is becoming an interesting question for brands today. Marketing managers want to know whether sending text messages to promote their product can distort brand images they have built over the decade. Lets say, the marketing manager of Rolex decides to do a mobile marketing campaign by sending the message "Buy Rolex INO at your nearest Rolex outlet; with a special price: offer lasts till 10/31/2009". Question: 1) Does this text ad form any specific impression about the brands personality on your mind?

2) What aspects of the text message indicate something about the brand's personality? Please elaborate.

3) If you were to imagine the appearance of a person based on the message you received, and you were an artist, what kind of a picture would you draw to accurately depict this unknown person?

How can Mobile Commerce Help tackle crime in the State of Michigan?

We all know about the profit companies make from mobile marketing programs. But can mobile instruments, advertisements, information, updates, etc serve a greater social cause? Lets come up with some open ideas on how potential mobile applications can help reduce crime in the state of Michigan, which is one of the toppers in crime indices in the USA.

Usefulness of Mobile Marketing to Consumers

Mobile marketing offers a unique competency of being able to reach consumers just in time , in different locations and in a personalized manner. As a consumer, in which product/service category would you find these applications (mobile texts, coupons or ads) most useful and why? Give one example only, such as (music, or car, etc)and elaborate why timing/location/personalization is so important for you in that context.

Invite Comments and Articles on Mobile Marketing

What are the opportunities and threats of Mobile Marketing? What industries are likely to find it useful?

Have you been Tagged?

Have you lately been to a Dairy Queen outlet? DQ has been connecting to customers on the go through mobile interfaces. Mobiles seem the best way to reach fast food customers as they are "on the road". The company working out the operations is Tetherball, a midwestern Mobile Marketing Firm. Tetherball helps clients "tether" their brand to target audiences by identifying what their customers want and delivering mobile campaigns that interact with the ultimate call to action through permission based mobile coupons, mobile rewards, mobile sweepstakes and mobile notifications.

Integrating traditional marketing methods such as in‐store advertising, customers are engaged to sign up for mobile loyalty rewards programs offering promotional discounts. Upon joining, customers are given a Tetherball Tag™, a tiny RFID chip that is easily affixed to their mobile phones, which uniquely identifies them through Tetherball’s sophisticated technology platform. Tetherball clients are then able to send offers to their customers via standard text messaging. Offers are redeemed electronically using existing in‐store RFID point of sale terminals or stand‐alone RFID kiosks provided by Tetherball.

Other than Fast Food, which other industry will benefit from this form of direct marketing? Any ideas?

Networking On The Go

How different would your social networking activities be if you were sitting in a classroom during a lecture? Sounds odd? Not at all. The last February 2009 report estimates over 4 million daily active users of Facebook, and marketers have absolutely no clue about what kind of physical locations or situations these users are in when they are using the application. So to marketers who are looking at millions of online users data these individuals appear just the same as other internet users, but in reality these "mobile users" behavior is also affected by the nature of their immediate physical situations. So marketers, the next time you design stimuli for "online" customers, think again about how the "mobile online"population will react.