- DM, The Direct Marketing Magazine,Singapore, November 2004
Upwardly Mobile In Asia
Integrating mobile marketing messages into the mix is the best way
to see results, say Sean Killeen
Another beep, another message. SMS is now so commonplace it's almost impossible to escape those beeps. But using your handphone to receive advertising is a relatively new activity for most mobile phone users.
If you sit in Singapore's busy SMRT or travel by bus these days the chances are that someone beside you or in front of you is texting a friend or playing
a game on their phone, but finding an ad with some kind of text or SMS response mechanism on that same train or bus is far less likely.
The global mobile marketing (m-marketing) industry has increased dramatically over recent months and advertisers are aggressively
exploring the best ways to reach consumers via their mobile phones.
Major advertisers such as HSBC, Coca Cola, Heineken, MacDonald's and
of course the telecoms SMS for quite some time. It is impossible to arrive back from a trip overseas without receiving a beep with a "welcome" message from a service provider.
But m-marketing is much more than welcome messages. Now that mobile phone subscribers have broken the 1.5 billion barrier globally it is anticipated that advertising revenues derived from Mobile Marketing will exceed those of the internet by 2007. This phenomenal growth of subscribers is expected to continue beyond the end of this decade and burst through the 2.5 billion mark by the end of 2010. With China alone expected to account for over 30% of all subscribers in the world, and Indonesia expecting its mobile subscriber base to grow by 25% this year to 28 million it is impossible to ignore the potential of reaching mobile phones users in Asia . SMS traffic is already so popular in countries like The Philippines - residents in Manila are the highest per capita users in the world - that their government has recently announced the likelihood of a special tax on text messages.
So what does this huge growth really mean for advertisers and consumers?
Well for advertisers it certainly presents some new challenges and opportunities. If you aren't already using m-marketing you can guarantee that by this time next year it will be an integral part of every major advertising campaign. But just how can you effectively reach a mobile phone user without "turning them off"?
The first rule is Spam is a big no! Tolerance to mobile Spam is low among consumers and can invite a very aggressive response. A recent article in the Singapore Straits Times called to "Outlaw spam on mobile phones too" highlighted the anger around spam when viewers of Singapore Idol received unsolicited SMS after voting for contestants. And other countries are witnessing similar trends with Europe and Australia heading the charge with tight restrictions on sending unsolicited data over the mobile networks. The reality is that the mobile phone has become the most personal communication device. It has become such a very intimate device that we can't imagine life before it or life without it.
So how can an advertiser reach consumers right in this most personal zones? "Give them something they value" is Suds Sarronwala's Singapore based SoundBuzz. Use the "pull" factor instead of "push" is Domenico Pezzaniti of Mobile Solutions Company, BeepCast.
As the media landscape is constantly changing, advertisers are struggling to reach the "new" consumer. TV has now become so fragmented that it can no longer be described as a true broadcast medium. And other "traditional" media such as Outdoor have been reinvented to some extent with the arrival of new channels such as ambient advertising, guerilla marketing. So just where should the smart advertising dollars go?
The answer, it seems, lies in the mix. M-marketing is at its most successful when it has something else to hang from. When part of an integrated approach the mobile can dramatically increase a campaign's effectiveness.
On it's own, however, it is likely to be Spam or "Splurge" (spamming an acquired database). M-marketing adds an interactive element to integrated campaigns. Whether TV, radio, press or outdoor, if an ad is enabled with a number then the mobile phone the consumer is encouraged to connect with the brand.
Downloads, music, ring tones, wallpapers etc are one dynamic part of the market market. Entertainment driven mobile applications are expected to net more than US$50m a year by the end of the decade. At a recent forum for the m-marketing industry in Singapore there was a new emphasis on the delivery of content and creative use of mobile. The interactive games industry certainly seems to have the mobile phone firmly in its sights. Peter Cakarnis of Australia's Intelligent Entertainment says it it now completely focused on games specifically developed for mobile phones: "Providing games for download is a powerful way to entice consumers to interact with your brand or website, " he says.
According to Pezzaniti, there is a marked shift among consumers in that they are prepared to pay for entertainment but they do not expect to pay for information or advertising. "We found that people are happy to pay to download a game that is "branded" but a simple ad, no matter how smart or sticky, isn't even a consideration if they have to pay for it," he says.
On the other hand the growth and use of promotions to entice mobile users to interact also appears to be slowing. Many subscribers for premium SMS services anticipate that they will get them for free in the future. Being paid a couple of dollars to receive an ad on your phone is still an unlikely reality and there is also a growing concern among advertisers that constantly linking their activity to a promotion could diminish their brand over a period of time. Are consumers truly interacting with your brand or just the promotion?
While many Singaporean companies and advertising agencies have implemented mobile campaigns almost without exception there has been one overriding objective, to capture a database. This focus on database capture can overshadow other opportunities of mobile campaigns. The real opportunities lie in the development of a real time interface between consumers and advertisers.
One exception to this short-sighted approach is BeepCast. It launched an interactive mobile platform called BeepMe earlier this year, a Spam free, "consumer choice" service free to the user and paid for by the advertiser. The consumer pays no additional costs to retrieve or capture information, and the advertiser is only charged if a consumer interacts. What makes this model unique is that it is a branded service, and is used as a call to action inviting consumers to interact with an ad. Consumers are guaranteed they won't spammed and most importantly that BeepCast won't sell its database.
"It's about giving control back to the consumers and creating a tool that empowers them." said John Smallwood, regional director of Beepcast. "People interact because they choose to and because they want the information, not because it's being pushed at them. If a consumer interacts because they want to rather than because of a promotion it has to be a more valuable interaction. Spam them and they just turn off! Give them something they want and they will come and explore."
